1978
February: Children’s Parade Band Songbook 2
Until an earlier candidate emerges, this looks to be the first professionally-published Yamato sheet music. The publisher’s name is unclear, but the Yamato theme is right there among other tunes such as Wooden Shoes, Beautiful Sunday, and Butterfly. No doubt the composition was highly simplified, but many other sources were on the way to rectify that.
August: From Yamato With Love sheet music
The hard-to-read label at the top of the cover reads “Watanabe Music Publishing Corporation Sheet Music No. 1,” which seems to be a pretty clear indicator that this company made its debut with the composition for Kenji Sawada’s smash hit end title for Farewell to Yamato. It’s quite rare today, but the song itself never went out of circulation.
September: Contemporary Guitar No. 145, October issue
Guitar players found plenty in this monthly magazine to keep them busy; articles on musicians and techniques were accompanied by loads of sheet music. Instructor Hidea Shinma caught the eye of Yamato fans with his Popular Guitar Lessons column in which he described the power of Yamato‘s opening and closing themes and offered up his own composition that combined the two.
Read the column here, where you’ll also find the composition itself if you want to give it a spin.
1980
Electric Organ Yamato Anime Collection
Tokyo Ongaku Shoin [Tokyo Music Study] became a steady source for Yamato sheet music in the early 80s, starting with this volume (publishing date unknown). It was released some time after the first Be Forever symphonic album and contained compositions for 14 songs arranged for electric organ.
1981
April 25: Piano accompaniment, Anime Song Collection
This collection of 27 songs from Tokyo Ongaku Shoin included three from Be Forever (Until the Day of Love, Galaxy Legend, and Pendant of Stars) and Be Forever Yamato, one of the end themes from Yamato III.
June 25: Choral Suite sheet music collection
Yamato may have been temporarily out of the anime business in 1981, but things were booming over in the music world. Sheet music books would become a common sight over the next couple of years, starting with the Yamato Choral Suite, published by Tokyo Ongaku Shoin [Music Study]. It offered choral arrangements of six compositions to liven up music recitals everywhere.
September 25: Let’s Play Piano: Space Battleship Yamato
This was Tokyo Ongaku Shoin’s second all-Yamato collection. There were now 15 songs in the catalog, and this book was the first to offer a piano arrangement for each of them.
1982
September 21: Play on the Piano, Space Battleship Yamato
Released in conjunction with the 1982 “Rhapsody Series” album Fascinating Piano Yamato, this book from International Sheet Music Publishing offered the piano parts for all ten tracks.
November 21: Anime Piano, Yamato/Gundam album & sheet music
This album was a real gem, full of skillful piano solos with one side each devoted to Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam. The Yamato tracks were performed by soloist Aoki Nozomi and made such a strong impression on their own that they could be enjoyed by listeners who hadn’t yet seen the anime.
Fans could also buy the sheet music from Tokyo Ongaku Shoin to create their own solo performances at home.
December 25: Symphonic Suite Yamato
This collection of piano scores from Tokyo Ongaku Shoin was quite a package: sheet music for 14 Yamato songs and the entirety of Symphonic Suite. That was probably enough to keep most fans at the keys for years.
1983
March 25: Anime Song Omnibus sheet music
Published by Shoin Music, this thick volume brought together well known and more recent anime themes alike with compositions for piano. It included seven Yamato songs with the sheet music debut of Love Supreme and Kodai & Yamato.
April 25: Piano and Vocal Performance, Space Battleship Yamato Complete Collection
Tokyo Ongaku Shoin published the most comprehensive sheet music book to date, a 250-page whopper that contained piano compositions for 17 songs and 28 BGM tracks with several from Final Yamato appearing for the first time.
August 20: Space Battleship Yamato Complete Music Works
Once you got your hands on this saga-spanning omnibus from Tokyo Ongaku Shoin, which ran over 300 pages, you were pretty much set for life. Inside were piano arrangements for 21 theme songs, 30 BGM compositions, and the entire Symphonic Suite. Also included was piano duo sheet music for the Yamato theme and The Scarlet Scarf.
Fans who ordered the book from the official fan club could pay a little more and get a limited-edition 90-minute cassette tape titled Complete Music Works Model Performance. 29 tracks were selected from the score and performed on piano by Hiroshi Miyagawa and Kentaro Haneda. (It also came with a set of cassette labels as shown above left.) Only 2,000 tapes were made, so they disappeared quickly to become true collector’s items.
Fortunately for all of us, the recordings were revived as a series of bonus tracks in the Yamato Sound Almanac CD series in 2013. (Read about it here.)
Flyers for the book/cassette combo. The one at right promotes the Final Yamato hardcover book at the top and the book/cassette combo at the bottom.
Also spotted in 1983
for piano
for Electone organ
for Electone organ
for solo piano, published in May
for piano, published in June
for piano