Suite (The Lord of the Rings)

Shore composed roughly ten hours of music for Peter Jackson's three Lord of the Rings films between 1999 and 2003, working from Tolkien's text as much as from the edits. He built the score as a system of leitmotifs — well over eighty of them — attached not only to characters but to cultures, so that the Shire, Rohan, Gondor and Mordor each have their own intervals, instruments and modes, which then combine, decay and turn against one another as the story moves. Most of it was recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Shore received three Academy Awards for the trilogy.