Howard Shore has reworked the music from the Lord of the Rings movies into a two hour, six movement symphony. All of the musical material has been retained; however much of the material has been reworked or reorchestrated to create a standalone piece.
I wonder if someday the melodies and thematic material will be better known from the symphony than from the movies themselves — similar to how everyone seems to know Procession of the Nobles by Rimsky-Korsakov, yet few remember the opera Млада from which it came.
A narrated walkthrough of the symphony:
The complete symphony:
The Lord of the Rings Symphony Album from Arkivmusic
Incidentally, Howard Shore was not the first to compose a symphony based on the Lord of the Rings. Johan De Meij wrote his Symphony No. 1 "Lord of the Rings" between 1984 and 1988.
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