The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring (The Complete Recordings)
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CD Details
Composer: Howard ShoreEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 2005-12-13
Music Label: Reprise / Wea
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Prologue: One Ring to Rule Them All
- The Shire
- Bag End (includes "The Road Goes Ever On" (Walsh))
- Very Old Friends
- Flaming Red Hair, song (for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of th
- Farewell Dear Bilbo
- Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe (includes "Drinking Song" and "The Road Go
- A Conspiracy Unmasked
- Three is Company
- The Passing of the Elves, song (aka "The Elvish Lament") (The Lord of the R
- Saruman the White
- A Shortcut to Mushrooms
- Strider
- The Nazgul (inlcudes "The Song of Lúthien" (Mortensen))
- Weathertop
- The Caverns of Isengard
- Give Up the Halfling
- Orthanc
- Rivendell
- The Sword That Was Broken
- The Council of Elrond Assembles (includes "AnÃron, Theme for Aragorn an
- The Great Eye
- Gilraen's Memorial
- The Pass of Caradhras
- The Doors of Durin
- Moria
- Gollum
- Balin's Tomb
- Khazad-Dum
- Caras Galadhon (featuring Lament for Gandalf, performed by Elizabeth Fraser)
- The Mirror of Galadriel
- The Fighting Uruk-hai
- Parth Galen
- The Departure of Boromir
- The Road Goes Ever On (part 1)
- May It Be (composed and performed by Enya)
- The Road Goes Ever On (part 2. featuring In Dreams, perfomed by Edward Ross)
Music reviews of The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring (The Complete Recordings)
Music Review: Fantastic Content, Less than Fantastic Packaging, Copy Protected Format Confusion
Rating: 4 Stars
I picked this up because I am a big fan of the earlier CD releases of Howard Shore's scores for the Lord of the Rings films. If there is one aspect of the films that will age very well, it is Shore's brilliant soundtrack. I believe orchestras will be performing this work in years to come. As some reviewers have mentioned, the booklet that comes with the CDs is excellent, and has a great exposition on the various motifs found in the score, and how they reappear and merge and change over the course of the film. It is, as one reviewer commented, an education in film scoring in and of itself.
I had no trouble importing the CD content with iTunes. The artwork, box, and enclosed snap-in trays holding the CDs are all nicely done, although the package is somewhat fragile and I have had to tape together a torn corner already.
The enclosed DVD is a bit troublesome, though, for several reasons, some of which are within the control of the people designing this boxed set, and some which aren't.
Because it contains the entire score in multiple formats with better audio quality than a standard CD can hold, it is the most valuable part of the set. Yet it is not enclosed in a protective tray like the CDs: instead, the cover of the faux-book box has a cutout with a rubber nub glued on it, and the DVD is stuck onto the nub. It is somewhat unprotected against scratches in this configuration; keep in mind that even rubbing against cardboard can scratch a CD or DVD. The set must involve hand-assembly, and the rubber nub on my set was not properly centered in the cover, and so after removal I could not re-insert the DVD until I peeled off the nub and centered it, which tore up the inside cover somewhat. It is difficult to put the DVD back onto the nub. The second time I removed the DVD, the nub tore off completely, so I wound up just throwing out the nub and sticking the DVD into a vinyl CD sleeve of my own, which I put in the box. The DVD now has a number of fine scratches, and although this doesn't seem to affect playback.
It is frustrating to have such a beautiful piece of packaging that is so dysfunctional! I understand the reason for treating the DVD separately, because of the fragility of the spindle holes in DVDs, but this solution doesn't work well. Since I plan to buy the complete scores for The Two Towers and Return of the King if and when they become available, I hope that the people producing the packaging for those boxed sets come up with a better solution. The DVD needs better protection and a place of honor in the set, especially since it is difficult or not possible to back it up by "ripping" it. Let me elaborate.
Prospective buyers should be aware that DVD audio is not well-supported on as many platforms as CD audio. This is a general problem in the "format wars" -- there is not a clear winner in the category of better-than-CD audio formats.
My Sony DVD player will play two of the four versions -- I'm not sure which -- but unlike an audio CD, which will play automatically, it is necessary to use the remote control and on-screen menus to pick the mix and start playing the content; you can't just hit play or navigate with the track buttons on the DVD player. That's annoying, given that this is not a movie.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the score on DVD audio sounds fantastic -- the improvement in dynamic range is noticeable esepcially at higher volumes. The content is terrific, too. Whether in the higher-resolution format or plain old CD (does anyone remeber when CD meant "perfect audio forever?"), the new pieces are great, particularly the Celtic-sounding jig "Flaming Red Hair" and the haunting choral piece "The Passing of the Elves." The additional content is definitely not filler! After listening to this, the original soundtrack album sounds like a Cliff's Notes or highly abridged edition by comparison. I can't wait to hear the next films.
Like many people these days I do just about all of my listening via iTunes and put away my actual CDs to keep them safe. If I don't have the audio ripped, I often just put in the CD and listen to it on a PC or Macintosh while I work. It is problematic to try to use DVD-Audio format material this way. My brand-new Dell PC at work will not play the DVD audio at all, even though it has a DVD drive.
DVD-Audio is copy protected. It may be possible to use some devious software to import the higher-resolution audio tracks into iTunes, and I am looking into this, but it is not supported by default, and the typical computer is not guaranteed to generate clean playback of 24-bit audio (my Airport Express, for example, apparently won't do it, even though iTunes will allegedly support the 24-bit files). If I can't figure out how to import it myself, I will try to find a way to download (that is, "pirate" or "steal") an iTunes-importable version of the high-resolution audio data I just paid a lot of money to listen to, so that I can listen to it when and where I want to.
Fortunately you don't need to rely on the DVD to listen to the content. Depending on your usage patterns and how you feel about copy protection, it may be best to consider the DVD an interesting curiosity, and not the mainstay of the boxed set. It is unfortunate that there isn't a widely usable higher-resolution standard, and the "format wars" also raises the irritating possibility that there may be yet another better-sounding release of this music in the future, on SACD or Blu-Ray or X-Ray or whatever. The next scores had better also come on CD, because I will not knowingly purchase content released in only a copy-protected format, although I would love to have a better format that met my usage patterns and did not take away my rights to use the content I paid for. I've already purchased all three of the original soundtrack albums, and have now purchased this premium offering. As Kay says in _Men in Black_, "So now I gotta buy the White Album again?" There's another saying that also might apply: "fool me twice -- shame on me."
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Description of The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring (The Complete Recordings)
An epic film score receives epic treatment with The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring/Complete Recordings. Released for the first time on CD, the complete score for the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy contains more than 180 minutes of music on three CDs plus a DVD-Audio disc of the entire score in Surround Sound. Breathtaking and majestic, the 2001 Oscar and Grammy winning score compsted by Howard Shore also includes Enya's Oscar nominated "May It Be." For fans of any of The Lord of the Rings films, the Fellowship of the Ring/Complete Recordings is an essential experience.As fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy know, each film exists in two versions: the theatrical one and the extended one that appeared on DVD. This luxurious box set--which also comes with a detailed essay on the movie's musical themes--features the full extended score, so many cues not on the CDs of the individual movies are included. Granted, the majority of listeners will be perfectly happy with the shorter versions of the scores--it's a safe bet that most people can live without hearing, say, Ian McKellen's 35-second-long ditty "The Road Goes Ever On" at the beginning of "Bag End," or Viggo Mortensen's performance of his own composition, "The Song of Lúthien," within the track "The Nazgûl." But if you're a completist and/or a devotee of Howard Shore's pounding tympani and overwhelming choral compositions (featured particularly prominently on disc 3, a large chunk of which is devoted to a battle scene), then this set is a dream come true. Audiophiles should note that the fourth disc, a DVD, offers the score in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Fire up those speakers so the whole shire can hear. --Elisabeth Vincentelli
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