The Return of The Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings is one of contemporary cinema's milestone moments. Now, more than 20 years since it first appeared, Matthew Sweet devotes the whole of this week's programme to the series and to what is one of the most ambitious of all film scores - Howard Shore's remarkable ten-hour epic. Matthew is joined by the musicologist Doug Adams, who worked alongside the composer deconstructing some of the incredibly complex ingredients that constitute Shore's musical story-telling. Shore took as his basis Richard Wagner's leitmotif idea, where musical themes and statements are used to represent characters and ideas in the films. When these themes are combined and varied symphonically, they present a complete aural picture of the narrative to complement and enhance the story as it is unveiled on the screen. Together, Matthew and Doug unpick some of the main musical ideas in Shore's score and reveal just how far-reaching the music for LOTR is.