Composers Datebook

In 2002, film director Godfrey Reggio released his latest movie. Entitled "Naqoyqatsi"—the Hopi word for "Life as War"—this was Reggio's third and final installment in a trilogy of unusual, non-narrative films, all with Hopi titles, each comprised of visually striking, collage-like visuals set against hypnotic film scores by American composer Philip Glass. The preceding two films were: "Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance" (released in 1982) and "Powaqqatsi: Life in transformation" (released in 1988). "Naqoyqatsi" may have been a non-narrative film, but Reggio's message was that humankind was transforming its natural environment into a technology-based one. Reggio described his 2002 film as a symphony in three movements, and even provided descriptive titles: Movement 1 - Language and place gives way to numerical code and virtual reality; movement 2 - Life becomes a game; Movement 3 - A world that language can no longer describe. Fast forward ten years to 2012. That year Philip Glass was serving as the Creative Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and had been commissioned to turn his "Naqoyqatsi" film score into a concert work for cello and orchestra. In the film score, solos played by the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma featured prominently, so this "repurposing" of film score seemed a logical step. And so, on today's date in 2012, Philip Glass's Cello Concerto No. 2, subtitled "Naqoyqatsi," received its premiere performance with the Cincinnati Symphony conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and Matt Haimowitz as the cello soloist.