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Bear McCreary and Rings of Power at the Grammy Museum

Last night at the Grammy Museum in LA, the inimitable Bear McCreary gave a talk for over two hours along with a q&a about his compositional process and work on the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2

You guys get my scribbles in the dark instead of riddles in the dark, and I was so delighted to get to attend what turned out to be a very intimate theater setting for the audience. As a musicologist who works on television music among other things, this was the opportunity of a lifetime so I took copious notes and hope they can answer most of the questions people posed to me on here and on bluesky when I said I would keep an ear out for discussion of themes or process, etc.

He came out and was so charismatic and lovely from the get-go. A natural performer, it seemed like, which makes sense given his concert work with touring his album The Singularity in the lead up to this talk. He spent a ton of time at the piano, and where I had assumed it would be an industry-oriented audience, he talked to a general one yet didn’t dumb things down at all. It was absolutely charming the way he opened the discussion with pointing out that John Williams was able to capture a character and the imagination and memory of an audience with only two or three notes or specific intervals (the distance between two pitches). The first he demonstrated was a Perfect 5th for the old Superman theme and then a minor 2nd for Jaws.

He had themes in the double digits to write for s1 of RoP (16 I think he said?!?) and even more added to those with s2. He demonstrated an ascending Perfect 4th for the Dwarven theme, describing their music with that opening interval as “consistent and powerful” while Nori’s “optimistic, adventurous, and likeable” theme springs from the ascending Perfect 5th that opens her theme. The bigger ascending interval of a minor 6th as a beautiful and lush melody instead for Arondir and Bronwyn… He wanted these to be all “ringing a bell obvious”.

The Galadriel Theme! (Wheeeee!) is an ascending minor 7th with elements that are more unusual. He wanted to communicate things about characters with these themes, and the shifting chords beneath here indicate that she is “unresolved” and “driven by a quest for Sauron and quest for revenge — always on the move” in s1 just like the theme. The sound and harmonies always shifting underneath the theme but never resolved, yet also “noble”.

He told an amazing anecdote of an ear training professor in college saying something to the effect of “nobody opens a theme with an ascending Major 7th” and his response? Challenge Accepted! It became the opening to The Stranger’s theme [and then I zoned out listening to him play that amazing theme and forgot to take more notes on the Stranger. Sorry!]

It was fascinating that all of these themes started low and moved high that would often express an “aspirational and hopeful” or “noble” sound but he wanted to “muddy the waters a little bit” by having themes that moved downwards as well. So we get the Rings theme opening on a descending interval with a tritone (the very “diabolus in musica” interval that is so jarring and disturbing and distinct if you want to look up an audio clip) in the accompanying music beneath the theme. And then he sang Where the Shadows Lie! It was amazing. (He did apologize for not being Fiona Apple 😂)

Oh man do my notes get unhinged at this point so apologies because it was very dark and I was scribbling very fast and was very excited as he started talking about writing Sauron and Halbrand’s themes. I have words jotted down that he said like “more conflicted and less nebulous…distrust…malevolence…Sauron as the antagonist OR is he the Protagonist?!?…sinister and conflicted” with a descending minor 3rd followed by an ascending minor 3rd where it “forms a ring” through that circle and then another circle and again and again through moving down with “jagged” circles.

The challenge, then, in s1 was that he wanted the next theme - Halbrand’s theme - to be related but not sound the same. So that your brain would put together associations without conscious realization. (And how cool is that!) So he put it backwards, tweaking one very important half-step (the tiniest musical interval) and that became the Halbrand theme.

In short, he wanted to present melodies that the audience could quickly identify. Bear McCreary’s love of Tolkien rang throughout the entire talk because he knew the movies including the cartoon haha and he had read the books as a kid/teen, but as he put it, it took “twenty years to piece together the totality if Tolkien’s work” for him to try to express that in musical form. He talked about his work while a college student at University of Southern California where he was the last protege of Elmer Bernstein who worked with DeMille and Scorsese and every big name in old Hollywood. McCreary launched into using everything for that first season of Rings of Power: instrumentalists, middle eastern music, Celtic music, “left nothing on the table”

And then the showrunners said “We’re going to Rhûn!” And then it was an… oh shit moment haha because what was there to use now for s2? I have vague notes on the language setting and the poetry JD Payne wrote and contributed that then had to be translated by experts into Elvish or other languages they had from the Legendarium where Tolkien’s lexicon kind of petered out and petered depending on the Middle-earth race and culture until you just have one or two phonemes for Rhûn. Apparently Payne met with him weekly(?!?) to talk out soundtrack and lyric elements which is honestly just wild when it comes to soundtrack writing as I understand it.

McCreary’s work with choirs came up next, where he talked about how the human voice was and is “the first instrument” set as a “primal” sound. He used children’s choir for Valinor, and wrote with a child soprano in mind who he shouted out as reappearing in the final moments with Sauron and Celebrimbor when Celebrimbor delivers his last line and you see Sauron’s reaction. I was losing my MIND at that point since it ties into the question I got to ask during the q&a… Anyway! As the choral opposite to the Austrian classical professional choir they use for the choral elven moments and the s1 orc “Nampat” music, he got to at last work with Bulgarian women’s choir which has such a distinctive sound and vocal practice and that was the key to the Rhûn music. Jotted that bit down specifically for @conundrumoftime!

The weight of responsibility he felt when it came to Tom Bombadil’s music was something I hadn’t expected. Because, as he put it, we all read the books and every single person hears those Tolkien lyrics differently as you read Tom’s chapters. To know that some people might hear his music now when they read that for the first time? A bit overwhelming, which is super understandable. He wanted a “melancholy” kind of sound to Tom’s music as much as it at first sounds like any repeated pentatonic (five-note musical scale) phrases in a British or American folk song until you hit the complex shift in the latter part of his theme on the words “Old Tom Bombadil”. Because Tom has seen it all. There’s a “wistfulness and deeper layer” to his reactions because of McCreary’s sense that there was a “wisdom and longing” in that character.

So, Damrod! I didn’t take as many notes for this in part because it was so captivating just how into the idea he was of orcs and goblins in Tolkien clearly having their own form of song. He was frankly pretty gobsmacked that the showrunners and the producers and Amazon itself let him run with inviting the lead singer of the incredibly influential band Meshuggah to sing on the Damrod track and that McCreary’s band and an incredibly influential metal drummer got to accompany him. The battle scene music at that point introduced a Finnish scream choir who filled the role a bit better than the Austrian choir’s “Nampat” role in s1.

To wrap up the discussion portion, he talked about how he is a very narrative-driven musician and revealed he has already read the s3 scripts!! He also talked about how it is an extraordinarily collaborative endeavor with writers, production, cast, showrunners, producers…everybody and not just him influencing these tracks.

Q&A time! I was hyping myself up to ask a question so I didn’t get everything from this but someone asked about the Song to the Rocks or Plea to the Rocks in Khuzdûl and how epic it was from the actress who sang that (Sophia Nomvete). He originally refused to write the storm music in Rhûn in s2 because it would probably get cut, but they cued it just right with the sound effects.

Ok. Ok ok ok. I was delighted that he had already spoken about the use of Elvish and Black Speech translated poetry from JD Payne in every one of those musical moments (and what I wouldn’t give to know what they actually say) and the child soprano effect with Celebrimbor and Sauron. Since it was more of a general audience, I toned down asking about specific range choices and underlying orchestration in Sauron’s theme as it varies across the season. I asked what it expressed in those climactic moments like on the raft in s1 and after the duel in s2 to have that child soprano that in Renaissance music denotes light and beauty and purity provide Sauron’s theme. What did it say about the Sauron and Galadriel interactions?

And that’s where either I didn’t phrase my question well or it trod into NDA land lol because he talked about Sauron being a complex character (which yes!) and how McCreary lives to see people debate “did he mean it” when he made his pitch to Galadriel on the raft in s1. From his perspective alone (he emphasized that it was his alone) he feels like that as with “any good sociopath” there was a level of truth there on the raft.

And then he immediately pivoted to talking about his wife Raya Yarbrough singing the funeral pyre music in s2. Which was very cool! But made me wonder if there’s not much he can say about Sauron/Galadriel interactions until s3 comes out 😅 sorry, haladriels.

Someone asked about the language and Golden Leaves, and to my delight for the sake of @julyzaa who had asked me to keep an ear out, he revealed that the lyrics were by JD Payne based on Fellowship text, and if he remembered correctly that it was Galadriel’s song in that book it was supposed to recall! How cool is that?! You were onto something there, julyzaa!

He then played the theme that had been a general “horse charge” theme from s1 that he now considers to be the “Elven valor” theme that appears in Galadriel’s closing “And the sun yet shines!” speech. (If I remember right it is also in the Fall of Galadriel/The Last Temptation tracks at one point and I had been curious about what it represented there so that was lovely to hear about.

Someone asked about whether he likes to play with musical modes (which are basically scales, so a series of pitches in different permutations that the Greeks in antiquity thought would inspire certain feelings and had certain characteristics. They’re very popular in rock and metal, as well). As he put it, it’s “the vibe of the scale” which is great, honestly. Then he played the Númenor theme and climax and talked about how that was one of his favorites in s1 where now it has become civil war music and the theme of the Kingsmen. Where it was so beautiful in s1, it becomes less and less beautiful over time. What blew me away is that he theorized that we have “maybe hear[d] it in the major chords for the last time” …which weeping weeping weeping 😭

And that was it! Hope you guys enjoyed this epic recap as I tried to piece together my scribbles into something coherent. DM me if you want me to wrack my brain for any other details.

And as always…be well, trop fam!!

#rings of power #rings of power soundtrack #bear mccreary #my posts #galadriel #halbrand #sauron #gandalf #tom bombadil #nori #bronwyn #arondir #disa #damrod

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Bear McCreary and Rings of Power at the Grammy Museum

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