The Music of Howard Shore
Interview with Howard Shore
Howard Shore
For Howard Shore's 60th birthday the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra invited the three times Oscar-winning composer to an exklusive concert to Switzerland. The orchestra performed twice while Ludwig Wicki conducted the shows in Lucerne and Lausanne. Howard Shore personally was present and also gave a little introduction into his work. OutNow.CH couldn't miss the chance for an interview with this international star of film music composing.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache
OutNow.CH (ON): Welcome here in Switzerland, Lucerne, and thank you very much for giving us the chance to do this interview with you. How did you get into film music?
At work
Howard Shore (HS): I've been writing music since I was ten, and I studied harmony and counterpoint. My interest has always been in composition. So I did a lot of different things before arriving at working in film. I did years of records and touring, and television as well. I've started doing films in the late 70s, where I began working with David Cronenberg. Films were a good way to express musical ideas. It was a way to work with orchestras and with very good musicians.
ON: So what does film music mean to you?
HS: It is a type of collaboration. Before I did films, I've worked in theaters. I'm a good collaborator and creating film music means collaboration to me: working with screenwriters, directors, actors and editors, especially in post-production. It's a way of adding an element to a production - in my case with composing music. It's a way to broaden the depth of the production.
With David Cronenberg
ON: David Cronenberg once wrote that he sees you as a storyteller.
HS: Yes. I like to read and I like stories so in some ways it's true. Film music is a way to express my dramatic ideas.
ON: How are you working? What's the first thing you're doing after you've seen a rough cut of the movie?
HS: I'm dreaming a lot about what I saw. I like to write very intuitively at first. Usually when I start a project I write quite a lot of music away from the film just based on the first impressions of the film. Those ideas are then sometimes used to score the film with. So if you will it's a way to create a lot of music initially and then place that into the film.
ON: Where lies the future of film music?
HS: Of course it has to do with the nature of the film, the story and how music is used in the films. There are a lot of different ways how to use music in the films. From early films that I did in the 70s up to something like The Lord of the Rings probably spans every type of approach you can take in terms of stories. And it probably will go on like this. The possibility to use an orchestra is wonderful and the idea of using solo instruments can be really effective too.
ON: Has working in the film music business changed a lot after you've had such a huge success with the music to The Lord of the Rings-Trilogy?
Cover of "The Return of the King"
HS: I don't think that it has changed so much but it opened a few avenues for me. One of them is the opera "The Fly" which I'm writing and doing workshops for right now in Paris. That was something I've thought about for many years. So in addition to film projects I'm working on I can now also write music for the theatre and for the concert stage. That's great!
ON: What is it like to work in Hollywood in terms of relationships to other film music composers? Thinking about other A-List composers like John Williams or James Horner: is it an ongoing contest about who gets the best assignments?
HS: No, it's not a contest! I have many friends in music and in film as well. We respect and admire each other's work.
ON: So despite the hard business it's still on a very personal level?
HS: Yes. There's a lot of support for each other when it comes to doing great work, taking on good assignments and creating wonderful music.
ON: You've written The Lord of the Rings-Symphony, which premiered in a lot of different countries. On may 4th - 6th 2007 it will also be played here in Lucerne. How does it feel like to visit all the different countries, to hear all the different interpretations of your music by so many different orchestras and choirs?
With his wife
HS: That's been a wonderful process because I travelled with it in 2005 as a conductor. I think I did maybe 30 or 40 concerts in places like Russia, Australia, America, Canada, Belgium and Spain. And during these concerts it was fascinating to hear all the different interpretations of the music. Especially in terms of Tolkien's different languages and how they were adapted for different choirs. The Lord of the Rings-Symphony includes a boy's choir that sometimes became a children's choir or a mixed choir. It was wonderful to see how the kids would learn the languages, to compare how the Japanese kids were working on it and how the Russian kids did it. That was one of the fascinating and also fun aspects of the project.
ON: On October 15th 2005 it hit the film music community like a stroke: you've been replaced by James Newton Howard on Peter Jackson's King Kong. Can you explain us what happened?
The cock of the walk
HS: Well the original King Kong is a wonderful film. The music that I wrote for Peter's film... Well, I will bring it out sometimes.
ON: That is definitively something to look forward to. You've recorded quite a lot based on what we could see on the post-production video-diary that got released around that time on kongisking.net.
HS: I recorded some of it. And some of it is mocked up. I'd love to have that come out as a proper release at some point.
ON: Have you heard James Newton Howard's composition for the film?
HS: Oh no, I really haven't.
ON: In 2006 you've had a very interesting scoring assignment. You've scored the video game "SUN: Soul of the Ultimate Nation"... How did you come to this project?
The cover of the SUN-OST
HS: I was working with a Russian orchestra and a Russian choir. We were performing The Lord of the Rings-Symphony at the Kremlin and after that I took the Russian orchestra and the chorus to Tokyo and I did two or three concerts at the Forum in Tokyo. As I was there I've started writing a piece based on the idea of Russia and these East-West relationships. I also visited Lydia Kavina when I was in Russia. She's a great thereminist who lives and works in Moscow. I've started thinking of a piece to create for this orchestra, which I loved, and for Lydia. The idea about the game kind of came about the same time. I was interested to write a piece about that kind of a story and wanted to work with the Russian Philharmonic again. So I wrote a piece for the game that utilized the russian orchestra and the chorus. They are singing in ancient Korean and there is also a wonderful pipe organ that I've wanted to write for and record with the orchestra. This was a kind of a musical journey that I was taking at that time.
ON: As you said, you used the organ - an instrument that does not really get a lot of credit and use in today's film music...
HS: Well, the organ was in the concert hall and I wanted to use it because it was really part of the recording studio. I tend to do that because I'm orchestrating my own music and would like to take advantage of things that are possible to use in the recording situation. In this case there was this wonderful newly built German organ.
With the Oscar
ON: The two newest scores you've done are The Departed and The Last Mimzy. They are very different in terms of musical style and voice. Actually beside SUN - which comes closest to your efforts for The Lord of the Rings-Trilogy in terms of scale - your work differs quite a lot. How important is it for you to compose music for different genres and different films?
HS: Working in different genres is part of the interest of working in films. First I worked with Cronenberg and then in 1986 I've scored Scorsese's film After Hours and Penny Marshall's film Big. In the same year Cronenberg's film The Fly came out. After showing that range I tried a lot of different projects for about 15 years. Just to gather the experience and the knowledge and to try different ways in using music in different films - some of them more conventional than others. Changing genres is a good opportunity to express a lot of different musical ideas.
ON: Rumor has it that MGM is in possession of the rights of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Would you like to go back to Middle Earth and give The Hobbit your distinctive musical voice?
HS: I'd love to go back to Middle Earth. I've spent three years and nine months "there", working on The Lord of the Rings-Trilogy. The hobbits were really a part of it, always. So I'd love to work on that project!
ON: What are you up to in the near future? Is there a genre you'd especially like to do film music for?
HS: Well, I'm working on David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. It's a Russian story that takes place in London. And I'm in workshops now for "The Fly: The Opera", orchestrating the pieces and getting ready for the opening. The premiere will be 2008 in Paris on July 2nd and then at the LA Opera on September 7th. Cronenberg himself is directing the opera.
