Whistle used performing Themes in “The Hobbit Trilogy Movies”

Whistle
1

I was wondering if anyone knows what type of Whistle is used in the various theme songs of The Hobbit Trilogy Movies? Type/Brand and Key plus high or low I assume would be very helpful..
Thanks one and all for your patience and time.

2

Check out CutiePie on YouTube. She seems to like that kind of music. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfUZy8uhccNg2Xx3W9v0WQVHTYMt6Gvrl

3

Assuming you mean the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which features “Concerning Hobbits” (the best known of the tracks featuring tin whistle)…

Sir James Galway performed the whistle and flute parts in Concerning Hobbits with the London Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack. You can see him perform, and when he switches between the flute and whistle within the same tune, in these two videos. The whistle appears to be a Chris Abell, in D. “Appears” is shorthand for “I am not sure” and I am happy to be corrected if anyone knows definitively.

https://youtu.be/oiayC0QYOt8?si=_yWdybyjkgiDBHyJ

https://youtu.be/hBQf1CV1Zfs?si=gNSk4QQQSU2A0xWB

AW

4

I think it was a collaborative effort with multiple whistles. In Return of the King, Sir James Galway plays high whistle and flute, and Jan Hendrickse played low whistle.

Alan Doherty of Grada and aldoc was the whistle player credited on the LOTR, The Fellowship of the Rings, soundtrack: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring--the-complete-recordings-mw0000357204/credits

He also gets credit for ney flute, but that’s just beyond the scope of our little C&F world…LOL.

I can’t find anything definitive for The Two Towers…I would love to see something, though.

Eric (a huge Alan Doherty fan)

5

Thanks for that!

So often musicians aren’t credited and it’s very difficult to track down who played on what.

You’d have to ask Alan Doherty which specific whistle he played on each cue.

I’ve done quite a bit of soundtrack work and in my case it’s a simple matter, because I only bring one whistle of each key to the recording session.

But I’ve been at recording sessions where a “wind guy” brings piles of whistles (Irish, bamboo, etc) and flutes (Boehm, wood, Bansuri, Ney, Kaval, etc) and Recorders etc etc and for each cue he’ll play several different things letting the composer pick which sound he likes.

I’m sure that particular “wind guy”, if asked years later, wouldn’t have the foggiest notion of which instrument he’d played on each cue. You’d have to play the soundtrack for him and he’d likely be able to identify the various instruments.

Needless to say which whistles were used on any other performance of the soundtrack music gives not the slightest clue as to what whistles were used on the original film-used soundtrack cues.

6

My recollection is that for The Fellowship of the Ring, that it was an old-style Burke, identifiable as such by the ‘swallowed grape’ tuning slide. It was visible for a split second on one of the extended edition behind-the-scenes clips, I think.

7

I played with Sir Galway a couple years ago - mid 2010s - for I think 2 consecutive years at the annual Tim Janis Ensemble Christmas concert in NYC. He was playing an aluminum Burke session D at the time. Said he chose aluminum over brass because he liked “the bling.”