Return to Edoras by Howard Shore Song Info
With a deepening series of minor chords beneath dissonant high strings, Saruman’s spiked wheel turns, sinking his body into the flood waters, and causing his palantír to fall from his robe. Pippin spots the vile orb glowing beneath the murky waters and hurries over to retrieve it. Gandalf quickly confiscates the object, but Pippin is intrigued. The camera pushes in on his widening eyes as the orchestra condenses to an obsessively enveloping D-natural. The mode shifts to A minor and the rasp of the Hardanger fiddle sings the score’s first statement of the Rohan Fanfare. The story returns to Edoras, the capital of Rohan. The Rohirrim are honoring the bravery displayed at Helm’s Deep, and remembering their fallen comrades. Shore sets the Rohan theme in an elegant six beats per measure, lending it both a heroic lilt and a songful, elegiac quality. (c) The Annotated Score (The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films)
