Making a film soundtrack requires a double mastery. You have to make do music an additional part of the story told in images, but you also have to make it a standalone piece of music. Sometimes there are these brilliant snippets of music that work perfectly in a movie, but if you play them at home without the images, they turn just into simple, incoherent snippets. On the other hand, there is this great piece of music but when you see the movie it either makes no connection to the images or is either buried down to be completely unrecognizable or simply cut in pieces. Of course, movie makers and music arrangers often cop to the ‘easy” (of course, it’s not) solution of doing a compilation of tracks that should make sense in the movie and as a standalone selection of music.
William Ryan Fritch, who has been labeled as a ‘modern classical’ composer, but whose music actually defies any precise categorisation has taken on the task of preparing a soundtrack for a documentary that deals with a centuries-long tradition, of eagle hunting, “Birkitshi - Eagle Hunters In A New World”. It is a dying tradition, now still to be found in certain parts of Asia. So, if you want to make your music relevant to the images it has to portray in this case, you would also have to incorporate certain ethnic music elements connected to the region where eagle hunting is still around.
Immediately, to be frank, I have absolutely no idea how the music he composed for the film really relates to it. I haven’t had the chance to see it yet. But then what I can say is that Fritch has come up with the music that perfectly stands alone on its merits. He has obviously done an excellent job of doing a high-quality research of ethnic musical elements and how to incorporate them into his personal musical style, which on evidence of what he has done previously is truly personal. Being mainly instrumental (and not only because of it) Fritch’s music has always had that cinematic touch in it anyway, meaning he was always able to convey a ‘heavy’ musical message in a manner this is not heavy on the ear (unless necessary). This time around, he has incorporated that ethnic element perfectly into his style, without them looking, or to be more precise, sounding like oil and water.
Based on the evidence of the soundtrack itself, I hardly have any doubts that it fits perfectly with the images it is supposed to accompany - it is another William Ryan Fritch work to cherish.
