“The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power“ is the most expensive television show of all time and it shows. It’s a massive production with giant battles, set pieces, tons of characters, and every department working at the top of their game to transport audiences to Middle Earth. One of the key people who helped with that level of immersion is composer Bear McCreary,, who has now composed the music for the show’s first two seasons. During the airing of the second season, McCreary was kind enough to spend some time talking with us about his work on the latest season. Please listen to the interview (or read it) below and be sure to check out the show, which is now available to stream in full on Prime Video. Thank you, and enjoy!
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Whether it’s the inspired use of Balkan choir or fist-pumping heavy metal, composer Bear McCreary’s musical score for Season 2 of “The Rings of Power” is a powerful level-up from the first, as though he slipped on one of the rings of power for himself.
A genre film and television mainstay for nearly 20 years, McCreary’s scores often find the idyllic balance between what difficult-to-please fans expect while delivering something novel and new; he gives us what we want just as much as what we didn’t know we needed to hear. “The Rings of Power” might be his most ambitious project yet. It’s Amazon’s mind-bogglingly lavish adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age and the Formation of the Great Rings, where he once again pulls off that trick while delivering hours and hours of music that brings together the cultures, races, and characters of the series.
Expanding from an already excellent musical score for the debut season, McCreary had to satiate what we expect from the music of Middle Earth (lush strings, big drums, and celestial hymns) while also delivering bold –– even risky –– new musical themes unlike anything heard in any previous adaptation of Tolkien’s work.
“The Rings of Power“ is a darker, bolder, faster-paced television season in its sophomore season. I had a conversation with McCreary over Zoom to discuss the process of scoring it.
Here are some highlights from that conversation…
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
NBP: I wanted to start by talking with you about how “The Rings of Power“ Season 2 has so much music: so many locations, so many character themes, and action sequences with new cues we hadn’t heard before. How long does it take you to actually write and compose prior to recording?
Bear: I spend about a month per episode. It really boils down to (how) I wrote Season 1, which was eight episodes in nine months. I also wrote an hour of theme suites. Season 2 is the same; I wrote eight episodes in eight months. The interesting thing about Season 2 was that because of the nature of the recording schedule, the recording was later down the line and jam-packed. I was looking at my notes a couple of days ago, trying to remember when we started recording Episode 1, and it was when I was writing Episode 7. So, I had almost seven-and-a-half or eight hours of music written, and then we recorded basically every day for two months to get that eight hours.
And, by the end, we’re recording so fast, by the time I was writing episode 8, so the stragglers at the very end (were) getting Rufus Wainwright, getting Jens Kidman, a few of the other little odds and ends that I wanted to pick up. I just threw those into whatever sessions I could. It’s …a lot… it’s a lot to do, but at the same time, I get in the zone, and it feels really good. It’s a great creative, almost zen state I get into every day. I love it.
I want to piggyback off that into how Season 2 is much darker than Season 1. It almost plays out –– especially for the Annatar arc –– almost like a psychological thriller.
Very much so, yes.
Because of that, you’ve got a darker palette and moodier tones, and that obviously impacts your music as well. What did that mean to you in composing your score this round?
It meant creating further extremes. Last season, we were at Eregion, the realm of the smiths, many times. I never wrote an Eregion theme. The city had no need for a personality in season 1. It was about the events that happened there and the characters that were going there. To get to your point, in season 2, Eregion itself has a theme. Is it dark and brooding? No. It’s uplifting. It’s joyous. It is delicate in the way a beautiful classical piece is. We talked about Vienna or Venice, cities with artists and architecture where people are free, and thought is free, and I wrote a piece that involved a lot of children’s choirs. That makes darkness more effective because then you destroy that for people.
Similarly, I wrote about this theme last season with Celebrimbor. Fiona Apple sang the song version called “Where the Shadows Lie.“ I called it where the “rings theme“ in my blog, and it became Celebrimbor’s theme in Season 2. The creation of rings, the forges, the fires, and all that stuff is represented by that melody. And, you’ll find in episodes 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that the theme is reharmonized to be more beautiful. Because Celebrimbor is seduced into doing this, he’s not forced into doing this; it’s his ambition, his desire to make something meaningful, and his desire to step out of the shadow of his famous grandfather. That brightness is what makes the darkness later more possible. So, I would say yes, overall, the season is darker, but for me, that meant higher contrast.
Hearing you talk reminds me of my personal favorite theme of the show, which basically has everything to do with the dwarves in Khazad Dum. It harkens a little bit to the “God of War“ series, but still in a very different direction. I love it. That is an interesting counterpoint here because this season, you’ll have different themes overlaid on one another, and I think you feel that in those dwarven themes.
Yeah, Khazad Dum is a mighty civilization, so I wanted to write a mighty theme. It does sound a little like “God of War,“ but that’s because both of those things sound a little like one of my favorite scores: “Conan the Barbarian.“ I can’t talk to you with a straight face about writing music for the dwarves without acknowledging one of my heroes and contenders for one of the greatest scores of all time, in my opinion. So, obviously, influence is there, but what’s fun is that it’s so mighty and sturdy, especially the rhythmic foundation of what feels like a march, and you can put other things on top of it. If you go back and rewatch season 1, where the shadows lie, the Celebrimbor theme, the rings theme, actually originates in Khazad Dum.
It starts with these chords that breathe on top of the Khazad Dum ostinato when King Durin and Prince Durin open this mysterious box and look at something we don’t see. It’s Mythril. And so, you can see right what’s interesting is I actuallywrote that chord for that scene over the Dwarf theme, and only later did I think, “Hey, that’s cool, it’s not just the Mythril theme, I can make that the Rings theme, that’s cool, I’ll make that a Fiona Apple song, that’s cool, I’ll make that Celembrimbor’s theme.“ But it’s because I think there’s fertile ground in that Dwarven theme, and again, to go to the idea of contrasts, listen to the episode that just went up today (episode 5); we get some Dwarven rings of power. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything. One of the mightiest melodies is the Khazad Dum melody, which is representing the king in particular. He puts this ring on, and every time it is on, a thing happens with the melody where I chip away at one of its structural themes. One of the notes gets moved into a place that’s wrong as if the orchestra made a mistake. So, the might of Khazad Dum is easily tipped. It’s like something that’s so strong. All you have to do is take away one of the legs, and it’s going to fall over. That’s one of the things I like about musical storytelling: you can create an expectation and then sort of twist it.
You do feel that very much in episode 5, and I’m glad you brought that episode up because it pinpoints something season 2 is doing incredibly well. Compared to a lot of other big shows that are juggling all these different story arcs, “Rings of Power“ really settles into one or two main arcs per episode, and you may check in with some other ones, but most of the screen time is usually on one or two main storylines. In episode 5 it is (focused) on Khazad Dum. Do you like that as a composer?
Absolutely. I prefer it as a composer, (and) I prefer it as a viewer. I think it is one of the great strengths of the show. I never really thought about it, but looking back, I can only think of one episode that touched on every story arc. I’m pretty sure 1.07 did; after the volcano erupted, everything went wrong everywhere, and we checked in with everybody. You’ll get a bunch of angry comments if I’m wrong, but I really do love that format. For me, the most personally gripping story this season is the Annatar-Celebrimbor story. It’s why, with all the great marketing materials that were candidates for my album cover for season 2 album cover, it was Celembimrbor throwing the rings in the fire that’s going to be the image I remember 20 years from now when I don’t remember anything else. To me, that’s the core of what season 2 is fundamentally about. Episode 5 gives you so much great material there. I sort of smiled while watching fans bristling that episode 4 didn’t have any Celebrimbor because I thought you were going to get plenty. If that’s what you don’t like about episode 4, you’re going to be extremely happy for the rest of the season.
With that in mind, you already talked a lot about those pointed contrasts between extremes and dark and light, and what struck me was the almost Christ-like imagery of Annatar at the end of episode 2. It almost looks like a Renaissance painting, with the clouds, the beams of light, and even the cloak he’s wearing. Can you talk about Annatar’s scoring process in particular? We already know his true nature, but he’s a different character, and he goes on this journey. Walk me through that.
The Sauron theme is the most exciting for me. In Season 1, I wrote a theme for Sauron, who is a presence more than a character. We just know people talking about him. If you play his theme backward, it sounds an awful lot like the Halbrand theme. That’s by design. So, I already had this Halbrand theme and this Sauron theme, which were identical. Now, he takes on this new form, and I did a few things: one, I created a theme specifically for him. I had actually created in Season 1, the first single we ever put out, was called “Sauron,” and there’s this B-theme, this bridge, this middle section, that actually never shows up in Season 1 because I was saving it for Season 2. It actually appears twice in the scene you’re describing. One in the sort of tee-up when he’s sort of suggesting he’s not mortal, and right before he says the name, he says, “This is what you call me.“ This is the Annatar theme, which is connected to the Sauron theme.
But, more than that, I actually set the Sauron theme itself in these angelic voices, and I changed all the harmonies underneath them so they’re major. They’re uplifting. They’re beautiful. The melody is identical. I found that to be a really effective way of acknowledging what the audience knows but to tell the story. We’re in Celebrimbor’s perspective. If that scene’s going to work, it must be his perspective. You have to feel what he feels; otherwise, we will injure his character. You don’t want people yelling at the screen, “Hey dummy, that’s Sauron.“ We should feel like we get seduced into it, right? And I found that to be marvelously effective: setting these angelic, choral voices I’ve used for Valinor, I’ve used for Lindon, for elves, I’ve used for Galadriel, and now I’m using them for Annatar. And your brain is recognizing those notes –– that’s the Sauron theme. I’m not hiding it, but I’m recontextualizing it. I went nuts with this from episode 5 onward, where there’s all kinds of bristling tension. Celebrimbor is always walking right to the point of a revelation; he might figure it out, but then Annatar just pivots and says the right thing. He’s gaslighting this guy so badly, but it’s also his own ego that allows this to happen. There are just these little hints. Sometimes it’s so beautiful and so uplifting, and it’s like, yeah, this guy’s your friend. You can do it, Celebrimbor, but then you get these little shades of darkness. Little moments that remind the audience that it’s all mind games. You can probably hear me talking about how much fun that is; I’m scoring it like a dynamic fight scene. I never approach them like, “Oh, here’s a dialogue scene.“
Correct me if I’m wrong, but season 1 mostly consists of themes of locations, characters, or monsters, where we’ve heard other musical renditions of those locations or cultures beforehand (in other adaptations). We’ve heard music for elves, for dwarves, etc. But season 2 has a bunch of stuff in it that had not been brought into the “Lord of the Rings“ Tolkien adaptation space before.
Yeah, like, four of them were in episode 4 alone.
Exactly, so what was it like to have an entirely original spin on stuff we hadn’t seen before in a Tolkien adaptation? The Rhûn stuff, especially.
Well, thank you. I had a little experience with this because that was my mindset for Númenor in season 1. Yes, there are references to Númenor in other adaptations, and the Gondor lineage is there, but it’s like referencing the music of Mesopotamia for a movie that takes place today. It’s so far away that there is no reason for it to literally sound like it has musical connections (in my mind). Plus, its design looked so refreshing. It looked Grecian and Mediterranean.
Yeah, and Atlantis is in there too.
Exactly, it’s like Atlantis meets Camelot. So, I brought in and stretched the musical map drawing from Western, European, Scandinavian, and Celtic colors. (I figured) that’s a bullseye. Howard Shore did it, and Tolkien himself did it for the mythologies he was drawing from. So, that feels very safe, right? Nobody’s going to get mad at you. I hopped the Atlantic for Númenor. I brought in drums from North Africa, the Armenian woodwind instrument called the duduk, and the Turkish instrument called the yaylı tambur, and these frame drums and these rhythms that feel very Moroccan and African and Egyptian. I thought I was done, right? There we go, I expanded the map.
Season 2 comes along: we’re going to Rhûn. Rhûn is the biggest, most generally unexplained, and unexplored part of Tolkien’s writing. It’s sort of the great unknown, in a way. And that was very liberating but also very terrifying because I didn’t leave any other ideas. It’s not like I saved anything; I used everything I could think of in Season 1. But then I remembered the Bulgarian women’s choir. Bulgarian women’s choir is this fascinating sound that I’ve been obsessed with ever since I was in high school (when) I became aware of it, which is now 25 years ago. And I realized that there’s something to explore there. So, I suppose in a bit of unintentional literalism, where they’re going east and Tolkien’s influence sort of ends there, I’m going to go a little further east myself to get to that Bulgarian region. I brought in the gadulka, which is a string instrument. I brought in the Bulgarian women’s choir, and I also brought in some of these North African drums and the yaylı tambur. Partly because it’s so expressive and connects it to sounds that we’ve heard before, but, I mean, you smash-cut to that Gaudrim riding into the sunset, or riding away from it, I should say, it’s a shocking sound, I hope. It sort of announces, “We are going somewhere else.”
“The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power” is available to stream in full on Amazon Prime Video. You can watch the trailer below:
You can follow Brendan and hear more of his thoughts on the Emmys and TV on Twitter @metaplexmovie