Peter Gabriel - Passion

I want to say this right off the bat: I have strong theological and spiritual objections to The Last Temptation of Christ, either the Nikos Kazantakis novel and the Martin Scorsese film adaptation. In a nutshell, it's the right struggle but embodied in the wrong person. Now having said that, I can appreciate both novel and film as works of art and can see the craftsmanship of both were executed on the highest order. In the case of the film, a significant part of it is in the score Peter Gabriel provides.

What's wonderful about Passion as an album is that you can listen to it as pure music apart from any film connotations. Of course you can't avoid it if you've seen the film. But this is the mark of a great film score when it can work just as well without the film as it does with it. When you hear it as music, you get the feeling of a spiritual journey and everything that occurs: doubt, uncertainty, melancholy, anguish, fear, happiness, joy and transcendence. And of course the synthesis of many different and distinct elements - various worlds of music especially from northern Africa, the Middle East, south Asia and southeastern Europe, some general ambient tendencies, Western chorales and even some "pop sensibility" through its production techniques and digital sampling - is fascinating. Gabriel allows each part to be its own entity but they all work for the same goal.

The end result is a very moving work that's truly timeless and yet of its time. It's "functional" in that it was commissioned as a film score and yet transcends mere "film score" designation and is something more. (I dare you to hear this and *not* think of the music for the Halo game series). And all in all, it is one of the best musical representations of man's spiritual journey (even if the source of the commission is theologically improper)