Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The greatest forest of the North, the dark, tangled and ancient Mirkwood is a treacherous place, where paths often lead astray and perpetual gloom lives under its thick canopy of leaves. The dark power of Dol Guldur has enfolded the trees into a black insidious sorcery that disorients and confuses the mind and the waters of its streams are dangerous and full of enchantment of sleep and drowsiness.
For this disorienting and gloomy place Howard Shore provides a small wisp of a melody, ominous, and fleeting. The six note idea feels always unfinished, much like the journey through the woods and slowly the motif is fragmented, fades and disappears into the eternal gloom under the branches as the dwarves and the hobbit become hopelessly lost on their way along the elven path.
The forest along with its thematic identification has also a whole textural level of musical identity as the composer depicts the deceptive, hallucinatory magic of Mirkwood with bowed cymbals, skittering orchestral colours, screeching metallic sounds from various sources in the percussion and finally even ghostly choral voices whispering in Sprechtstimme style to complement the nightmarish surroundings. It is music meant to make you woozy and frightened.
The greatest forest of the North, the dark, tangled and ancient Mirkwood is a treacherous place, where paths often lead astray and perpetual gloom lives under its thick canopy of leaves. The dark power of Dol Guldur has enfolded the trees into a black insidious sorcery that disorients and confuses the mind and the waters of its streams are dangerous and full of enchantment of sleep and drowsiness.
For this disorienting and gloomy place Howard Shore provides a small wisp of a melody, ominous, and fleeting. The six note idea feels always unfinished, much like the journey through the woods and slowly the motif is fragmented, fades and disappears into the eternal gloom under the branches as the dwarves and the hobbit become hopelessly lost on their way along the elven path.
The forest along with its thematic identification has also a whole textural level of musical identity as the composer depicts the deceptive, hallucinatory magic of Mirkwood with bowed cymbals, skittering orchestral colours, screeching metallic sounds from various sources in the percussion and finally even ghostly choral voices whispering in Sprechtstimme style to complement the nightmarish surroundings. It is music meant to make you woozy and frightened.
