Suite bergamasque: Claire de lune, No.3
By ISAO TOMITA
“When you think about Japan, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? ”
I have always had a very poetic idea about that country, even if I have never been there. It was impossible not to find something that contributed to the development of electronic music history in one of the most industrialized countries in the world.
Isao Tomita was a Japanese composer born in Tokyo in 1932. He is considered one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music and one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements.
A lot of his albums are electronic transformations of well-known classical music pieces.
Suppose you are following our journey through electronic music history. In that case, you might remember we published an article about another composer who, in the 70s, started producing classical music with synthesizers: Jean Jaques Perrey.
After his early years as a composer, Tomita turned to electronic music in the late 60s and acquired a Moog III synthesizer inspired by Wendy Carlos's work. Don't miss our article about her and Robert Moog.
“Tomita built his home studio to experiment with this new machine and soon realized that synthesizers could also be used to create entirely new sounds in addition to mimicking other instruments.”
In 1974 Tomita released his second studio album, Snowflakes Are Dancing. The first thing that comes to my mind while listening to it is that Tomita chose the best possible title. The album's atmosphere makes you feel like you are in a dreamy, snowy landscape.
Ambiance, realistic string simulations, an early attempt to synthesize the sound of a symphony orchestra, whistles, and abstract bell-like sounds, as well as several processing effects including reverberation, phase shifting, flanging, and ring modulation, are the ingredients of this massive work.
The production took 14 months because Tomita created the album's polyphonic sounds, as Wendy Carlos had done before him, by recording selections one part at a time on a separate tape track and then mixing the result to stereo. This colossal work was then luckily repaid by becoming the top-selling classical music album of 1974.
The album's incredible success happened in a historical moment in which music production and music composition were seen as a vital part of the technological revolution that was occurring worldwide. A particularly significant achievement of the album was its polyphonic sound, created before the era of polyphonic synthesizers.
Music, especially experimental music, wasn't considered mere entertainment back then.
Like every classical music composition, the album should be heard in its entirety. Still, I chose Suite bergamasque: Claire de lune, No.3, probably the most famous Debussy's work for piano and the most famous track of Snowflakes Are Dancing.
Tomita performed it on the Moog synthesizer and Mellotron. The track had such a considerable impact historically and culturally that, 46 years later, it was used at the end of the 2020 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in Tokyo.
