Music Subject Guide: Remembering R. Murray Schafer

Music is central to many of R. Murray Schafer's memories. Schafer recounts childhood summers spent in Manitoba lassoing gophers (and being paid two cents a head for them) and a music education marked by his cheerful but total resistance to the conventional instruction that was available. This title presents his story.

Adam traces the development of Schafer's music from his early works in a mild neo-classical vein to his experimentation with various modernist procedures.

The soundscape--a term coined by the author--is our sonic environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all live. Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilization develops, new noises rise up around us: from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith's hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the "sound imperialism" of airports, city streets, and factories. The author contends that we now suffer from an overabundance of acoustic information and a proportionate diminishing of our ability to hear the nuances and subtleties of sound. Our task, he maintains, is to listen, analyze, and make distinctions. As a society we have become more aware of the toxic wastes that can enter our bodies through the air we breathe and the water we drink. In fact, the pollution of our sonic environment is no less real. Schafer emphasizes the importance of discerning the sounds that enrich and feed us and using them to create healthier environments. To this end, he explains how to classify sounds, appreciating their beauty or ugliness, and provides exercises and "soundwalks" to help us become more discriminating and sensitive to the sounds around us. This book is a pioneering exploration of our acoustic environment, past and present, and an attempt to imagine what it might become in the future.

Patria (Latin for 'homeland') is composer R. Murray Schafer's life's work, a cycle of ten related music dramas created and performed over the last thirty years. Each play in the cycle has a common theme - the search of two lovers for one another through the many labyrinths of life on Earth. Though many of the same characters reappear in different sections, the scale of the cycle is vast, unfolding across many cultures and drawing extensively from numerous world mythologies. Many of these works are conceived for performance in unusual environments: on the surface of a lake, deep in a forest or even in a deserted mine. Some begin at dawn, sunset or midnight and some last for as long as a week. This definitive edition of Patria contains all ten parts of the cycle, plus photos, pages from the scores (complex visual artworks in their own right), commentary on the performance of the pieces and Schafer's personal essays on aestheticism. In these remarkable works, the arts court one another: theatre meets ritual, mythology fuses with art, and the line between performer and audience blurs.

It is a common misconception that it is difficult or impossible to discuss music, that a piece of music simply speaks to the listener-or not. Paul Steenhuisen, in conversation with composers, offers readers insight into the creative process, and ways of listening and entering into works of new music. Steenhuisen, himself a composer of merit, talks one on one with thirty-two of his contemporaries-twenty-six of whom are Canadian-with a colleague's candour, sympathy, and expertise. These rare intimations afford fellow composers, musicologists, students, and inquisitive listeners a comparative look into the lives of the people who write some of the most innovative, challenging, and sublime music today. This title includes an interview with R. Murray Schafer.

This book of studies and reflections on the soundscape extends the important research begun by Schafer with The World Soundscape Project, which culminated in his influential book 'The Tuning of the World'. IN this new collection of essays, written at various times over several years, Schafer deals with creation and destruction by sound, what he calls 'open', 'closed', and 'dialectical' soundscapes, with the influence of music on the soundscape and vice versa, as well as aspects of acoustic design.

This book consists of essays dealing with various aspects of music in Canada. Throughout the volume the reader will notice Schafer's own concern for a Canadian musical style, first, through the manifesto Music in the Cold. and then in several of his own 'Canadian' compositions. The book concludes with notes and prefaces to some of these works: North/White, Music for Wilderness Lake and The Princess of the Stars.