Despite the lack of pop-culture connections to Shore's music, Newman provides an appropriately respectful but rather dreamy score for Tolkien, handling the concept with a blend of fantasy atmosphere and character-centric melodies. The score has none of the scope of those by Shore, but Newman does intriguingly scale back some of the same underlying choral and instrumental tones into his own mould, offering, for instance, soothingly chanted vocals for connections to Elvish inspiration and Hardanger fiddle to tie in Scandinavian mythology. This music is, to some degree, what Newman might provide to understated scenes of Jackson's films, and the emotional appeal is similar even if the size of the recording is not. That said, Tolkien is an absolutely stereotypical Newman score, defining many of the characteristics that his collectors appreciate the most in his dramatic music. If you were to create a checklist of twenty "Thomas Newman trademarks," this score would contain at least fifteen of them, and they are attractively packaged into an introspective but pretty and mostly easy listening experience. For those desiring to hear Newman's tonally melodic mode with a blend of symphonic elements and his specialty instrumentation, Tolkien remains a consistently wonderful listening experience. He applies the fiddle, viola de gamba, mandolin, dulcimer, recorder, pennywhistle, various high metallic percussion, and a few guitar-like variants on top of the orchestral string section, unashamed synthetic drones as needed, and the processed vocal effects. It's truly a quintessential dramatic ensemble for Newman, producing accessible rhythmic passages that are downright gorgeous and require a lossless presentation on album. On the other hand, whereas the score excels in tone, it struggles mightily in its thematic delineations. Newman conjures upwards of ten unique melodies for the score, and while most of them do recur for various concepts or characters, they never enjoy any significant interaction with each other or evolve significantly on their own. In some ways, the score is like a nature documentary for underwater creatures, the motific development restricted to a handful of scenes and no overarching structural identity pulling all of these ideas together. There is no main theme of Tolkien amongst the many that meander through the score, and the ambience is no worse because of it. But it thus becomes a score that requires little thought or close attention.

Among the recurring melodies in Tolkien, the theme for the four boys' group, the TCBS, may be the most stylish, with processed vocals over twinkling percussive rhythms and fluid string interludes. It debuts at 0:14 into "The TCBS," with variants in spirit during the engaging pair of "A Good Man in the Dirt" and "Sunlit," the latter among the best Newman moments in years. It is reprised in original form in "Helheimr (End Crawl)," where Newman closes out the credits with a Finnish folk piece on zither after the director mentioned his love of it. A theme for Tolkien himself is rather upbeat in the spirit of Finding Nemo, heard in the middle of "John Ronald" and during all of "Everything That's Good." Newman's theme for fear is defined by four ascending notes in a murky haze, dominating three cues at 0:12 and 0:50 into "The Great War" and far more aggressive at 0:25 into "Army of the Dead" and at 0:21 into "Black Rider." Extended variants of this, the score's only challenging material, fester in the crescendo of "Rugby" and stew in lighter shades during "Starlit" on piano and voice. A mysticism and imagination motif consists of five descending notes, often plucked, and meanders at 1:09 into "White as Bone" and opening "Eik (Oak)" more clearly. A comfort theme of three-note descending choral phrases soothingly occupies all of "Vinátta (Friendship)" and the start of "Other Sorts of Scars." A theme for Tolkien's friend, Geoffrey, is conveyed on piano and harp late in "Geoffrey" and reprised very similarly in "Dark Magic." Most intriguing is a passion theme taking the form of a somewhat uncertain piano melody, applied in "Lúthien Tinúviel," "Dutch Courage," and "Scuppered (Ancient Things)," typically over a wash of strings, and providing fragments to open "The Ascanius" and inform the strangely optimistic ensemble ambience of that cue. A notable singular highlight comes in the dreamy theme at 0:14 and 1:08 into "Impecunious Circumstances." Several of these ideas merge into the progressions and personality of the pivotal "Fellowship" cue that concludes the narrative. Few cues in Tolkien fail to explore one of these themes, and with their consistently pleasant renderings, the listening experience as a whole is an effortlessly whimsical joy. If you remove the six minutes of the fear theme and perhaps the five minutes of the relatively sparse mysticism and imagination motif, then you are left with forty minutes of pure Thomas Newman bliss. Its lack of consolidated thematic coherence remains a significant problem intellectually, but this is a score for your heart, not your brain.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download