Howard Shore - the horror man

Canadian Howard Shore studied in Boston at the Berklee School of Music and worked for a time as a musician playing sax in the rock group "Lighthouse". After a few years on the road, his first screen work was for the small screen on "Saturday Night Live", before he began his film career alongside director David Cronenberg. Now both director and composer are closely associated with these landmark films with a strong suspense or horror element. Their early films tended to be low budget affairs like "The Brood", "Scanners" and "Videodrome" but the relative success of these was such that their later films were better funded, such as "The Fly", "Dead Ringers" and "Naked Lunch". Even when Shore worked with other directors his association with horror led to more work in that genre including "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven", or the offbeat "Ed Wood" when Tim Burton had temporarily fallen out with Danny Elfman.

It seems as though the early period with Cronenberg may have been important for his musical development. It is certainly true that working on low-budget horror movies where the boundaries between fantasy and reality are rarely clear, offers a lot of freedom to all the artists involved, not least the composer. Shore seems to to have used this period in an experimental fashion, trying different techniques and developing a feel for what works in various situations. Within traditional orchestral scores he has mixed period styles and world music, as well as electronic instruments and sampled sounds. In interviews, the composer often stresses an instinctive approach to composition and it's tempting to conclude that he developed that approach on those Cronenberg films.

However, among all the many genre films he has scored with apparent freedom, there are now many examples where he has worked on more mainstream movies where the music requirements were no doubt more strictly specified. He can obviously work admirably under these conditions and has demonstrated a versatility previously only hinted at. He has done light-hearted family movies such as "Big", "Mrs. Doubtfire" and more recently "Cats and Dogs". The soundtrack to "Philadelphia" is extremely memorable (with a highly successful album release) including songs by Bruce Springstein, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel and an operatic track sung by Maria Callas. It is easy to forget Shore's contribution to this gem, with its sadness, comfort and quiet dignity, earning him the final track on the soundtrack album.

Despite this substantial career grounding, it must still have come as a surprise to some when Shore was chosen for the "Lord of the Rings" films. The surpise is greater when you look back to those early Cronenberg films where the music is often a mere backdrop to the eye-catching visuals and downright weird plots. In contrast the Tolkien epics demand a much more prominent position in the finished product. These long-awaited movies are certain to raise Shore's profile in Hollywood now that he has completed the mammoth scoring task - although still to come are the extended version of "Return of the King" and a possible prequel. The first in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring introduces Celtic music for the Hobbits with song contributions from Enya, and much powerful, mystical choral cues winning Shore his first Oscar. The subsequent soundtracks for The Two Towers and The Return of the King are more intense but equally worthy in musical terms with at least 95% new musical material. Given that each film is three hours long with music present for a good proportion of screen-time, the scoring task is considerable. Shore has also provided music for the various Lord of the Rings video games.

Following Shore's work for Peter Jackson on the Lord of the Rings films, it seemed natural that Shore would compose the music for Jackson's "King Kong" project, but following creative differences the film's composer will be James Newton Howard. Instead, following his work on "Gangs of New York", Shore has been working more frequently with Martin Scorsese, winning the 2004 Golden Globe for Best Score for "The Aviator" and then scoring "The Departed". Shore has also created music for a computer game called "Soul of the Ultimate Nation" or "Sun" for short.

However, Shore has not forgotten his roots with Cronenberg and Horror, since they are working on an Opera version of "The Fly". The premiere has been announced as being in Paris on July 1st 2008!

Films by Howard Shore:

• I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses
• The Brood - the first of a long relationship with Cronenberg
• Scanners
• Videodrome
• Dead Ringers - some of the music cues are designed to give a sense of normality to this tale
• She Devil
• Naked Lunch
• The Fly - the Jeff Goldblum remake
• After Hours - a first collaboration with Martin Scorsese
• Prelude to a Kiss
• Sliver
• Big
• Mrs. Doubtfire
• Philadelphia - his contribution often forgotten amid several moving songs on the soundtrack
• Silence of the Lambs - includes music by Bach as does the sequel "Hannibal" by Hans Zimmer
• The Game
• Se7en
• eXistenZ - more brooding tracks in this "what is reality?" tale
• Analyse This
• Striptease
• Cop Land
• Crash - lots of electric guitars featuring in the soundtrack to this disturbing film
• The Cell
• Ed Wood - Tim Burton turned to Shore rather than Danny Elfman for this film, whose score includes some period horror/drama stuff including B-movie theremin and "Swan Lake" for Bela Lugosi
• The Score - Shore's score for "The Score" is heavily drums and bass driven, with a muted trumpet providing jazz overtones
• The Truth about Cats and Dogs - taking second billing behind the Music Supervisor, Shore provides some light romantic cues for this romantic comedy
• Analyse This
• Dogma - the score finds ample opportunity for ironic religious mysticism, devilish antics and a lot of irreverent humour
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - the previous animated version of The Lord of the Rings had a soundtrack by Leonard Rosenman
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Panic Room - a melding of the orchestral and electronic, with tension and adrenalin
• Gangs of New York - Elmer Bernstein was originally contracted to do the score, but it ended up being by "various artists" and including music from Shore's concert work "Brooklyn Heights"
• The Aviator - winning a "Golden Globe", this music mixes new sounds with old baroque forms like canon and fugue, and suggests Howard Hughes' obsessive mind
• A History of Violence - back with Cronenberg again
• The Departed - another score for Martin Scorsese, featuring various types of guitars and there's a tango-style theme which recurs at a number of points in the film
• Eastern Promises

Recommendations:

Some of Shore's themes can be found on compilation CDs of well-known horror movies. "Philadelphia" is highly recommended (though noting that it only features a single track by Shore. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King all come with at least 4 different covers and also leather bound versions.