April 06, 2023
‘Music of Middle Earth’ presentation is Friday
Janice Dickensheets, an associate professor of music history at the University of Northern Colorado, will give a talk on the nuances of Canadian composer Howard Shores’ scores for the film trilogies “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” on Friday, April 7.
Dickensheets’ lecture is at 4:30 p.m. in Altgeld Hall, Room 119. The presentation is free and open to the public.
The lecture will show students and the public how to “pluck out leitmotifs from film scores and connect them with the facets of cultures J.R.R Tolkien and Howard Shore were inspired by,” according to Dickensheets.
A leitmotif is defined as “a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation.”
In creating the worlds of Middle Earth, Tolkien took great care to create entire histories for each race, according to Dickensheets. Shore “uses Romantic styles and folk idioms, layering them to create complex symbolism, gifting each race with a musical world that uniquely illustrates its own history and its interconnections to the other races of Middle Earth, resulting in an exquisite film experience.”