Introduction | Fellowship of the Ring | Two Towers | Return of the King | Notes and Links

The Two Towers

1.) Foundations of Stone

As in all the films, the RING HISTORY theme plays over the opening. In this case, it starts at 00:31, in about as bold a statement as you'll find. After, we spend a while musically noodling around the outside of the Misty Mountains, as (in the film) sounds wafts out to us. Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog starts in earnest around 01:42. Some of this music is right out of the Balrog part of FOTR. Of course, we get a different point of view on that fight this time around; as the music opens up at 03:32 we cut to that wide shot of Gandalf and the Balrog falling into the cavern, a pinpoint of flame.

2.) The Taming of Smeagol

00:01 -- HOBBIT music, for little hobbitses lost in the rain in the Emyn Muil. Of course, Frodo and Sam are not alone for long! At 01:12, we hear GOLLUM'S THEME. As Sam would put it, this is more the Stinker half of the music than the Slinker half. (That's a hammer dulcimer, I believe; it's covered in the music featurette on Disc 4 of the TTT:EE DVD set if you're really curious.) After the music of the fight, the GOLLUM theme is restated at 02:22; now he's named in person for the first time this film. And he's not going away any time soon.

3.) The Riders of Rohan

00:01 -- Although the bass line at the beginning of the track has a passing resemblance to the Nazgul music, it's not the same. It's okay this time, it's just Eomer and his eored. "An Elf, a Man and a Dwarf walk into the Riddermark, and..." No, okay. ;)

At 01:21, we hear a sweeping dramatic theme that seems to be an incarnation of the theme for GANDALF THE WHITE, though I really have no idea what it's doing there because he hasn't shown up in this film yet. At 01:43, a sort of Rohan sub-theme comes into play that generally folls EOWYN, and so I'm calling it her theme.

At 02:23 we get our first true statement of the ROHAN THEME, and it's a beauty. First played in the horns and brass, it's soon restated in the hardanger, a Norwegian fiddle, at 02:54. (The hardanger was an excellent choice to represent Rohan, but that gets into matters of history, mythology, Tolkien, and cultural indicators, so it's best saved for another time.

4.) The Passage of the Marshes

This is another example of music representing a place to which we never return. It's a track filled with some delightfully creepy ambient stuff. Between 01:15 and 02:00, tiny (tiny) fragments of MORDOR music make the occasional appearance, but you have to be rather alert to catch them. Once in a while you hear a note threatning to turn into the RING HISTORY music, too, but it never quite does. At 02:24 GOLLUM'S THEME repeats.

5.) The Uruk-Hai

00:01 -- a version of the FELLOWSHIP THEME, for the Three Hunters. I find it fascinating before it opens up again at 00:29; we've never heard it presented quite this way before. At 00:55 is the musical cue that plays while Aragorn finds Pippin's brooch: "Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall!"It's essentially theme and variation on the FELLOWSHIP until 01:26, after which it opens up, at 01:31, into the ROHAN THEME. This is a perfect example of a time when the soundtrack does not follow the order of the film; the music that opened track #3 plays while the Three Hunters encounter the Riders, but this music, and scene, take place before that.

At 01:40 the music changes again, lickety-split, into the ISENGARD music, and at 01:47 it's the MORDOR theme. Hear the sound of marching armies built into the percission again, after the 2:00 mark? (That's my favorite thing about the Mordor theme.) 02:25 brings us straight back to ISENGARD music, very clearly stated in that uneven 5/4 meter again.

6.) The King of the Golden Hall

A lot of themes intermingle in the first few seconds of this track. Right from the start, 00:01, we hear the FELLOWSHIP theme. By 00:07 it's ROHAN music, and then at 00:35 it's into that EOWYN sub-theme. 00:53 brings a haunting statement of the ROHAN theme once again.

01:53 gets nice and ominous and honestly I have no memory of what happens there in the music, but I know that by the 2:00 mark Theoden's getting his exorcism ("I told you to take the Wizard's staff!"), and at 03:17 he's mourning Theodred and Gandalf is speaking Old English.

7.) The Black Gate is Closed

00:06 -- starts out to be Mordor music, but tricksed you! 00:24 is the actual MORDOR music. 01:11 has the NAZGUL bass line in double-time, before it gets quiet again. And at 01:40 the RING HISTORY theme is snuck in the violin line. The next minute has a lot going on -- the bass line is from Mordor, the upper lines are, well, reminiscent of a lot of things. There examples here of how, when done right, you can make associations based on only a note or two. (And the more obsesively you listen to the music, the more easily you'll hear them. *grin*.)

8.) Evenstar

This is a theme representing ARWEN, but in a slightly different way than the theme we heard in FOTR and will hear again in ROTK. The "Evenstar" music more represents her choices, or the Arwen/Aragorn history, whichever way you want to put it.

It plays at two key points in the film: Aragorn's flashback to time in Rivendell with Arwen, and Arwen's flash-forward to the end of her story: fading in the woods of Lorien after Aragorn's death. It'll also come back in ROTK, for Arwen's vision of Eldarion (their son). It's hauntingly beautiful, I think, and perhaps the most cohesive whole track on the CD. Here is a discussion of the text.

9.) The White Rider

At 00:13, the music plays a trick on us; it's all right, though, bcause so do the characters. The 5/4 meter is back, but it's not Saruman's music. Why? Because it's not really Saruman! Heh. The chord at 01:02 always makes me think it wants to turn into the Fellowship theme, but that wears off presently. At 02:00 we're given music for GANDALF THE WHITE, which is properly dramatic.

10.) Treebeard

00:00 -- well, if the track title doesn't tell you, this is an intro to TREEBEARD theme, which doesn't actually flesh out into proper TREEBEARD (also ENT) MUSIC until 00:55. It's in the percussion (yum, marimba rolls) more than the woodwinds, but there you have it. All this Fangorn music is played on wooden instruments.

11.) The Leave-Taking

The leave-taking in question is all about the elves. At 00:30 we hear the RIVENDELL (Elrond) music, slow and lamenting. As Elrond and Galadriel have their little telepathic conference, the music helps, so that at 01:13 we hear the LOTHLORIEN (Galadriel) music. 02:20 brings us back to some of the music from the original Prologue (in FOTR), about the Ring, with a proper statement of the RING HISTORY theme at 02:55 (during which, I believe, Galadriel is alluding to Faramir's closeness to the Ring).

12.) Helm's Deep

00:00 - 00:02 -- a quick statement of ISENGARD music, followed up by some more Uruk-Hai music in that 5/4 meter again. I don't actually know about that very cool horn call at 00:24, but it's definitely related to the Rohirrim (echoed, in a sense, in the charge on the Pelennor in ROTK), though the bass line underneath (I love bass) is talking about the bad guys.

What we hear at 00:56 isn't a theme per se, but it's part of the "where is the horse and the rider" poem, and it gives me chills every time (analysis of text for the Rohirrim found here. 02:11 brings a hint of that theme I identify with EOWYN, and then at 02:40 the ROHAN theme, in the hardanger, is back. Listen to that percussion rhythm, it comes up a lot in this trilogy. 03:26 is a lament, presumably for Aragorn, except that he's not dead yet (he's feeling much better), and that's what track #14 is all about.

13.) The Forbidden Pool

00:00 -- Kind of a mix of GOLLUM music (the Smeagolish half) right up front, briefly. 01:43 has that hammer dulcimer snuck in there, which has only been used, to this point, for Gollum (who is, at this point, in the pool, smashing a fish against a rock). At 02:59 we hear the GOLLUM AND THE RING music (again, as opposed to their separate themes). At 04:41, the RINGCALL sings to Faramir, tempting him. (An aside: as a longtime Faramir fan, the main reason I was able to forgive PJ's change in characterization is because even though movie!Faramir makes the wrong choice, he still never actually lays a hand on the Ring.)

14.) Breath of Life

From the beginning, this is sort of its own separate, whole piece of music, a theme unto itself. The sound, however, rings of all the things we associate with elves at this point, and for good reason (Arwen makes a non-appearance on screen to revive Aragorn). After the solo is over, we hear some familiar-sounding bits and pieces; at 04:06, we take off into a brief bit of music that sounds like track #1. This, too, gives way as eventually Aragorn finds himself zipping across the countryside of Rohan.

15.) The Hornburg

00:01 -- ROHAN music (surprise). I love the chorus on Theoden's "the days have gone down into the West," (here) and the trumpet fanfare over that crane shot of Helm's Deep (whee, too much film school, don't mind me). Incidentally, in the Extended cut of the movie the fanfare is, musically, in the wrong place from where I expect it (they cut to a Treebeard scene right beforehand), and it drives me nuts.

Anyway, 02:23 brings a hint, and then at 02:33 we've got the FELLOWSHIP theme. 02:52 brings a melancholy rendition of the ROHAN theme, and then at 03:14 it's something we did NOT expect: the LOTHLORIEN music, bold and brassy, as the army of the Galadrhim shows up. Hi, Haldir!

04:12 brings the ROHAN music, but this time in that uneven 5/4 meter 'cause, well, the forces of Isengard are here.

16.) Forth Eorlingas

I'm honestly not sure what to say about the beginning, but at 01:24 we've got ROHAN music, brassy and loud. 01:47 has FELLOWSHIP music, as Gandalf shows up just in time ("not alone!"). 02:25 begins the boy soprano solo that serves as a precursor to Gandalf (it reappears in ROTK track #3), and 02:42 we break into the GANDALF THE WHITE, as he and Eomer charge down the mountain and save the day!

17.) Isengard Unleashed

00:03 -- A variant of the LOTHLORIEN music, sort of a second cousin of that theme, serves as Haldir's Lament (it's sung by Elizabeth Fraser, who sang the Lament for Gandalf in FOTR, so that helps to draw the connection).

We're back in 5/4 at 01:10, and 01:21 it breaks out into the ISENGARD theme. 01:49 is a brass variation on the theme of ROHAN, and at 02:19 the motive that I think of as "Nature's Revenge," because I don't know what else to call it, starts, and gets familiar at 02:59 (when you heard it for the moth, it was in 5/4. Now it's in 4/4, and that makes it sound different). Then comes all the music for the flood. Whee!

18.) Samwise the Brave

One of the fascinating things about this trilogy is that all three films end the sam way: with Samwise, in whatever circumstances (the books do this as well, although the stopping-points are different). The beginning of this should remind you of the ending of FOTR. The music isn't the same, but the ideas in it are, and at 00:44 there's a direct quote back to track 17 in FOTR. I still don't know if you can call it a particular theme, but if you did, it'd have to be, "SAM ROCKS." In fact, though I think it is safe to say this is music for Samwise, I believe it only appears at the end of each film.

02:04 is a direct statement of the HOBBIT THEME, and then at 03:00 we're back into Gollum territory with music that's kind of the sum total of all Gollum's themes -- I'm hard put to explain it, but by this point you can hear it all.

19.) Gollum's Song

"Gollum's Song" covers the fade to black at the end of the film, with this horrible, lingering tension and suspense, not to mention an overriding sense of evil. As with most of the other songs, this one is its own distinct entity rather than a theme, but if you listen to it really carefully (and I mean the music, not the lyrics, and not so much the melody line either), you can hear how it's made up of other Gollum moments from the past two soundtracks. Particularly in the introduction, if you really start pulling it apart with your brain it's amazing how that one was put together. I can't even really describe it. It's more than the sum of its parts. (And yes, if you were wondering, they chose a singer who sounds like Bjork on purpose.)

And of course, to round out the credits, at 03:56 we've got the EOWYN element followed by the main ROHAN theme.