 Howard Shore continued his approach from the music of "The Lord of the Rings" films, and wrote 64-70 identified leitmotifs (not including ten or more newly reprised themes from the Lord of the Rings) that are used throughout the nine hours of the three scores.Combined with recurring themes from the Lord of the Rings, there are about sixty or more leitmotifs used through each of the three scores, which given their shorter length makes them somewhat more dense than even The Lord of the Rings scores.The main theme of the trilogy is The Shire theme.