I hope you like my little joke.

When composers primarily known as concert composers work in film, the resulting attention given to their scores usually guarantees those scores an element of renown. Think of composers from Prokofiev and Shostokovich right through to Corigliano and Tan Dun. Philip Glass has written relatively frequently for film (it's a lucrative business, after all) but his first, his most famous and most well-regarded score was Koyaanisqatsi for director Godfrey Reggio, followed up a couple of years later by Powaqqatsi. The unpronounceable trilogy is now completed by Naqoyqatsi, produced by Steven Soderberg (after Francis Coppola and George Lucas lent their considerable promotional talents to the previous two).

The movies are (as most readers are, I'm sure, well aware) very unusual in that they offer contemplative, meditative almost, views of life on earth and have no narrative structure at all. As such, the music is absolutely vital to each: it is as important ingredient as any other aspect of the film. Equally as such, it offers an almost unprecedented opportunity for the composer to shine, and shine Glass has, on each occasion.

I feel I must have a small rant, which is no reflection on Glass or his scores: classical music "snobs" almost always point to scores composed by "proper" composers as being far superior to those written by mere "film" composers, when in fact a quick thought about why this may be so offers ample explanation: how many times have the likes of Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and co. been given the opportunity of scoring such music-friendly films as this trilogy, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or The Red Violin, and so on? The answer is very rarely. The only films that spring immediately to mind are Sergio Leone's westerns, in which (of course) Ennio Morricone wrote music that not only served the films, it made the films - without it, they would have been nothing; with it, they are everything.

Anyway, that rant is over, and I was very pleasantly surprised by Naqoyqatsi's album. Glass, despite now spending a reasonable portion of his time writing film music, doesn't have a style that lends itself especially well to film, where music is so frequently relied upon to provide very human emotion; his somewhat distant, detached style of composition seems to have been conceived almost as a deliberate musical definition of "clinical". Naqoyqatsi is different; the film concerns technology and its impact on Earth, and has received as mixed a reaction as the previous two films in the trilogy, but what Glass has done so well is - at every turn - to accentuate the human. His music is entirely acoustic, featuring cello solos by the inimitable Yo-Yo Ma. While arguably the violin is more readily able to convey a wide range of human emotion simply through its inherent familiarity, the cello is for me a more expressive conduit for the more joyous human emotions. Somewhat disappointingly (and this is probably the score's only real disappointment), the cello solos are not especially dominant, nor do they allow Ma much freedom of expression - they are frequently present, but seem just a part of the overall orchestral fabric and frankly any competent cellist could have played them.

That complaint aside, Naqoyqatsi does not disappoint. It is far more romantic and emotive than any other music I've heard by Glass (from film or otherwise). Each track is a self-contained piece and none really disappoints. From the deep chanting of the title in the opening cue (it seems somehow more appropriate here than in Robocop 2) to the playful, beautiful strains of "Religion", the score features a wealth of ideas and emotions (there's that e-word again). Dare I say, it's haunting.

This is a film score for people who hate them; and also, I'm sure, for people who love them. I'm not sure you can go far wrong.

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