Track-by-Track: Soundtrack Discussion and Analysis

[Aiwendil]

Encaitare wrote:

The chords are major, but the melody is in c minor.

I'd say this has to do with Shore's goal of a somewhat antique or modal sound. You are right that the melody sticks closely to C minor but the chords make it unambiguously major - in fact, the chords for the fellowship theme are (as far as I can tell) exclusively major, which curiously enough can only be accomplished by making the melody minor. The result is a lot of nice cross-relations between the flat and natural 3rd and 7th. The same kind of writing comes up much later on, in the Gondor theme for RotK.

Also, the theme ends with a striking sequence of three major chords each a major second apart (probably either A flat, B flat, C or B flat, C, D - sorry, I don't have the CD with me). This is a chord progression that has always fascinated me (and now that I think about it, I believe Rosenman used it in Bakshi's LotR). It is a sequence of three chords that do not co-exist in any of the usual modes, and this results in what one can only describe as a sense of coming to something new, or breaking through into a new key. The major-ness of the final chord is brought fully to our attention because of the cross-relation of its third with the fifth of the first chord - so, for example, in the sequence B flat, C, D, the juxtaposition of the F sharp in the final chord with the F natural in the first chord emphasizes the fact that the final chord is a D major.

Sorry if that sounds like incoherent babble, but I find it to be a fascinating progression.