Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The third but certainly not the least of the major villains of the story is the dragon Smaug the Golden, the greatest and most horrible of all terrors of the Age, who laid waste to the kingdom of Erebor and desolated the town of Dale and all the lands surrounding the Lonely Mountain. Reportedly Shore’s approach incorporates both the Eastern tinged musical ideas related to the past ages of Middle-earth heard e.g. in the music of the Lothlórien elves and Sauron/Necromancer but also gives a slight nod in orchestrations and in the form of the musical ideas to the music of Far East, where dragons prominently figure into many legends and myths.
The great fire drake is depicted by three central musical ideas derived from same basic colours and they work in a effortless tandem with one another, constructed in a way that allows each of them to be quoted quickly and efficiently in succession and they are often entwined together by Shore with the Smaug Chords forming the constant base above which the two more prominent melodies are heard.
Smaug Chords (Theme A)/Dragon-sickness:As many of the composer’s themes this simple idea of two alternating chords attains an organic breath-like pattern, almost like a giant bellows, rising and falling naturally and fatefully as we see the great beast on-screen providing almost subliminal tension to these scenes as it accompanies the other music associated with the dragon.
Interestingly this music is combined often with a rhythmic string pattern to represent the dragon-sickness, a malady of the mind that takes hold of those who covet the hoard of wealth the wyrm has piled into his abode. Same madness and lust for treasure runs in the line of kings of Erebor as Thrór was as susceptible to it and now his grandson Thorin shares the same affliction.
Smaug’s Theme B: A short, sinuous, cruel and sharply angled melody is the first thematic identity of the fire drake and appears during the prologue of An Unexpected Journey when we see fateful glimpses of Smaug laying waste to both Dale and Erebor, the music exuding imperious aggression, rage and violence. It is short and to the point and thus can be easily and quickly quoted in a short space of time but Shore provides the great drake of the North with a second theme as well.
Smaug’s Theme C: The complexity and wicked cunning of Smaug’s persona led the composer to complement his manipulative evil with a musical mirror image of the first theme, a longer melodic line that is actually an inverted variation on the first idea, which reflects the wyrm’s multifaceted persona and dangerous cold cunning. This long lined and more ominous variation of Smaug’s music appears once in An Unexpected Journey when Bilbo is first told of the Great Calamity, the ghostly clang of Tibetan gongs and bass drum pulsing together underneath as strings and woodwinds play an inverted version of this slithering reptilian theme for Smaug, a horror Bilbo can scarcely even imagine. In the sequels this malicious music torments both Bilbo and Thorin and sneers at Bard at their meeting in the ruins of burning Lake-town.
The third but certainly not the least of the major villains of the story is the dragon Smaug the Golden, the greatest and most horrible of all terrors of the Age, who laid waste to the kingdom of Erebor and desolated the town of Dale and all the lands surrounding the Lonely Mountain. Reportedly Shore’s approach incorporates both the Eastern tinged musical ideas related to the past ages of Middle-earth heard e.g. in the music of the Lothlórien elves and Sauron/Necromancer but also gives a slight nod in orchestrations and in the form of the musical ideas to the music of Far East, where dragons prominently figure into many legends and myths.
The great fire drake is depicted by three central musical ideas derived from same basic colours and they work in a effortless tandem with one another, constructed in a way that allows each of them to be quoted quickly and efficiently in succession and they are often entwined together by Shore with the Smaug Chords forming the constant base above which the two more prominent melodies are heard.
Smaug Chords (Theme A)/Dragon-sickness:As many of the composer’s themes this simple idea of two alternating chords attains an organic breath-like pattern, almost like a giant bellows, rising and falling naturally and fatefully as we see the great beast on-screen providing almost subliminal tension to these scenes as it accompanies the other music associated with the dragon.
Interestingly this music is combined often with a rhythmic string pattern to represent the dragon-sickness, a malady of the mind that takes hold of those who covet the hoard of wealth the wyrm has piled into his abode. Same madness and lust for treasure runs in the line of kings of Erebor as Thrór was as susceptible to it and now his grandson Thorin shares the same affliction.
Smaug’s Theme B: A short, sinuous, cruel and sharply angled melody is the first thematic identity of the fire drake and appears during the prologue of An Unexpected Journey when we see fateful glimpses of Smaug laying waste to both Dale and Erebor, the music exuding imperious aggression, rage and violence. It is short and to the point and thus can be easily and quickly quoted in a short space of time but Shore provides the great drake of the North with a second theme as well.
Smaug’s Theme C: The complexity and wicked cunning of Smaug’s persona led the composer to complement his manipulative evil with a musical mirror image of the first theme, a longer melodic line that is actually an inverted variation on the first idea, which reflects the wyrm’s multifaceted persona and dangerous cold cunning. This long lined and more ominous variation of Smaug’s music appears once in An Unexpected Journey when Bilbo is first told of the Great Calamity, the ghostly clang of Tibetan gongs and bass drum pulsing together underneath as strings and woodwinds play an inverted version of this slithering reptilian theme for Smaug, a horror Bilbo can scarcely even imagine. In the sequels this malicious music torments both Bilbo and Thorin and sneers at Bard at their meeting in the ruins of burning Lake-town.
