Writing about music is a difficult thing to do, since it is such a personal art form. One man's goose, so to speak, is another man's gander. But there are a few things that can be written as fact rather than opinion, and it has been interesting (not to mention exciting) to read comments concerning The Two Towers pronouncing it to be the most ambitious and fully-realised film score in history (and from well-respected writers, to boot). Interesting also to read from director Peter Jackson that the one thing Howard Shore has brought to the project that no other film composer could have done is the level of emotional connection with each and every scene, and Shore himself has said that he has tried to make the music sound as if it were written in advance of the film being made, with the images later being choreographed to his score. What makes all these comments all the more interesting is how completely off the mark each of them would seem to be.

The Fellowship of the Ring was a fine album - hardly worthy of the masturbatory praise it attracted in most quarters, but it made a solid enough listen. In the film it fared less well: there were just about enough different themes and ideas to sustain the long album, but in the film these themes and ideas seemed to be repeated ad nauseum with no variation (especially the Fellowship Theme, by whose umpteenth appearance I would have been perfectly willing to get in my car and run over a few small furry animals). My biggest criticism, along with the overuse of themes without variation, would be that it really wasn't all that emotive for much of its running-time: the action music just couldn't make your hair stand on end in the way that even Jerry Goldsmith's most routine action scores do; the romantic music just sounded quite generic. The three notably emotive ideas in the score were the brilliant Hobbit music, the choirboy solo towards the end and Enya's beautiful end title song.

It is therefore with regret that I discovered that (barring a brief reprise of the Hobbit material in "The Taming of Sméagol") these ideas do not carry over into The Two Towers. (Mercifully, neither does the Fellowship Theme appear too often.) The Two Towers is considerably darker than The Fellowship of the Ring, and also concentrates more on action than character. The album is, therefore, a lot darker than its predecessor, but the reduced amount of character exposition means unfortunately that Shore is left to ramble for quite a large proportion of it, especially the middle-section.

So let's concentrate instead on what Shore has done very well. The first notable new idea is his music for the human characters in the film, introduced in "The Riders of Rohan". Man is represented by a fiddle solo, a very beautiful (if unmemorable) melody. (If only it weren't repeated so often without variation - an even bigger problem in the film than on the album, again. On the subject of the film, I found it less satisfying overall than the first one, but the battle that covers the last 45 minutes or so is truly spectacular.) The other highlights all come towards the end of the album, where a variety of vocal soloists (including the wonderful Elizabeth Fraser) are given a chance to shine with some beautiful and (yes) emotive songs. These are mingled in with some fine action material for the Battle of Helm's Deep. "Forth Eorlingas" stands out especially. By far my favourite track on the album is the last one, "Gollum's Song", performed by Emiliana Torrini. It's proved to be quite controversial, with her breathy, Björk-like delivery not being to everyone's taste, but I think it's a very fine accomplishment by all concerned and a very beautiful piece of music.

Shore's music pushes all the right buttons at the right time, and what he does well, he does very well. For such an incredibly inspirational book and film, however, this comes at the very bottom of the ladder of what you might expect from a film composer, and I still feel as before that there are several film composers who could have written a score which would eclipse this one. Indeed, despite its several merits, this is a weaker album than that for The Fellowship of the Ring.

Much of the above review seems overwhelmingly negative - a (subconscious) attempt on my part, I guess, to counter the ridiculously over-the-top praise showered on this music elsewhere. I must conclude though by saying that there is plenty of fine music contained here, and the concluding 25 or 30 minutes of the album are as fine as any film music from 2002. If the 25 or 30 minutes of music before that hadn't been so dull, this would be a far more satisfying album.

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