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| Aaltio |
Tale of the Sleeping Giants (Tunturin Tarina):
(Panu Aaltio) The Finnish series of nature documentaries beginning with
2012's
Tale of a Forest and including 2016's
Tale of a
Lake has earned international acclaim, and the production team's
2021 follow-up,
Tale of the Sleeping Giants, debuted to immense
popularity in the country. Delays caused by the pandemic allowed the
film to enjoy extended post-production consideration and generate
tremendous regional hype. The filmmakers tackle the mountainous region
of northern Scandinavia, shooting 850 hours of footage over three years
on the barren terrain with an eye for the landscape and the wildlife of
the era, culling that material down to 77 minutes for the final film.
Extreme cold temperatures and fickle animals required patience, grit,
and technological advances to coordinate the endeavor. The formula for
Tale of the Sleeping Giants is a bit different from its
predecessors in that its addressing of the mysticism of the region is
paired with emphasized storytelling elements related to the animals
followed, putting the movie more in line with other contemporary
wildlife documentaries. Like the prior films, though, composer Panu
Aaltio's music plays a pivotal role, often dominating the soundscape
when not competing with the sounds of nature. While
Tale of a
Forest was a capable documentary score with a handful of highlights,
Tale of a Lake remains a memorable classic in the genre,
showcasing the composer's talents and offering stunning lyricism along
the way. From the perspective of compositional quality,
Tale of the
Sleeping Giants sits somewhere between those two scores, more
ambitious in its style but not as attractive from start to finish.
Aaltio intentionally sought to shake up the music for this third film,
taking a risk by diminishing the streamlined orchestral and vocal
approach from
Tale of a Lake and instead seeking nontraditional
vocal and percussion techniques that will define the score for many
listeners. The Finnish orchestra Tapiola Sinfonietta is applied to most
of the work, though the composer relies upon the Finish vocal group
Tuuletar for distinctive style, the four women of that ensemble known
for combining hip hop, folk, and tribal spirit with the Finnish language
to yield unusual vocal textures.
It's not unusual for composer to want to experiment with
new directions in a franchise, but audiences may not be ready for
Aaltio's choices in
Tale of the Sleeping Giants. There is
symphonic beauty to be heard in the score, certainly, but it's layered
with aggressive percussive tones of an organic nature, the stylized
vocals, and unrestrained synthetic augmentation at times that goes
beyond the composer's usual blending of virtual sweetening with organic
recordings. On the other hand, some of the ingredients do remain the
same, passages for cute animals receiving exuberant, light-footed
orchestral performances led by woodwinds. These bouncy clarinet
passages, along with timpani applications and the use of brass to beef
up the weight of dramatic cues, are all carryovers from
Tale of a
Lake. These scores tend to suffer from some amount of fragmented
musical narratives, and the storytelling element of
Tale of the
Sleeping Giants presented Aaltio the opportunity to build a tighter
arc in his themes. He responds with a pair of main themes that is
consistently applied, but their enunciation isn't always complete and
their fullest versions are rather rare in application. As such, this
work ultimately plays less as a cohesive thematic tale and more as an
impressionistic tour de force. The massive orchestral statements are
fewer, the dramatic cues for the changing of seasons are a bit more
subdued, and the wacky moments for animals at play reserve some of their
energy. On the other end of the spectrum,
Tale of the Sleeping
Giants contains a few cues that will likely outright repel some
listeners, requiring a reprogramming of a lesser length of music to
yield an enjoyable companion to its predecessors. Fortunately, there are
plenty of remarkably wonderful highlights hidden throughout the score
for combining into such a presentation. Don't be surprised if you end up
shunning the vocal effects in their most obvious sequences. Their mixing
into the work ranges from extremely subtle rhythmic whispering to
outright singing of a high, abrasive tone similar to James Horner's
Avatar. They are replaced in several cues by an operatic solo
female voice more akin to the one utilized in
Tale of a Lake,
though its mixing here is moved further back and supplied more reverb so
that it emulates Howard Shore's
The Lord of the Rings trilogy of
scores. Not surprisingly, these moments are uniformly delightful.
The nontraditional vocal performances by Tuuletar in
Tale of the Sleeping Giants form their own motific base aside
from Aaltio's central themes. They dominate throughout "The Message,"
which opens the album but actually closes the film, and they faintly
contribute over wind-like effects in the middle of "God of Wind," where
they truly excel. The group's soft chanting returns in the second half
of "The Ice Breaks," while whispers in the middle of "Crown Snow" under
distant wails strike more of a new age tone. The calls reminiscent to
Avatar emerge by the end of "Battle of the Birds," but they adopt
a percussive-like effect after a minute in that cue that is more
interesting. The
Avatar mode returns in the performance of the
main majestic theme during "Muskoxen," and it sounds a bit better in
this context. The pulsating rhythmic vocals return in the middle of "The
Giant Era," while the fully layered whispering from earlier in the album
presentation return in "Crow Syndicate" at the end. The two formal
themes by Aaltio for
Tale of the Sleeping Giants may not reveal
themselves easily to listeners; the composer sometimes stews with only
their underlying chord progressions for minutes on end, and fragments of
their structures tend to pop up as counterpoint to other material. The
two ideas, the cyclical theme and the majestic theme, also overlap in
several instances, both in their full thematic forms and in their
counterpoint fragments. While the cyclical theme may seem like the
score's main identity due to its mere frequency in bits and pieces, it
is the majestic theme that receives the work's only massively dramatic
moments for either theme. A series of similar three-note phrases in
succession, the cyclical theme is exactly that, its repetitive main
sequence eventually adding two notes as a bridge between each phrase in
the full version of the theme. Its chords open "The Message," the
three-note phrases debuting at 0:59 on seemingly a processed woodwind.
In that end credits cue, Aaltio starts to develop the proper theme at
3:30 with the bridge notes, allowing the idea to fully mature by 4:30 on
strings. A solo female voice at 6:15 performs the most formally
developed version of the theme with amazing elegance. The cyclical
rhythm opens "Crown Snow" on synths and percussion, while the three-note
phrases inform suspense on woodwinds late in "Stoat and the Owl."
Woodwinds carry the same three-note figures at the end of "Bird Island"
as well.
The cyclical theme in
Tale of the Sleeping
Giants really starts to shine when it overlaps Aaltio's majestic
theme, as it does when it serves as counterpoint to the majestic theme
in the middle of "Muskoxen." After also closing that cue, the cyclical
theme returns similarly at 0:29 into "Jaybird and the Mole" against the
majestic theme but recedes to underlying chords that persist throughout
"Ants" in delicate suspense. The idea faintly opens "The Giant Era" but
develops into the full theme on flute, taking on the same form as in
"The Message" in the middle of the cue; the strings perform the full
cyclical theme leading up to the burst of the majestic theme. The album
returns the theme to vocal rhythmic form at 1:04 into "Crow Syndicate"
before shifting to a nice new melody at the cue's end. The majestic
theme is a little more straight forward in
Tale of the Sleeping
Giants and is the identity most memorable from the score. Solemn at
1:49 and 2:27 into "The Message" over the rhythmic three-note phrases of
the other theme, the majestic theme achieves full brass force at 4:55,
its repetitive phrasing building momentum as it goes. Hints of its
progressions open "God of Wind" quietly and consolidate nicely at 1:44
even without the actual melody utilized. A solo female voice finally
provides the actual theme at 2:56 into that cue with really pretty
harmonics. Fragments of the idea emerge two minutes into "Crown Snow"
and extend to a solo piano later in the cue. The sudden vocal outburst
of its progressions late in "Battle of the Birds" is highly annoying,
but it reprises its monumental symphonic form at 1:02 into "Muskoxen"
with the cyclical theme as counterpoint. Also against the cyclical
three-note phrases is the majestic idea at 0:29 into "Jaybird and the
Mole." Hints occupy the first half of "Fall Colors" before Aaltio moves
into new melodic territory later. Echoing the expansive performance of
"The Message" but with more female vocals is the summarizing performance
of the majestic theme at 4:14 into "The Giant Era." It softly opens
"Crow Syndicate" with perky vocals and metallic percussion, and the solo
female voice offers it at 0:24 like in "God of Wind," but in almost
Chinese erhu tones. Aside from these two major themes, Aaltio tends to
restrain his many other melodies to particular scenes or characters. And
there are many of them, which is understandable given the conventions of
the documentary genre of music. Sadly, though, some of the most alluring
themes of the score reside in these brief parts.
A fantastic family theme conjured for the reindeer in
Tale of the Sleeping Giants is strong enough to anchor a whole
score on its own. It's heard at 0:14 into "Birth of a Reindeer" on
winds, building to a lovely ensemble performance at 1:46, and the theme
persists at 0:09 into "Friends," where it rotates between woodwinds as
an accent to the separate friendship theme; the full string section's
vigor at 0:56 sadly closes out the score's presentation of the idea. The
friendship theme is a structural variant of the family theme, opening
"Friends" and repeating several times with chipper strings and triangle.
The only other theme to carry over substantially to multiple cues is
Aaltio's upbeat bird motif, used throughout "Wagtail and the Eaglet"
(and big at 1:45 with optimistic spirit) and opening "Jaybird and the
Mole." He moves to a separate identity combining phrasing of the
cyclical and majestic themes for the outset of the "Bird Island" cue,
building to a powerful performance at 1:34 with more traditional voices
in support. This motif returns to percussive delicacy later in that cue,
woodwinds imitating earlier vocal effects in the score. Notable singular
identities for particular scenes are encountered at 2:03 into "The Ice
Breaks" (the work's only poor temp track exposure, clearly emulating the
nature theme from
The Lord of the Rings) and throughout
"Muskoxen," where a solo voice at 0:33 is quite lovely. The exuberant
"Fox Family" theme and Vic Mizzy flair throughout "The Scary Vole" are
also standouts. On the other hand, detriments to the score include the
stoic percussive slapping of "Battle of the Birds," the totally
disjointed Latin flavor to harpsichord to rock guitar of "Ruff Revue,"
the understated, percussion-dominant "Wolverines" with unique woodwind
accents, and the disappointingly devoid "Salmon Spawn." These misfires
range from obnoxious to disengaging, forcing the listener to pull
together cues like "God of Wind," "Bird Island," and "Fall Colors,"
along with a number of the wildlife-centric character moments, for an
impressive half hour of superior material. When not trying to impress
with the usual vocals and percussion, Aaltio's
Tale of the Sleeping
Giants is a slightly lesser but still solidly pleasing sibling to
Tale of a Lake. A digital-only release in 2021 was followed by a
limited 2023 CD set along with the prior two scores. Listeners
unsatisfied with the sometimes overly augmented sound of the prior
scores (or the composer's work in general) will appreciate the more
expansive ambience of this recording, even if that scope comes with
unconventional sounds attached. The composer's risk was worth taking
here, but the result will alienate some listeners seeking more
accessible beauty.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
There exists no official packaging for the 2021 digital album.
The insert of the 2023 Quartet/MovieScore set includes a partial list of
performers and notes about the films and scores.
