One of his earliest film scores was the British sex comedy "Keep It Up Downstairs" (1976), and he has since scored numerous films, many of them European art films, including several of those directed by Peter Greenaway. Nyman drew frequently on early music sources in his scores for Greenaway's films: Henry Purcell in "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982) and "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (1989) (which included Memorial and Miserere Paraphrase), Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber in "A Zed & Two Noughts" (1985), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in "Drowning by Numbers" (1988), and John Dowland in "Prospero's Books" (1991), largely at the request of the director. He wrote settings to various texts by Mozart for "Letters, Riddles and Writs", part of "Not Mozart". He also produced a soundtrack for the silent film "Man with a Movie Camera". Nyman's popularity increased after he wrote the score to Jane Campion's award-winning 1993 film "The Piano". The album became a classical music best-seller. He was nominated for a British Academy Award and a Golden Globe.