Track-by-Track: Soundtrack Discussion and Analysis

[Anguirel]

I play this, and several other Rohan tracks, when writing battle scenes...

This is the first track, perhaps, which causes images to swell before the eye; I can see Eomer's eored speeding by; Eowyn in her white dress; the flag of the White Horse on the wind.

My only regret is that it feels too short and leads on to a piece of music I found as uninspiring as the scene it went with. All that unsubtle business with the corpse...

But that is later, and for the moment we are in Edoras, shorn of its glory but not of its romance. I love the point at about 2:24 when we are transported into the cramped, sorrowful, mourning of the golden hall; and the fiddle comes into its own here. But there's a beauty amid the tears; a feeling that hope is on the horizon. At about 3:36 the track feels like it's come to a slightly menacing end, but trickles on in a minor way, ever so slightly claustrophobic, smothering the chance of redemption we saw before.

Incidentally, I shuddered when Bernard Hill and others seemed to think that the Rohirrim were Celts. Was this a PJesque decision? The white horse motif and Norwegian fiddle would seem to hint otherwise.