To continue with an analysis
of Tomita’s epic Kosmos, he describes his influence on choosing the tracks and
his interpretation of the originals.
“This is my fifth album. In the past I made music for
jingles or soundtracks for movies and television drama series, and I made them
in collaboration with others. However, I have made these five albums in the
current series all by myself. The reason is that in the case of synthesizer
music it is extremely difficult to write a description of the original sound.
Even if one did do this it would require an enormous amount of paper if all the
necessary details were to be noted down, and if a programmer were to try to
assemble the sounds according to such directions there is no assurance that the
original conception of the music could be realized.”(Tomita.)[1]
Tomita used the analogy of an
artist’s pallet to explain about synth music. He uses the synthesizer once an
idea has come to mind. He imagines four dimetional images in space and a hall
that can hold thousands of people. With Star Wars he used a rhythm box and a
famous melody near the end in a likeness to robots talking. He describes the
Space Fantasy with a heavy beginning expressing the shaking of the earth.
Pacific 123 was based on the pacific steam engine from his childhood, which he
fantasised taking him away to a far of place. The Unanswered Question is
described as being pulled away from the earth into space with no gravity and
one should listen as if they are listening through speakers drifting in the
airless space. Experiencing sound without the air through which it is
transmitted. Solveig’s Song is the tale of a woman in Norway who waits for
lover to return, Peer Gynt. She sings a song while working her spinning wheel.
Tomita says that time and space are woven into the haunting melody. Aranjuez
differs from the original music. Tomita is imagining a picture taken by a Pilot
in the 1920’s of the Nazca Lines in southern Peru. What are these symbols. Are
they a signal for ancient Space Travelers? Hora Staccato was designed using
computers as Tomita states in the hope we do not destroy ourselves with our own
technology. Tomita says about The Sea named Solaris-
The Sea Named
"Solaris" – “for this piece I was inspired by the Russian science
fiction movie "Solaris". The planet "Solaris" consists
entirely of a sea of plasma that is a living creature with its own power of
reasoning. Men from the earth make a space station on Solaris and send people
there to make observations. The sea of Solaris extracts memories from the
sleeping earthmen's brains and reincarnate loved ones from their past. I did
not try to express the planet Solaris itself but a certain state of a human
mind that might be created by the happenings there. The cherished memories are
depicted by Bach's Invention, and the eternal longing is expressed by Bach's
chorale I Call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ. “(Tomita)[2]
Tomita’s Kosmos (Album
Cover)1978.
The website Echos interviewed Tomita in 1992 in his studio-
“Tomita took a lot of liberties with his source material, altering timbres and interjecting space music effects. His freewheeling interpretations could get him in trouble. His 1976 rendition of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” prompted the Holst estate to sue him and tried preventing the release. They didn’t succeed.
Tomita’s music, especially early on, was resolutely electronic. He wasn’t trying to imitate orchestral sounds. “I’ve always been interested in the effect of sound itself rather than music,” he claimed in a 1992 interview on Echoes.
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