Auld Lang Syne - Celtic Whistles Collection Vol.21

close out the year, I performed "Farewell Waltz" on tin whistle and low whistle.It's often confused with "Hotaru no Hikari" (the Japanese version of Auld Lang Syne), but "Hotaru no Hikari" is in 4/4 time, while this "Farewell Waltz"-famous as the closing BGM in stores-is in 3/4 waltz time.Both come from the Scottish folk song "Auld Lang Syne."The waltz arrangement appeared in the 1940 film Waterloo Bridge (released in Japan in 1949 as Aichū), where it became a massive hit as a symbol of parting.From the 1950s to 1960s, it was adopted as closing music in department stores and supermarkets, cementing the uniquely Japanese image of "store closing = Farewell Waltz."By the way, the recording commonly heard in Japan is not the original movie soundtrack.Due to difficulties importing the original film audio in the immediate postwar period, Columbia Records asked their in-house composer Yuji Koseki to recreate it by ear from the movie.Koseki's version was subtly adjusted in tempo and structure to better suit Japanese sensibilities, which is why it became so deeply ingrained.In other words, the melody we all associate with store closing is a true hybrid:
Scottish folk song × Hollywood film × Japanese genius composer.The record was released under the pseudonym "Eugene Cossmann"
(Eugene = Yuji, Cossmann = "Koseki" + "man").This little-known episode is pretty interesting, isn't it?