The headline says it all. Andy Machals and his team have finished their translation of The Two Towers' Annotated Score. See the finished product right here, or browse the full website yourself.

Beautiful job, guys!

That's "still" as in "I'm continuing to work," not "Motionless at work"... though the latter is more accurate as it pertains to emails and posts in the past few days. For that I apologize. Anyone waiting on correspondence: I promise I'll get back to you soon!

Editing is going incredibly--if exhaustingly--well. I expect a locked text within days. 33 gigs of image files are arriving around the end of the week, so that should pretty well inaugurate the layout phase. Regular updates and email responses will likely resume around the same time.

In the meantime, I'm going to try and squeeze in a few hours of sleep!

Goodnight...

-Doug

Work progresses! (Apologies to the people in foreground... don't know who they are, but I hope they were ready for their close-ups!)

Hi everyone,

A very brief book update before I tumble into bed: I'm leaving town tomorrow night to tend to the tail end of the proofreading process. We should have a locked first draft of the text by the end of the weekend. Next week begins the layout phase.

Anyway, posts/emails may be slow in the next day or two.

Back soon!

-Doug

July 23, 2008

Over the past few weeks--months even--there's been a lot of speculation, both here and elsewhere, about just what a potential "deluxe" version of The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films could/should offer. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to add my thoughts/rational to the mix.

This book was originally designed with a twofold purpose: One, to examine the creation of Howard Shore's score to The Lord of the Rings and two) to explain its function. Why? Because I believe it's a work of art. I could go into it's utter uniqueness, or into film music's longstanding status as a misunderstood art form, but that's really superfluous. I mean, a excellent tome on Beethoven's Seventh would be absolutely welcome... or Britten's Peter Grimes... or Piccasso's blue period. But it's not as if Classical period symphonies, British operas or Twentieth Century Spanish painting have been marginalized. Shore's work here deserves our concentration simply because it is good. That's enough.

And in fact, I so ardently believe that Shore's score merits examination that I've allowed large sections of my book to be released well before it officially goes to print. You know these excerpts as the liner notes to The Complete Recordings and The Annotated Scores. The book expands both these sections and adds chapters on the score's creation and recording and The Rarities Archives, so it certainly has reason to exist. But that's neither here nor there. My point is this: I want people to understand this amazing music. Inside and out. Backwards and forwards.  

Public Radio International has a nice piece on The Fly here. Glad to see the coverage slowly turning from hype- and celebrity-based journalism to an intelligent discussion of the content. It hasn't completely turned the corner, but it is improving.

It seems a long time off, but start booking those plains, trains and automobiles now: TTT Live is officially set for March, 2009, performed by the 21st Century Orchestra and Chorus at the KKL in Lucerne, Switzerland.

This blog has popped up on a couple of radars this week, so I thought I'd return the favor. Check out TheOneRing.net's coverage here, and Kristin Thompson's coverage here.

Tickets to the Los Angeles Opera's production of Howard Shore's The Fly are now on sale. Click here, or see the link near the bottom of the right sidebar.

I will most likely attend the performance on September 7. Anyone in the neighborhood, please feel free to say hello.

-Doug

I'm generally not a big fan of the number-crunching side of the arts: How much did this production cost? How much did it make? Who gets what off the first 10% of ticket sales? Certainly these stats are a reality of any production, but audiences' preoccupation with dollar signs gets a little silly after a while... as if these numbers have anything to do with the resultant artistry.

Nevertheless, I found this info on US government grants awarded to opera productions to be interesting if only because you can see the relative amounts awarded to various productions. John Adams' A Flowering Tree gathered a just bit less that Shore's The Fly. But both were dwarfed by a Lyric Opera production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. 

St. Louis has a short blurb on the upcoming LOTR Symphony performances on their webpage today. Check it out here.

The above is the current word count for The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films. The book will rest comfortably at this number for the time being--it is now officially out for proofreading and the text is locked until the tweaking begins. Funnily, it currently feels just just another document cleared off the desktop. Of course, I think the import will sink in later.

John Jennette's ambitious project began as school assignment, but has turned in to a really uniquely interactive way of experiencing the online Annotated Scores. Click the logo below, and give it a try.

Hi everyone,

It's interesting watching the press try to grapple with The Fly. Critics are notoriously tough on new operas, so I pretty well expected them to head in with nails sharpened, teeth bared. And while some of the obligatory low-level grumbling has been present, in the main it seems like first audiences are still absorbing the piece, still sorting it through in their minds. 

This would be the first I've heard of it, but this piece in The National states that the LOTR Symphony is on the agenda at the upcoming Abu Dhabi Classics festival. It also states that Shore, himself, will be in attendance. 

Hello one and all from Los Angeles, California. I'm just back from meetings with the Music of LOTR book's publishers, which were tremendously productive, I'm happy to say. I'll have additional details when the schedule slows, but know that, at the moment, things are looking very, very good!

I'll be thrilled if anyone gets the headline!

It is now July first, and as I write this I'm stuffing belongings into suitcases, preparing to fly to Los Angeles and meet with the book's publishers. As I do so, I'm reminded of one of my first LOTR-related trips: my voyage to the London-based recording sessions for The Return of the King. Seems a long time ago now. Soon after returning, I wrote up my recollections for Film Score Monthly Magazine. I'm not sure how much of the blog's current readership was following events back then, so I've scanned the article for your viewing pleasure. Please see the slideshow at right and click to enlarge each page, or simply click here, if you wish, for the album. You'll probably need to zoom in a bit... but I promise this time the resolution will actually withstand your scrutiny.