A Closer Listen
Many of our readers encountered Songs of Earth for the first time in our roundup of The Year’s Best Film Scores. As the film nears international release, we expect it will pick up steam. The same holds true for the original score, composed by Rebekkah Karijord and performed by London Contemporary Orchestra. The orchestra has appeared on numerous albums we have covered, most recently on projects by Sigur Rós, Matthew Herbert, Danny Mulhern and Drum & Lace, well earning their “contemporary” label.
Margreth Olin’s film is a love letter to Norway’s Oldedalen Valley, and a tribute to the relationship between the director and her 85-year-old father and guide. “Ever since I was a child,” the trailer begins, “I yearned to walk in your footsteps;” and here she does. The journey takes place over the course of a year; as landscapes cycle, the effects of climate change are clearly seen. The cinematography is majestic, and Karijord’s music is a match. Divided in four movements, one for each season, the score honors Vivaldi while walking its own humble path.
Spring arrives on a string-laden breeze, unfolding from cold silence. Field recordings provide a sense of place, with nature herself a co-composer. Wind and crackle are apparent on “The Cave,” while bubbling water populates “Stones in the River.” At times, the orchestra seems reluctant to overwhelm, as if in respect for the earth’s original music. “The Spruce” includes crumble, creak and drone, the spruce expanding and contracting as the temperatures fluctuate. Major melodies emerge for the first time in “The Mountain” as the fullness of color is revealed.
And then it is summer. The sound of “Melting Snow” is a reminder that the seasons are different in Norway than they are in southern climes. The warmth arrives later, and in the far northern winter, the light disappears. This leads to an amplified gratitude for the sun, conveyed by choir in “Echoes of Voices.” Summer’s last piece, “Longing,” is a reminder that the season passes too quickly; all of the other movements contain four tracks, while summer has only three. The “longing” may be for more summer, or more time: in the director’s case, more time with her father, already deep in the autumn of his life.
Fall is introduced with a deep drone and a rumble of drums. The track titles – “Flood,” Under Water,” “The Wind,” “Decay & Love” – bear the magnitude of impending loss, on more than one level. Whenever parts of nature die, they remind us of ourselves. The loss of natural habitats suggests an even wider, more consequential loss: the end of cycles themselves. The choir, once hopeful, is now elegiac. The same wind that once scattered seeds has now become a ravager.
After the peak of “Decay & Loss,” the instruments turn inward. Winter arrives in a coat of cold beneath a blanket of darkness. Wonders are witnessed, but the awe of winters past is muted. The mighty glacier is retreating. For now, one can still walk on the ice, hear the pings and echoes of ice as it forms beneath the feet. The two lives – those of a father and an ecosystem – are intertwined. Karijord’s winter movement contains both wonder and a sadness that might be characterized as pre-mourning. Glissandos descend, disintegrate and fade. Cycles have comfort, but the next cycle may be different from the last. This is our song, and it is also the song of Earth. (Richard Allen)
Tue Jan 09 00:01:12 GMT 2024