Frances Walsh (APRA), Howard Shore and Annie Lennox (PRS) accept their Academy Awards for Original Song, “"Into The West,"” from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Shore also won an Oscar for the film's original score.

HOWARD SHORE: LORD OF THE SCORES

Howard Shore, this year's recipient of the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award, has been one of film music's most distinctive and versatile composers for more than 25 years. Closely associated with the films of director and fellow Canadian David Cronenberg (The Brood, Scanners, The Fly), Shore has also worked on films by directors ranging from Martin Scorsese (After Hours, Gangs of New York), Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) and Tim Burton (Ed Wood). Shore has composed scores for family films (Mrs. Doubtfire, Big), broad comedies (Analyze This), and small-scale dramas (Nobody's Fool). The past few years has seen Shore linked with what is probably the most successful fantasy film series of all time –-- The Lord of the Rings trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson. Shore received Best Original Score Academy Awards for his scores for two films of the Tolkein trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King, as well as the Best Song Oscar for “"Into the West," a song co-written by Shore with Fran West and Annie Lennox for The Return of the King.

Shore's impact started long before his involvement with film music. He was an original member of the popular 1960s Canadian rock band, Lighthouse, for a number of years, and later was a founding creative force on the television mainstay, Saturday Night Live. Despite a long list of musical achievements, crowned by the Lord of the Rings scores, Shore remains driven to express himself musically and to collaborate with others on a high level. Shortly after his Oscar triumph, Shore shared some reflections on his distinguished career in music.

Can you describe your musical beginnings?

I started studying counterpoint and harmony when I was ten, along with the clarinet. At fourteen, at a music library, I heard Toru Takemitsu for the first time. I also discovered the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Bela Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. That was the music that interested me when I was younger and I mixed that with my love of popular music –-- Elvis Presley and the Beatles, growing up in the 50s and 60s.

Saturday Night Live was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

You went from summer camp shows to professional musician pretty quickly.

I was accepted at Berklee College of Music and studied composition there. And then I went on the road with Lighthouse and did a thousand one-nighters in four years of touring. It was another way to express music with this group –-- I did eight albums with them. I wrote songs, played woodwinds and sang –-- it was all very much being part of a repertory group. We had ten in the band, including a string quartet and a horn section. We also played with symphony orchestras. At 19 and 20, I was conducting pieces of my own, including a ballet with The Royal Winnipeg Ballet. I was also doing radio and TV programs for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) with Lorne Michaels. That led to Saturday Night Live –-- which I did from 1975 to 1980, 113 live broadcasts.

Was Saturday Night Live good preparation for film composing?

I think it was good preparation. I wrote music every week, assembled the band, wrote the opening and closing themes, and established the sound of that show. It had you working with writers, actors and different directors and it showed you the great value of collaboration. And the repertory nature of it was good for film music because you were using so many approaches.

Howard Shore conducted the World Premiere of The Lord of the Rings Symphony in Wellington, New Zealand on November 29, 2003

Your entry into film music took place while you were still Music Director of Saturday Night Live.

Yes. I began delving into film in the late 70s. The reason I did was more from an interest in music than film. I thought it was a means of expression. As I mentioned before, all those earlier years listening to Takemitsu, Stockhausen, Cage and Bartók –-- it was working its way through my young brain for years, but I had no way to express any of that –-- not in a rock band or in doing radio and television. The director, David Cronenberg, is a few years older than I am and I had known about him growing up in Toronto. He was a kid from the neighborhood who rode a motorcycle and made 16 mm films, some of which were very experimental. I approached him about working together. He had never worked with a composer before and I had never worked with a director. In 1978, we made The Brood and over the next 20 years we made ten more films.

Was Lord of the Rings your greatest challenge as a film composer?

Without question, each of the three films score is four hours long and I've been working on these scores for close to four years. There are few film projects which encompass that kind of time and effort.

My career has always been about music. And Lord of the Rings is just an expression of music that I had in me but hadn't had an opportunity to create. It's music that I had thought about for years and years. You hear it in earlier works, like The Fly and Dead Ringers and The Silence of the Lambs. If you look at the whole career, you can see all the workings of it leading up to this twelve-hour piece. It's been a very linear process since the age of ten, gathering experience, knowledge, working in recording studios, working with bands and orchestras until you have the experience and the energy to create something like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Choral music plays a big part in Lord of the Rings. Had you had much prior experience with that?

Yes, there were the beginnings of that in the film Looking for Richard, which used choirs singing in Latin. The text was created by Elizabeth Cotnoir. The Lord of the Rings is a music image of Tolkien. I'm used to working with different authors –-- I did music imagery for Naked Lunch, the William Burroughs book, and Looking for Richard was based on Shakespeare. I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?

Do you compose “"stand-alone"” music, not tied to a film?

Yes, I write chamber music. I like it because I can have a lot of control over the piece. The orchestrations are for usually less than ten musicians. It's something I've always done. The Aspen Music Festival will be doing some of my chamber music this summer.

You have never allowed yourself to be boxed in by category –-- your domain is comedy, adventure, horror, fantasy and drama.

I found it interesting to see what my reaction would be to different types of films. And because of my repertory experience, in theater and television variety, it seemed perfectly natural to me. Theater and film are essentially the same –-- just different kinds of storytelling.

I'm interested in good collaborations and in working with directors who bring something new and interesting out of you. It isn't the subject of the film, then, as much as the people involved and creating something where the sum of what's created is better than all the parts. That's the success of Lord of the Rings –-- the whole is greater than all the individual parts.

Songwriting for The Lord of the Rings must have been challenging with you living on the East Coast, Annie Lennox living in Britain and Fran Walsh living in New Zealand.

We connect through technology. Video conferencing is something I've been using for years. I've developed some good systems for working in London, San Francisco and Wellington, New Zealand. But the three of us were all together for quite a while in London last August, September and October.

Does receiving the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award inspire any thoughts?

It means a lot to me because of Henry Mancini. I took over for Henry on Ed Wood, the Tim Burton movie. Henry was going to write that score but became ill. I dedicated the score to him. I have always been a fan of his work since the late 1950s, beginning with Touch of Evil. I never was fortunate to have met him, but I'd have loved to.

You've worked in film music for quite a long time. It seems that the tangible accolades are really coming in for you now. What does the Oscar mean to you?

It's just joyous. This is the 76th year of the Oscar. When you look at the list of people who have won before, you really feel that you're part of a great tradition of filmmakers. It's wonderful to feel part of the filmmaking community gathered in that room for the broadcast.

–-- Jim Steinblatt