The music of the American fantasy television series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power mostly consists of an original film score by Bear McCreary. The series is based on J. R. R. Tolkien's history of Middle-earth, primarily material from the appendices of the novel The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It is set thousands of years before the novel and depicts the major events of Middle-earth's Second Age. The series was developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay for the streaming service Amazon Prime Video.
McCreary was approached in 2019, and began writing themes or leitmotifs in July 2021. The series is not a continuation of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) film trilogies and McCreary was contractually prevented from quoting any of the themes that Howard Shore composed for those films. Despite this, he hoped to create musical continuity between his score and Shore's. McCreary eschewed the common industry practice of using other composers to write additional music, ensuring a consistent musical approach for the whole series. He composed nine hours of music for the first season and eight hours for the second. McCreary's score was recorded with orchestras, choirs singing in Tolkien's constructed languages, and specialty solo instruments. The series also features original diegetic music and songs, and a main title theme by Shore.
Soundtrack albums for each season have been released, along with additional albums featuring McCreary's full score for each episode. The score has received positive reviews from critics and several accolades, including a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award nomination and multiple wins at the International Film Music Critics Association Awards.
Background Amazon acquired the global television rights for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) in November 2017. The company's streaming service, Prime Video, gave a multi-season commitment to a series based on the novel and its appendices, to be produced by Amazon Studios in association with New Line Cinema and in consultation with the Tolkien Estate. J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay were set as showrunners of the series, titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings. It follows a large cast of characters and covers all the major events of the Second Age from Tolkien's writings: the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, and the last alliance between Elves and Men.
The series was originally expected to be a continuation of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) film trilogies, but Amazon later clarified that their deal with Tolkien's estate required them to keep the series distinct from the films. Despite this, musicians Plan 9—Janet Roddick, David Donaldson, and Steve Roche—and David Long returned from the films to provide music during filming for the first season, and Howard Shore, who composed the original scores for Jackson's films, also returned. Shore was first reported to be in discussions for the series in September 2020. He was said to be interested in developing musical themes but not necessarily composing the entire score. Shore was confirmed to be in talks a year later, when composer Bear McCreary was reported to be involved as well. A long-time fan of Tolkien's writings and Jackson's films, McCreary was first approached about working on the series by executive producer Lindsey Weber, who he worked with on the films 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), in 2019. He was not hired until mid-2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the first season's production and delayed the producers' decision on who the composer would be. The hiring of Shore to write the main title theme and McCreary to compose the rest of the score was officially announced in July 2022. McCreary later confirmed that he was contractually prohibited from quoting any themes that Shore wrote for the films.
Production Composition
Despite not being able to quote any of Shore's material from the films, McCreary wanted to stay true to Shore's approach by preserving the core sounds and styles of music for each culture that Shore had developed. In this way, he hoped to create a "continuity of concept" between Shore's music and his own, with his new themes being added to the "pantheon of memorable melodies" that Shore had written. When starting work on the series, McCreary met Shore and they discussed their approaches to writing music. McCreary felt there was an expectation, based on Shore's scores, that the music in the series be a "character in and of itself" and he wanted to match that by writing music that was less in the background than other modern scores are.
McCreary preferred to see completed footage from a project before composing music for it, but for The Rings of Power he had to begin work based only on the scripts for the first season, conversations with the showrunners, and seeing a rough version of the first two episodes. He felt this worked for the series because, as a Tolkien fan, he could compose themes based on his personal expectations. This meant he was also able to compose themes that would work across the whole series, rather than just the first season, because he already knew the major character arcs. McCreary typically composes three or four themes or leitmotifs for a project, but needed more than fifteen for the first season. He began working on the music in July 2021, starting with "an absolutely brutal six weeks" just composing the themes. He compared this to writing a symphony. McCreary next applied his themes to several key scenes from the first two episodes. He presented these to the showrunners and other executive producers before they heard the individual themes, because he wanted their first experience of the music to be in context.
Because of the delay in his hiring, McCreary had less time than he would have liked to compose the season's score. After his themes had been approved, he dedicated most of his time for the next eight months to composing the full nine-hour score for the first season. He only took five days off in that time, and eschewed the common industry practice of using other composers to write additional music. This was to ensure a consistent musical approach for the whole series. Also uncommonly, McCreary did not have spotting sessions with the showrunners after the first two episodes because they all felt that they were already on the same page. He would instead compose and mock-up the full score for each episode and send it to the showrunners, who generally had only a few specific notes for each one. McCreary said it was surreal to have that much freedom and trust on such a big series, which he called "the most ambitious thing that I've ever been attached to. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to be able to pour myself into something so profoundly, and be given the space and the creative freedom to do the score I want to hear."
While he was focused on composing the score, McCreary's team at his Sparks & Shadows label were tasked with the orchestration, recording, and mixing. Supervising this work remotely while he was still composing all of the music himself took a large toll on McCreary's physical and mental wellbeing, but he chose to continue composing the entire score himself because he wanted to realize the "full extent of [his] vision" and because writing music for The Lord of the Rings was a lifelong dream of his. He finished composing in April 2022, and then spent around six months producing the music, creating albums, promoting the season, and writing blog entries that explain the score. McCreary finished this work in October, when he was given scripts for the second season so he could create music that was needed during filming. He initially expressed hope that he could pace out his work better on the second season, but the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike—which prevented the showrunners from working on the series—led to a change in schedule, with McCreary needing to compose much of the season's score before recording and mixing began near the end of post-production. He composed eight hours of music from September 2023 to April 2024, even less time than he had on the first season. McCreary was proud to again compose all of the music himself while improving his approach from the first season, this time looking after his health, staying connected to his family, and working on other projects at the same time.
Orchestration and languages The score is orchestrated by McCreary's long-time collaborators Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson, and Jonathan Beard, who are collectively known as the Tutti Music Partners. They first had months of discussions with McCreary to understand his approach, and then followed detailed notes he made while composing. The trio said orchestrating each episode was comparable to working on a feature film.
In addition to orchestra and specialist instruments, McCreary composed for choir and solo singers. The lyrics for these use words from Tolkien's constructed languages: the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, the Dwarvish language Khuzdul, the dark language Black Speech, and the Númenórean language Adûnaic. McCreary said there was potential to invent new words in some of these languages based on the rules that Tolkien established, but he preferred to stick to words that Tolkien created himself. He started by referring to a dictionary of words and phrases for each language while he was composing, and then worked with Sparks & Shadows's Brian Claeys to make sure the text fit the music. Payne reviewed all of the text in the first season's score to ensure each language was being used correctly. McCreary was grateful for this considering Payne's busy schedule as showrunner. Dialect coach Leith McPhearson recorded herself pronouncing every line of text phonetically, syllable by syllable, so the choirs and soloists could learn the correct pronunciation of each word ahead of recording.
The second season features lyrics written in the same fictional languages as the first season and also uses Rhûnic, which was developed for the series by scholars using unpublished notes from Tolkien. Carl F. Hostetter, a Tolkien scholar and the head of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, led the team responsible for translating English lyrics into Tolkien's languages. For the season, Payne wrote various poems in English which were translated into the appropriate fictional language. Claeys and Bailey Gordon ensured that the translated lyrics fit the music, and McPherson again recorded herself pronouncing each word for the singers to follow.
Recording and mixing
Because of the series' large budget, McCreary had the resources to record the score how he wanted without having to use common television cost-saving techniques such as alternating between big and small orchestras. Each episode of the first season used a 90-piece orchestra at either Abbey Road Studios or AIR Studios in London over four days, a 40-person choir and children's choir at Synchron Stage in Vienna over three or four days, and soloists on various specialty instruments in Los Angeles, New York City, Norway, and Sweden over seven days. Recording began in November 2021. McCreary supervised remotely while Gavin Greenaway, Cliff Masterson, and Anthony Weeden conducted the orchestra, and Gottfried Rabl and Bernhard Melbye Voss conducted the choirs. McCreary conducted the orchestra for the final episode at AIR Studios in April 2022, after he finished composing.