[personal] XMAS PANIC! 911! SOS! HELP!

My oldest friend sent me a request for musical titles to fulfill his son's particular CHRISTmas wish-list. I thought I would post the result, in case anyone else had similar needs. One good trick in this case is to use AMAZON. Their Customers who bought this title also bought: listings can lead to interesting reads as well as, in this case, sounds. Also, their user-posted lists can give you some good ideas.

Enjoy!

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 11:31 AM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [personal] XMAS PANIC! 911! SOS! HELP!

xxxxx wants music that sounds like the vocal choruses in “the Lord of the Rings.” Is there anything you know of in that category.


I assume we are talking listening material, not sheet music/scores, although that is possible w) some of this.

I used to have a playlist in Windows Media Player I called 'Writing Music' which included mostly LOTR and other orchestral stuff. I would listen to it while writing my novel. Lost it somewhere in the transfer to the new laptop. Have to look for it in the back-ups...

We are talking to basic categories:

The big choruses with huge orchestral underpinnings.
We'll call it Die Sturm-Muzik

The high tessitura female voice angsting during poignant points of character development.
Megan refers to this particular form as Woeful-Wailing-Women.

For number one, the major one that comes to mind is the big chorus from Carmina-Burana.
If memory serves it literally IS one of the DSM under-pinnings in the trilogy. This thing is everywhere, but a similar soundtrack in general, which I know includes the big chorus, would be Excalibur.
check it out here: http://www.anthea2.freeuk.com/carminaburana/

Most of the Celtic girls spend MAJOR time in WWW mode. Enya is also part of the LOTR musical palette. Lenox does Into the West, but I don't know that anything else on the album is of the same vein. Planxty is another group with good sounds along this path. (Enya used to do their vocals.) Some of the Celtic groups will get to 'legit' folk-songish.

Celtic Circle (Two-disc set) has some good examples of this 'style'.

Similar Celtic-influenced soundtracks that would also probably appeal:
Last of the Mohicans (both DSM and WWW here)
Braveheart (one could argue too much pipeing, I would argue there are not ENOUGH pipes in Shore's scoring. Besides, there's NO SUCH THING as TOO MUCH PIPEING! ;->)
I can't remember many vocals, but The Patriot had a good adventurer's soundtrack.

Slightly more Popera-ish but along the same vein:
(While not as Sturmish, these are a full chorus of voices.)
ADIEMUS - I have ADIEMUS IV:THE ETERNAL KNOT clips here - http://www.adiemus.f2s.com/sound.htm
Mediaeval Babes http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicArtistsM/medieval_babes.html