Who is Howard Shore? A cinematic legend looks back over his career...
I last met Howard Shore in 2006 when I had the pleasure of sitting with him for a performance of his Lord of the Rings Symphony in Nice, France. Our latest encounter, 18-plus years later, is on Zoom and it finds the 78-year-old Canadian composer in the midst of looking back at his career, archiving and cataloguing his many works and looking forward to the release of Anthology, a double album of his film music, out now on Deutsche Grammophon.
That recording, made over a three-day celebration last year by the Philharmonique de Radio France (conducted by Ludwig Wicki and Bastien Stil) and Le Balcon (conducted by Mike Schäperclaus) is a distillation of a career on screen that began in 1978 with the ‘video nasty’ I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses.
Howard Shore and David Cronenberg... a 40-year partnership
The following year he scored The Brood for director David Cronenberg, a horror film that sparked a fruitful artistic partnership; indeed over 40 years and 17 films later, the pair are still at it – their latest, The Shrouds, was released in March.
‘It has always been very intuitive with David,’ Shore tells me. ‘As soon as he finishes a script he lets me read it, and we talk about different ways to produce the film. As he’s shooting, I visit him and we discuss ideas. We’ve been working together for so long that I understand his ideas and I think I represent them well, musically.’
Those ideas birthed iconic films such as Dead Ringers, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, Shore appearing to revel in Cronenberg’s dark corners. He was inspired to create thrilling, beautiful and uncompromising music to bridge and bolster the director’s celluloid shadows and sinews.
Howard Shore and other directors... Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and more...
Beyond Cronenberg, Shore has enjoyed repeat collaborations with directors Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo), David Fincher (Seven, The Game, Panic Room) and the late Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia). Add to that films by Penny Marshall (Big), Chris Columbus (Mrs Doubtfire) and Tim Burton (Ed Wood) and it becomes quite a roster. So what’s the secret to a good composer-director relationship?
‘I think trust is important, and a common goal is also required,’ he shares. ‘A good ear is essential in a director, and a love of music. A lot of good friendships developed from that period of working with different directors.’
How did Howard Shore become a composer?
But where did it all start? Shore played the saxophone, and in the late 1970s and early ’80s he served as musical director of the legendary late-night sketch show Saturday Night Live. Composing, though, was a creative itch he needed to scratch, as he explains.
‘I was writing music for small groups, string quartets, brass trios; anywhere I could find ways to express my ideas musically, I was interested in. Television always has these hiatus periods, so I would write a film score. I would do the show during the winter months, then in the summer I’d write The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers and it didn’t interfere. Then I transitioned to writing more for film in the 1980s, because it was allowing me access to the thing I was interested in, which was the recording process.’
Howard Shore and the London Philharmonic Orchestra... a special partnership
Cronenberg’s 1986 horror classic The Fly saw Shore team up with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) for the first time, and it was the start of another winning partnership. The composer delighted in the orchestra’s sound and the ensemble really became key to his own creative development as a composer, orchestrator and conductor.
‘After The Fly, I probably recorded ten or 12 film scores with them over those years. My process of composition in pencil and orchestration in ink was developed by working with the LPO. I was experimenting on some scores and I learned a lot by recording the scores with them. They were good partners, so I have a lot to thank them for.’
Howard Shore and Lord of the Rings...
With 15 years of history together, it’s no wonder the LPO was at the top of Shore’s list when he took on Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films based on JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. More than that, as the composer explains, he wrote it for them. ‘It was written specifically for those players and I orchestrated it for them. I’d worked with them for so long, that when I started on The Fellowship of the Ring I was working specifically to their sound, their voicings, their range; for all those players on those recordings it was really personal, it was fantastic.’
Composer and orchestra reunited in March at the London Soundtrack Festival, where Shore was given the first Christopher Gunning Inspiration Award – named after the much-loved British film composer, who died in 2023 – at a gala concert of Shore’s music, performed by the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall.
Lord of the Rings in concert
Shore’s music for The Lord of the Rings films has taken on a new life in concert halls around the world with live-to-film performances, something the composer is happy about. ‘There’s something very special about hearing the music with the film it was created for. When you listen to Fellowship of the Ring, the colours in the performance match the sound beautifully – the greens, the burgundies, the colour of the film and the music language is wonderful in concert. The film is like you’ve never heard it before, and the music is like you’ve never seen it before. The two complement each other in a way that is unique and very interesting.’
What was it like to write the music for Lord of the Rings? Howard Shore remembers...
I ask him what he recalls about those early adventures in Middle-earth, and what he’s most proud of now that he looks back. ‘It was a very intense period; I was in my late 50s at the time, and I had the experience of having written a lot of scores,’ he says. ‘I went into it step by step. It was too vast a world to grasp at once. I knew I’d have to write the destruction of the ring, but I knew it was years away. So, I composed every day, maybe 40-50 bars of music, which was pretty good at the time; I kept up the pace and the score for the trilogy is about 12 hours. I was very disciplined, and I was able to follow Tolkien’s guide; I was using the book as much as I was writing to the film.’
He continues: ‘I did a lot of the work on paper. I was writing in pencil, on four to six staves, then orchestrating in ink and taking it almost immediately to the recording sessions. Sometimes I was writing overnight and then recording the next day! It was a very involving process that took almost four years. Peter Jackson was also following Tolkien, one step in front of the other, and we supported each other and found a way to create something from our hearts.’
Howard Shore... What does he think of modern film scores?
In the 20-plus years since, Shore has continued to find new ways to express himself, whether it be on the concert stage with numerous concert works including his guitar concerto for Miloš (The Forest) and his 2008 opera based on The Fly. On screen he has continued to craft engaging and vital dramatic scores for films like Doubt (2008), Spotlight (2015), Denial (2016) and Pieces of a Woman (2020). I wonder what he makes of modern film scores, and the places younger composers are taking the artform that he has contributed so much to himself. His outlook is optimistic.
‘It’s interesting that the orchestra has always been the instrument of choice for live performances, but it doesn’t seem to be the instrument of choice for recording. You hear a lot of electronic music which is quite good. I’m hearing a lot of great things, but composers aren’t using the orchestra so much in their expression, or they’re combining it with electronics. I think it’s in a developing process; but there is a lot of very good work being done.’
Can Howard Shore be tempted back to Middle-earth?
Some films, though, just cry out for the kind of deeply felt, orchestral music Shore is rightly being celebrated for this month, not least of all any further Lord of the Rings projects. He composed the title music for the popular Amazon Prime series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but could he be tempted back to the big screen for The Hunt for Gollum, which is currently in development?
‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘I guess we’ll see how that all works out.’
