Nearly 45 minutes of Howard Shore’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug score has made its way online, and it’s unsurprisingly beautiful.

Reaction to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was very mixed. While some fans of the series saw it as a good, world expanding edition, others saw flaws from expanding a single book into nearly nine hours of cinema.

Article Continues Below

Be this as it may, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t like the score from Howard Shore. An Unexpected Journey was just another example of how the music in a less good addition to a franchise can be a film saving factor (see: John Williams and the Star Wars prequels).

A total of 45 minutes of Shore’s score (that will never stop sounding good) is now available on Soundcloud.

The way Shore is working in our favorite themes from The Lord of the Rings will never cease to put huge smiles on our faces. It’s great to hear some new themes, too. Shore is clearly building both off The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and it’s quite masterful.

Additionally, Empire has uploaded four brand new Desolation of Smaug stills.

Thanks to SlashFilm for the heads up.

With the film set for release on December 13, promotion for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in full swing. Recently, a grand sculpture of Smaug was seen in Bulgaria. Smaug was also featured in a new TV spot recently. The spot featured a few new looks at the enormous dragon as well as Martin Freeman as Bilbo getting tangled up in webs.

Hypable recently gave away three copies of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’s Extended Edition in a contest that ended on Saturday. (Check your email to see if you won.) Read our review of the Extended Edition to find out why you should pick up the incredible set, which is available in stores now.

What do you think of these ‘Hobbit’ score samples from Howard Shore?