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Catalogue Number

RVC-2253 / RVC-2001 / ARL1-1312 / ARD1-1312 / AGL1-7143 (LP)
RCX-1002 / RK 11718 (Cassette)
RCAV 60578 / PD 81312 / RCA 60578 / 60578-2-RG / GD60578 / BVCC-2516 / R32C-1042 (CD)
ARS1-1312 (8-Track Cartridge)
R4C-2065 (Unknown)

Label

RCA

Date Released

1975

Total Playing Time

48:45

Tracks

Firebird Suite <Stravinsky>
1. Introduction and Dance of the Firebird (5:04)
2. Round of the Princesses [Khorovod] (7:07)
3. Infernal Dance of King Kastchei [235k MP3] (5:21)
4. Berceuse and Finale (8:01)
5. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun <Debussy> (10:15)
6. A Night on Bare Mountain <Mussorgsky> (12:48)

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Electronically Created by Isao Tomita
Produced by Plasma Music, Inc.
Sound Design and Dolby Surround Remix Supervisor: Nathaniel S. Johnson
Remastering Engineer: Marian Conaty
Dolby Lab Consultants: Robert S. Warren and Michael V. DiCosmo
Monitored Exclusively on Snell Acoustics Loudspeakers Designed by Kevin Voecks
Art Director: J.J. Stelmach

Stravinsky, as most composers, programmed in dots and directions on paper. His computer - arms pulling horse hairs over strings, lungs forcing air through and over metal and wooden tubes, finger shortening and lengthening strings, columns of metal and wood, hands with mallets hitting stretched skins, wooden bars, metal plates - an orchestra of trained gymnasts! Superbly specialized, to be sure. But a hundred or so minds and countless reflexes seeking to translate those dots and directions into the sound that will fulfill Stravinsky's program. And succeeding they create the music.

Imagine how elegant, how sophisticated, how uniquely contemporary to organize streams of electrons to follow Stravinsky's score - by one mind at whose order those super flecks of energy produce the complex signals that ultimately drive loudspeakers to the sounds of his music.

Tomita's music of sound is produced by this dignified discipline. Yes, it's tedious: a synergistic process of science and music is a laboratory exercise - analyze, imagine, search, test, modify, evaluate - carried out in the same ambience as that of the composer's desk. Where does Tomita start? A concept of the score - the musical message, the story line: a fairy-tale formula of a magic Firebird of brilliant plumage who helps a deserving hunter break an evil spell and win a lovely maiden imprisoned by the dread Kastchei.

The sound begins with generating a scored pitch by using an Oscillator of the Moog Synthesizer. The duration is regulated by the Keyboard or Ribbon Controller. Complexity or tone color is created by Low- or Highpass Filters and dynamic variations by a Voltage-Controlled Amplifier. More color is obtained by combining Oscillators, developing complex frequency spectrums by using the Bode Ring Modulator and Frequency Shifter. Portions of the duration of a sound are modified by non-tonal features using a Random Signal Generator. The loudness of the sound is governed by a mixer and recorded on one track of the 16-track tape recorder. A phrase, a line, perhaps a measure or two, is monophonically laid down on tape. Repeated processes build up layers of harmony, rhythm on successive tracks. Where 16 aren't enough, combinations are made and recorded back onto track one. More layers, blending, mixing, modifying, and there are still more possibilities Reverberate, fold sound with Echo units or Phase Shifters, add electro-acoustic sounds by the accessory units. Finally, a complexity of color, emerging in brilliant plumage as mixed together on the Compumix, and a phrase or two of Stravinsky's 1910 score emerges. Perhaps not in the tonal palette he envisioned but, nonetheless, in a sound of his music created as directly as he wrote it.

And so it proceeds, phrase by phrase, day by day, until the architecture is built. A final reduction to quadraphonic distrubution and another to stereophonic completes the performance. Debussy's daydreaming faun and Mussorgsky's exotic fabric of a Witches' Sabbath receive the same reflection of their dots and directions as from the eye of a dragon fly.

Conductors and their musicians interpret the language of a score into the sound of the music of Stravinsky, Debussy or Mussorhsky. Tomita carries interpretation into new realms - into the music of his sound.

- John Pfeiffer



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