Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore?

[Lord Halsar]

I just wanted to get this off my chest. Whose music do people think is better? Howard Shore's (LotR music)? Or Hans Zimmer(PotC music)?
I personally think it's Howard Shore's music... and i'm not just saying that because I'm an utter Tolkien-nut! Be honest on this one. no matter how much other Downers will hate you for it.

[Finduilas]

Not knowing who Hans Zimmer is , I would have to vote for Howard Shore. But I take it that PotC is Pirates of the C...(I don't know how to spell it) and as I have only watched that once, I can't really be said to have any knowledge on the subject.

[Lord Halsar]

Yes. Hans Zimmer is the man behind Pirates of the Caribbean music. i debated with myself for a long time over who's was better(I'm sorry to say being the Tolkien fan that i am). i also thought for an even longer period whether or not to submit a thread about it here in the Downs. I also think that i should have clarified.

[Finduilas]

Just because your a LotR fan doesn't mean you can't prefer other people's music more. I would have to watch it again to be able to answer, but I think that it would be incredibly difficult for anyone to best Howard's work.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

It's a no brainer- although I don't much like Jackson's films, Shore still writes very respectable scores (albeit not without some misjudgments-- whereas Zimmer has for years been churning out ponderous, bombastic schlock.

[The Might]

I like both, because they fit with the movies.
LotR music has this kind of glorious, legendary sound, just like Star Wars music and fits with the great battles.
In PotC I like the adventurous theme, it goes well with the story and the period when the action takes place.

[MatthewM]

Howard Shore and The Lord of the Rings music gets my vote. Pirates had a great soundtrack, but it is no Lord of the Rings.

[ninja91]

Shore wins, no question. Although the Pirates movies had a great soundtrack, it was more swashbuckling and giddy than heartfelt and immersive. (to me, at least!)

[Finduilas]

Originally Posted by ninja91

Shore wins, no question. Although the Pirates movies had a great soundtrack, it was more swashbuckling and giddy than heartfelt and immersive. (to me, at least!)

Well said.

[Knight of Gondor]

I hated Pirates 3.

I think you have to look at the genres of music that a composer is trying to score.

Hans Zimmer also scored Batman Begins, The Simpsons Movie and Prince of Egypt. You're talking three radically different genres, still pretty good results. (I assume; I haven't, and won't, see the Simpsons movie.) I think overall, Zimmer is a very talented and accomplished artist, and has a lot of variety in scoring the eclectic batches of movies that Hollywood sends his way.

Howard Shore has been a little bit less prolific. I haven't seen any of the other movies he scored besides Lord of the Rings, but I understand he did Gangs of New York and Aviator.

All in all, it depends on my mood as to which composer I listen to.

Edited to say, Zimmer can't be fully blamed or fully credited for the themes of the Pirates movies, because he was building on the first soundtrack, which, despite being pretty good, had a lot of generic themes and sounds because it wasn't necessarily a big-name composer.

[Beanamir of Gondor]

*rubs hands together in anticipation*

I'm a big soundtrack geek, and for those of you who don't know much about Hans Zimmer, he's done some amazing stuff: The Lion King, Gladiator, The Prince of Egypt, the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean (the first was actually Klaus Badelt, one of his students), The Ring, Black Hawk Down, working with James Newton Howard to score Batman Begins... the list is ridiculous. Check out IMDb. Every genre, every great director, so many great actors and movies have been scored along to his music. He's the master of bassline and strong, glorious themes.

Howard Shore, on the other hand... Honestly? I didn't know any of his music until I watched PJ's movies: after which point I found out that he did such classics as The Fly and Silence of the Lambs. I guess his music before that point just didn't strike me as magnificent enough to look up, as Zimmer's definitely did. That's not to say that Shore's music isn't fantastically wonderful and incredibly fitting to the LotR movies. It is! No denial! His best music is a lot like John William's, not only in sound but also because he's had over ten hours of movie footage to work with, as Williams had with Star Wars.

Williams and Shore both work best in character- and location-based themes. Zimmer, on the other hand, works in a grander perspective, motive- and emotional-based themes. I like both, myself, but ultimately for this thread I'll have to side with Hans Zimmer (half because I adore him, half to be obstinate ). He's done a lot more really deep scores that I personally appreciate.

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

I have to agree with a lot of what Beanamir already said. Comparing Shore and Zimmer based on just one production feels unfair seeing that they both have composed numerous soundtracks for very different kind of films.

I don't know much about Shore's other works besides LotR, but to make it possible to compare him and Zimmer, maybe the question could also be about which of these two composers is better at adventure/ war films.

In LotR, Shore did amazing job creating music for different kind of places and people from Hobbiton to Mordor, west to east, which undoubtedly required a vivid imagination. But hasn't Zimmer done the same, taking us from the Caribbean seas to a 19th century Japan (The Last Samurai) and the Roman empire in between (King Arthur, Gladiator)? One may think whatever about these aforementioned movies, but personally I liked their soundtracks a lot, and in many cases the music did a lot to improve the story.

If we are to separate the score from the films, I think I like Zimmer a bit better. Shore's music goes together seamlessly with the events on screen and that's an essential skill for a movie composer, but Zimmer's music can stand alone; it's easy to listen to without any context. However, if we talk about the music as a part of a film, Shore's versatility within one movie (even if it was a 11-hour-long one) is just awe-inspiring whereas while having some true gems in his scores, Zimmer sometimes seems to get stuck with a certain sound or a "feel" for an entire soundtrack. But should we blame the movie or the composer for that?

(Okay, so it is a cop-out to end a post in a question hoping that no one notices that I didn't really answer the original inquiry, but I think I could pick whichever and be happy with my choice. )

[Beanamir of Gondor]

Originally Posted by dancing spawn of ungoliant

In LotR, Shore did amazing job creating music for different kind of places and people from Hobbiton to Mordor, west to east, which undoubtedly required a vivid imagination. But hasn't Zimmer done the same, taking us from the Caribbean seas to a 19th century Japan (The Last Samurai) and the Roman empire in between (King Arthur, Gladiator)?

Shore's versatility within one movie (even if it was a 11-hour-long one) is just awe-inspiring whereas while having some true gems in his scores, Zimmer sometimes seems to get stuck with a certain sound or a "feel" for an entire soundtrack.

I agree, absolutely. Shore had so much more room to work with than Zimmer did, and so we got to hear all the different parts of the scores mixing in a magnificent fashion. It wove almost seamlessly, the Rohirric themes with the Gondorian themes at the Pelennor Fields, added with the Hobbit themes and the "White Rider" theme at the Black Gate, near the end of RotK.

However! I would argue that we also got to hear this in Zimmer's work with the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films. In Dead Man's Chest, Jack Sparrow (excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow) has his own separate Waltz, and Davy Jones got a kind of funereal dirge: the two themes mix with Barbossa's thundering theme (Klaus Badelt's invention, Curse of the Black Pearl) in the scene with Tia Dalma. The magnificent "Will and Elizabeth's Suite" from the first movie comes together with Jack's waltz again, during Jack's final faceoff with the Kraken. I know this is getting off-topic, but to compare Zimmer's theming with Shore's, we could also move on to Gladiator, where Maximus's "Wheat" theme blends right into the "Barbarian Horde" strains multiple times. Each movie definitely has its own "feel", as the dancing spawn mentioned, but there are definite breakaways.

It's not even in terms of location or character with Zimmer: Shore seems to work exclusively with the races of Middlearth (Men, Elves, Uruks, Orcs, Hobbits, Wraiths, and Dwarves) in their separate locations (Gondor, Rohan, Isengard, Mordor, Moria, Rivendell, Hobbiton, Lothlorien, and Minas Morgul). When those races move someplace else, regardless of who else is already in that particular location, their particular theme is played. For instance, when the Riders of Rohan travel to the Pelennor Fields, what do we hear? The violin solo we heard when Eowyn was standing in Edoras. When Celeborn's Elven army marches to Helm's Deep, what do we hear? The "Lament for Gandalf", which makes little sense, considering that it was a onetime song, sung only when the Fellowship arrived in Caras Galadhon. Shore wrote very little that was emotion- or action-based, which is ultimately why I think he's more limited a composer than Zimmer, though he is, without doubt, equally as musically talented.

In any case, I doubly agree with dancing spawn of ungoliant: we can't really judge the two against one another, because Zimmer hasn't had the opportunity to create an eleven-hour score and work with quite a huge, diverse cast of characters.

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Originally Posted by Beanamir

I would argue that we also got to hear this in Zimmer's work with the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Oh yes, I agree that Zimmer did just as good a job mixing various themes together as Shore did. Zimmer seems to have a "theme and variations" type of approach to PotC 2 and 3 and he's quite brilliant at it. It was a surprise to me how little there is new stuff, and how a huge part of the score comes from a few main themes and their different orchestrations.

I think scoring PotC comes closest to scoring LotR from Zimmer's works, so while trying to find a way to compare these two composers, maybe concentrating on the Pirates series is easiest. It's true that PotC 2 and 3 together lasted something like 5 hours - less than half of LotR's duration, but I'd say that the pirate trilogy did have quite a big and versatile bunch of characters for which to score, too. There were sea monsters, goddesses, soldiers, pirates, the crew of Flying Dutchman, tribe of cannibals and a good selection of different locations on top of that - and what does Zimmer do? Mostly the same as Shore; we hear the themes of these characters over and over again. While there are some new tunes that don't so clearly refer to any certain character or location, they are recycled quite efficiently as well: for example the theme "Hoist the Colors" which came along in PotC 3 is all over the score.

It's a good observation that Shore seems to build his score on characters and locations instead of feelings, although of course he has arranged the themes to fit the emotions on screen. I wonder how much that was the director and producer's choice, too. For someone who's not familiar with the books, it might be quite a relief to get some help from the music to figure out where something's happening and who's involved. I guess "Shelob's Lair" is one of the few tracks that I'd consider to be purely based on the general atmosphere on screen, and therefore quite anxious. Since LotR is oftentimes pretty glum when none of the main bunch of people is on screen, the score represents that, too, which makes it at times a bit uneasy to listen to on its own. Zimmer's score, on the other hand, covers a whole range of emotions: it had its tear-jerking moments and some tracks made me laugh out loud.

In terms of arranging the score for musicians, though, I'm more impressed about Shore's ability to use different instruments and voices in his pieces than Zimmer's. Also, it might be just me, but there are a few parts in PotC 3's soundtrack that sound like Zimmer just dug up his old King Arthur score and did some copying and pasting, but I'm digressing, back to the instruments. Zimmer used some electric cellos and guitars, but that seems pretty conservative compared to how Shore wrote some amazing stuff for most peculiar instruments that really contributed to creating the feeling of a fantasy world. But again, the movies were different, so the scores are bound to be as well. Both composers, however, are skilled with a full symphony orchestra.

[Alcarin]

I would go for Hans Zimmer for now. Why? Because the soundtrack for the Last Samurai, the movie which came out in 2003, is beautiful and full of emotion. It doesn't match to Lotr on some points, but i listen to it everyday. Tips:

The Last Samurai Soundtrack - A Small Measure of Peace
Idyll's End
Ronin
The Way of The Sword

[Sir Kohran]

I like a lot of Zimmer's music, but I think he's becoming a bit too used. Batman Begins, King Arthur, Pirates Of The Caribbean...he seems to be everywhere these days, and constantly hearing his musical style by now has become a bit tedious. Howard Shore on the other hand is more rare and hasn't done as much, so perhaps I appreciate his music a little more.

[Neurion]

Shore for introspection and melancholy, Zimmer for pulse-thundering heroics.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Interesting addition for Hans Zimmer - he composed the music for the Simpsons movie. The variations on the series theme are excellently done, pseudo-serious yet whimsical, as befits the original.

Try as I will, I cannot find a Tolkien connection for this post. Live with it.