Exclusive Interview: Howard Shore discusses the passion-play within The Twilight Saga: Eclipse score

In the last decade, Howard Shore is among the very few Hollywood film music composers to become a household name. Although he has been in the business since the 1970s and racking up over 80 film and television credits, Shore’s name rose to international stardom in 2001 when he carved the musical landscape for Peter Jackson’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Shore won three Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and four Grammys just for those three films.

Since then, he has enveloped himself in the world of high drama, scoring such emotional (and suspenseful) rollercoasters as THE DEPARTED, GANGS OF NEW YORK, EASTERN PROMISES, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, and EDGE OF DARKNESS, among many others.

Recently, he has added his name to another viciously famous franchise, THE TWILIGHT SAGA, providing the score to what will undoubtedly be a summer blockbuster, ECLIPSE. Shore has had his share of skeptics questioning his rationale for taking on such a project, but with one listen to the score, any doubt melts into the “twilight.”

The ECLIPSE score, at its core is a tumult of extreme emotions, where at any given time, it is simultaneously sincere, alluring, and terrifying. Shore makes extensive use of solo piano for character themes, displaying a naked vulnerability uncapturable by any other instrument. And his penchant for heaving violins and cellos are the earth Stephenie Meyer’s characters trod upon. ECLIPSE can pounce on you like a ravenous jaguar, cloud your judgment like a dense fog, or tantalize your senses with kaleidoscopic color-tones.

Howard Shore is a master of creating realms where nightmares and fantasy bleed together, and where beauty and the beast often inhabit the same body. While his time is strongly in demand, we did manage to obtain a bit of time to chat with the man who casts a twilight shadow on ECLIPSE!

How did you come into working on the ECLIPSE project?

They just asked me to work on it, and that was pretty much it. It really was as simple as that.

With NEW MOON, Alexandre Desplat admitted that he ignored Carter Burwell’s score for TWILIGHT and did not even see the first film. Did you follow that same mentality with ECLIPSE?

No, I actually did some pretty thorough research. I like to read a lot, and I knew the story. I was really interested in it from a dramatic point of view. And I felt that the story expands with the third film. I did the research and fell into a very interesting creative process. It was a pleasure to work on.

And I found both guys’ scores to be very good. Carter’s was such a good score, and Alexandre’s was just beautiful.

How was the experience tracking for songs through ECLIPSE?

I worked with Emily Haines and James Shaw of the group Metric, and Metric was a group that I had researched and felt that they would be good collaborators for this project. I asked them if they would be interested in writing with me, and the three of us created the song “Eclipse (All Yours).” I actually like the collaboration of working with different artists.

And that is something that you see less and less of in Hollywood. Back during the heyday of James Bond, you would almost always see a composer co-write the movie’s theme song.

Yes, yes! I enjoy that very much.

Listening to the ECLIPSE score, I noticed that you made Jacob the primary musical character, while using Bella as a sort of surrogate, bookending character.

He’s an important part of the story, and his character is an important element in the arc of the story. The timing was right in the third part to work with Jacob’s feelings and the dramatic arc of Jacob’s story. The Jacob character wasn’t really developed until the third film. It just felt right.

Since there were no previously established themes for Jacob, Victoria, Rosalie, Jasper, and Jane, did you feel any weight to present them in a proper fashion?

Definitely. I write how I feel where the emphasis is. And the emphasis for this part of the story might have been different from what had come before. So it just felt right for me to focus on and emphasize certain themes in the story.

Do you find yourself becoming emotionally invested in scoring these extremely dramatic films?

I do, I do become emotionally invested. I want to write and feel the drama. Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.

And that’s why I think ECLIPSE is right up your alley as a perfect project.

Yeah, it is. Film music is essentially the essence of what it is, writing to the emotional impact of the story.

It seems very important to you to make your music available to the public, and that is something you do not see many composers strive for. What is the rationale behind releasing things like the complete scores for THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and the HOWARD SHORE: COLLECTOR’S EDITION, and things like that?

It is important to me. I like to do good versions in the print medium and complete recordings, and full CD releases of scores; also archival releases of scores, rarities CDs. There is actually a rarities CD we are releasing with the Doug Adams book, MUSIC OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I do enjoy working on all aspects of that music. I like the details, yes.

Next year is the 20th Anniversary of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Are you planning on doing something special for that?

I am, actually. I think there is an A&E special being filmed, which I am participating in.

Is there something buried in your psyche that draws you to these realistic-fantasy worlds; places you would like to visit, but places where you would never like to live?

[Laughs] I don’t know…maybe.

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