New and public from the School of Music at Ohio State, “Musical Affect and Embodiment: Fear, Threat, and Danger in the Music of The Lord of the Rings“…

recent research in music perception, speech prosody, and animal ethology was reviewed to create a list of musical techniques that might communicate fear and threat. […] Musical analyses of the soundtrack accompanying the Nazgul demonstrate abundant use of these and other factors […] in the context of the soundtrack to The Fellowship of the Ring.

Those who are unfamiliar with Tolkien, or who are unable to get past Bombadil or The Council of Elrond in the first part, may not readily associate him with horror. But he has many such elements and does them very effectively. In The Lord of the Rings there are The Black Riders, the Barrow Wight, the flying Nazgul, the tentacular Lurker in the Lake, the Balrog, Moria, the Dead Marshes, the Way of the Dead, Shelob, Sam in the high pass above Mordor, and Mordor itself. There are also horror elements in Merry’s account of the Ent attack on Isengard, the attack on Crickhollow, the battle of Helm’s Deep, and several encounters with wargs. Forests also have their eerie elements.

The essay looks specifically at the early scenes on Weathertop, and includes a handy table of the conclusions of previous research on the matter…