Howard Shore Quotes

I think once a year it's good to look back at the history of Oscar and to embrace the great work that everybody's done this year and set it in place to the great work that's gone on before us.

I never shied away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They're interesting to me just on a pure music level, just in terms of the amount of music I could create for a symphony orchestra and chorus.

You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes of the story, and work more with the subtext, and add more depth to the story through the use of music.

The piano is really the featured instrument of a 10-piece chamber orchestra. The construction is the harmonic language.

My first score for 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' was the beginning of my journey into the world of Tolkien, and I will always hold a special fondness for the music and the experience.

All of the silent films had live music accompaniment, so it's actually a very rich period in music.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.

I always believed 'The Fly' to be a classic opera story. It's a tale of love and death, true love surviving in the face of physical decay and ultimate sacrifice.

The sarangi, the ney flute are pretty ancient instruments.

Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.

The techniques of different directors are very different, and people have different ways of expressing ideas in film. I'm happiest when working with a director as I would be if I were an actor. I'm wanting to provide a really good performance.

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past.

I think 'Two Towers' is a completely distinct film from 'Fellowship of the Ring' or 'Return of the King.' I think that you can watch them as a group and watch how the story evolves, but I think each one was made in its own entirety, and each one has its own palate of sound and music and color and characterization.

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?

Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.

I like to do a lot of research on all of the films I work on. So, I like to read a lot. That's always an interesting part of it with me.

The technology certainly changes. I think, in terms of making films, that's been the biggest change. But many things stay the same. I mean, there's still stories to be told. There are scripts that give you a good guide and insight into the film.

I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.

When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular.

When you see 'Lord of the Rings,' you want to feel like you've been dropped into it and that you're part of it. You don't want to be aware of how it's being done; you just want it to feel really seamless.

Piano is very elegant. I also think it's a very truthful instrument.

To make good films, you have to have a good relationship and good collaboration as composer-director, composer-editor, composer-production designer-actor because you're working with the actors on screen.

I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully long time. It just became part of everyday life.

Composing is sort of an intuitive act. You have to put yourself in the right frame of mind.

'Hugo' is made in the classical style of the 1940s.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film.

I'm interested in good collaborations and in working with directors who bring something new and interesting out of you.

The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing.

I have kind of an intuitive feeling as a composer as to what would be appropriate for those groups and how to feature certain paths in a certain way, whether there was dialogue in a scene, or whether there was no dialogue and music was telling the story at that point.

When you're working on film music, you're only working on 20, 30-minute sections at a time.