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Snowflakes Are Dancing

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Snowflakes Are Dancing is an electronic music album by Isao Tomita, recorded in 1974 and first released as a Quadradisc in April.[1] The album consists entirely of Tomita's arrangements of Claude Debussy's "tone paintings", performed by Tomita on a Moog synthesizer. The recording was a finalist for three Grammies in 1975, including best classical album of the year - and it was NARM's best-selling classical album of the year.[1]

The use of the term tone paintings here describes the nature of a large portion of Debussy's work, which was concerned with mood and colour, eschewing traditional tonality in favour of constructions such as the full-tonal scale, parallel chords, bitonality, and to a certain extent atonality, in order to achieve a greater degree of musical expression not allowed by strict adherence to a single key. Thus, the term tone painting is quite appropriate, in that Debussy's compositions often experimented with a much broader palette of tones, allowing each to behave similar to a colour within an illustration. Considered by Space Music fans as the Ultimate Space Music Experience.

Track listing

Side A

  1. Snowflakes Are Dancing (2:10)
  2. Reverie (4:44)
  3. Gardens in the Rain (3:41)
  4. Clair de Lune (5:48)
  5. Arabesque No. 1 (3:57)

Side B

  1. The Engulfed Cathedral (6:18)
  2. Passepied (3:17)
  3. The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (3:25)
  4. Golliwog's Cakewalk (2:50)
  5. Footprints in the Snow (4:30)

Bonus Track (2000 CD release)

11. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (10:18)

At least two of these titles are slightly wrong; the title track appears to be a mistranslation back into English of an other-language (probably Japanese) version of Debussy's original title (The Snow Is Dancing), whereas "Golliwog's[sic] Cakewalk" contains the common misspelling of the name Golliwogg.

Recording Information

The back of the album sleeve displays a complete list of the recording hardware that Tomita used in the creation of this album, including:

  • Moog synthesizer
    • One 914 extended range fixed filter bank
    • Two 904-A voltage-controlled low-pass filters
    • One 904-B voltage-controlled high-pass filter
    • One 904-C filter coupler
    • One 901 Voltage-controlled oscillator
    • Three 901-A oscillator controllers
    • Nine 901-B oscillators
    • Four 911 envelope generators
    • One 911-A dual-trigger delay
    • Five 902 voltage-controlled amplifiers
    • One 912 envelope follower
    • One 984 four-channel mixer
    • One 960 sequential controller
    • Two 961 interfaces
    • One 962 sequential switch
    • Two 950 keyboard controllers
    • One 6401 Bode ring modulator
  • Tape recorders
    • One Ampex MM-1100 16-track
    • One Ampex AG-440 4-track
    • One Sony TC-9040 4-track
    • One Teac A-3340S 4-track
    • One Teac 7030GSL 2-track
  • Mixers
    • Two Sony MX-16 8-channel mixers
    • Two Sony MX-12 6-channel mixers
  • Accessories
    • One AKG BX20E Echo unit
    • One Eventide Clockworks "Instant Phaser"
    • Two Binson Echorec "2" units
    • One Fender "Dimension IV"
    • One Mellotron

References

  1. ^ a b Billboard magazine, Aug 16, 1975, p.41.
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