R. Murray Schafer

Personal Life

Suppressing a youthful urge to become a painter, R. Murray Schafer entered the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in 1952 to study with Alberto Guerrero (piano), Greta Kraus (harpsichord), John Weinzweig (composition), and Arnold Walter (musicology). In view of Schafer's later proclivities, however, his casual contact with Marshall McLuhan at the university might be singled out as the strongest and most lasting influence on his intellectual development. Disillusioned by what he came to view as the confining atmosphere of the university, Schafer terminated his formal studies in 1955 and embarked upon an intensive autodidactic routine with an emphasis on languages, literature, and philosophy. The LRSM remains his only formal diploma.

When in 1956 R. Murray Schafer left Canada his plan was to study music at the Vienna Academy. Once there, however, his main attention was absorbed by medieval German - an early manifestation of his strong interest in unusual and exotic languages. After nearly two years in Vienna he went to England, where he studied briefly and informally with the composer Peter Racine Fricker. During his lengthy stay in Britain, Schafer supported himself largely by journalism (the major result of which was a book, British Composers in Interview) and by the preparation of a performing edition of the poet Ezra Pound's little-known opera Le Testament (1920-1), broadcast by the BBC in 1961. It was also in England, 1 Jul 1960, that he married his first wife, the Canadian mezzo-soprano Phyllis Mailing.

Back in Toronto R. Murray Schafer organized in 1961 and for a time directed the Ten Centuries Concerts. He then began 12 years of teaching, first (1963-5) as artist-in-residence at Memorial University, and then (1965-75) at Simon Fraser University. It was at Simon Fraser, with the aid of grants from UNESCO and the Donner Canadian Foundation, that he set up the World Soundscape Project dedicated to the study of the relationships between people and their acoustic environment. Schafer moved in 1975 to a farm near Bancroft, Ont (near the village of Maynooth), but remained affiliated with the project. In September 1975 he married Jean Elliott. (They later divorced.) Schafer left the Maynooth area in 1984, living temporarily in St Gallen, Switzerland, and Toronto before purchasing a farmhouse in the hamlet of Indian River near Peterborough, Ont, in 1987.

Works

R. Murray Schafer's earliest extant works, such as the Concerto for Harpsichord and Eight Wind Instruments and the Sonatina for Flute and Harpsichord (or Piano), reveal a debt to his teacher Weinzweig and are modelled on the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and 'Les Six.' However, the Minnelieder, a setting of 13 love songs from medieval Germany, though neoclassical in flavour, generates an atmosphere that the composer acknowledges to be Mahlerian. Significantly, Schafer singled out this expressive work as his first important achievement.

In the early 1960s R. Murray Schafer began to draw on diverse mid-20th-century compositional techniques (serialism in particular), and on the language, literature, and philosophy of ancient and recent cultures, and to explore the mythology and symbolism of modern life. The result was a succession of chillingly effective multimedia studies on 20th-century urban themes of alienation and psychoneurosis. Protest and Incarceration, Canzoni for Prisoners, the bilingual stage work Loving, and the chamber work for mezzo-soprano Patria 2: Requiems for the Party Girl (winner of the Fromm Foundation Prize, 1968) reflect a searching, wide-ranging social consciousness that motivates and informs all of Schafer's activities. Canzoni for Prisoners, five interconnected movements for orchestra, is a sombre, pointillistic, and somewhat Webernesque work of great textural delicacy that may be viewed as an anti-totalitarian statement dedicated to the non-violent conscientious objectors who became a force in Western society in the mid-1960s. Requiems for the Party Girl documents the mental collapse and suicide of a young woman who becomes a poignant symbol of acute loneliness and alienation in the dehumanized labyrinth of contemporary urban society.

Music Education

An important aspect of Schafer's career has been his deep involvement in music education. His unique and imaginative publications - The Composer in the Classroom, Ear Cleaning, The New Soundscape, When Words Sing, Rhinoceros in the Classroom, A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound-Making, and HearSing - illustrate the composer's experiences with students and are among the first attempts to introduce Cageian concepts of creative hearing and sensory awareness into the Canadian classroom. As an adjunct to his teaching, Schafer has composed several choral and orchestral works for youth. Statement in Blue, Threnody (a moving and bitter commentary on the bombing of Nagasaki based on comments by survivors), and Epitaph for Moonlight introduce young musicians to an unusual range of sounds while involving them in the creative process through a minimal use of aleatoric techniques.

Mysticism and Eastern Influences

Schafer's music, beginning in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, revealed an ever-widening stylistic and linguistic boundary along with a tendency in some works towards mysticism and a kind of oriental quietism. The sources are of a rich and unorthodox diversity, many revealing Schafer's interest in Eastern thought and religion. They range from 13th-century love poems in Divan i Shams i Tabriz (part 1 of Lustro and the product of a 1969 Canada Council-sponsored visit to Persia and Turkey) to fragments of a Bruckner symphony in Music for the Morning of the World (part 2 of Lustro), the verse of Rabindranath Tagore in Beyond the Great Gate of Light (part 3 of Lustro), the sounds of the sea and the poetry of Hesiod, Homer, Melville, and Pound in Okeanos, and a Buddhist text for From the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The first complete performance of Lustro was given in 1973 by the CBC and the second in 1975 as a special event of the General Assembly of the International Music Council (held that year in Canada) that preceded World Music Week.

Soundscape and Environmental Works

As the self-styled 'father of acoustic ecology,' Schafer was concerned about the damaging effects of technological sounds on humans, especially those living in the 'sonic sewers' of urban environments. His booklets The Book of Noise and The Music of the Environmentare reasoned but impassioned pleas for anti-noise legislation and improvement of the urban soundscape through the elimination or reduction of potentially destructive sounds. Of the various publications Schafer released as a result of his work with the World Soundscape Project, the most important is The Tuning of the World (1977), in which he summarizes his research, philosophies, and theories on the soundscape. The concept of soundscape, which is central to Schafer's thinking as a whole, influenced his work as a composer as well. For instance, the background rhythmic structure for String Quartet No. 2 ('Waves') is based on the intervals at which ocean waves crest; and the graphic notation at the beginning of No Longer Than Ten (10) Minuteswas influenced by charts made of Vancouver traffic noise. Schafer's move to an Ontario farmhouse, which was in part due to his search for a 'hi-fidelity' soundscape, also inspired a series of 'natural-environment works.' The first work in this genre, Music for Wilderness Lake, is scored for 12 trombones for performance around a small rural lake. The premiere in 1979 by the Ontario trombone choir Sonaré was recorded by the CBC at a lake near Schafer's Bancroft-area home and was made the subject of a film by Fichman-Sweete Productions (Rhombus Media). Schafer's interest in the soundscape is also reflected in part by the number of works that employ spatial distribution of the performers, one of the most ambitious being the dramatic pageant Apocalypsis, which employs the forces of approximately 500 performers. Later works, such as his Vox Naturae (1997), continued to explore nontraditional placement of the participants.

Patria and Theatre of Confluence

While the focus of the 1970s for Schafer was his soundscape work, that of the 1980s and later was Patria, a 12-part cycle of musical/theatrical works begun in 1966. Dissatisfied with the limitations and excesses of traditional opera, Schafer employed in his dramatic works a unique marriage of music and theatre that he called the 'theatre of confluence' (a kind of neo-Gesamtkunstwerk that reflects his urge to explore the relationships between the arts). A significant part of this focus was The Wolf Project (Patria the Epilogue: And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon), which is set in the wilderness and takes place over the course of a full week.

In The Wolf Project and related works, Schafer sought inspiration from ritual as a way of revitalizing contemporary theatre; a number of his works transform the traditionally passive theatre audience into active participants. Patria 6: RA is a dusk-to-dawn ritual enacting the descent to the underworld and resurrection of the Egyptian sun god. For its premiere at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, the members of the audience - the 'initiates' - were led through 29 different performance sites during the course of the 11-hour ritual. Patria 10: The Spirit Garden, Part 1: Spring (premiered at Carleton University in Ottawa in 1997) explores the significance of the spring planting ritual by involving the audience as gardeners. A number of Schafer's concert works exhibit ritualistic and theatrical aspects as well: Ko wo kiku ('Listen to the Incense'), a commission from the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, incorporates the Japanese incense ceremony in its first movement, as jars of incense are passed around from performer to performer. In Search of Zoroaster for 150-voice chorus is a newly invented ritual for an ancient Persian religion.

Concentration on Community

Although Schafer's choice to live in a rural environment allowed him an escape from the unhealthy aspects of urban living - in particular its garish soundscape - it did not result in a retreat from society. In fact, Schafer's involvement with the communities of Maynooth and Peterborough was a remarkable model for how contemporary artists can integrate their work into the societies of which they find themselves members. While living near Bancroft, Schafer founded the Maynooth Community Choir, with whom he wrote and produced the music theatre piece Jonah. He chose his second rural home near the Peterborough area in order to work on artistic projects with this community. The productions of Patria 3: The Greatest Show in Peterborough in 1987-88 and Patria 9: The Enchanted Forest (the latter with Maureen Forrester) included the participation of many local amateurs, and during Schafer's two years as the artistic director of the Peterborough Festival of the Arts, he helped steer a small, local undertaking with traditional programming towards an ambitious, diversified arts festival garnering both strong regional support and national recognition.

Although Schafer's outlook was largely internationalist, his belief in the importance of celebrating culture at the local level produced a unique brand of nationalism that might best be described as 'indigenism.' The composer believes one must fight the colonial or 'centre to margin' mentality: in other words, the tendency to regard culture as a commodity imported to Canada (usually from Europe or the US) or, within Canada, as the property of big cities, which then export it to smaller communities. Schafer encouraged artists - wherever they may find themselves - to draw on the riches of their local surroundings and culture. Using the beauty of Canada's wilderness for the setting of The Princess of the Stars (the prologue to Patria) and for Music for Wilderness Lake, Schafer has fashioned works that are uniquely Canadian.

Other Writings

In an era of specialization Schafer has shown himself to be a true renaissance man. Besides his works as a composer, dramatist, music educator, music journalist, and pioneer in the new field of soundscape studies, Schafer made significant contributions to the humanities as musicologist/literary scholar, creative writer, and visual artist. His E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music was the first book-length study on the subject, and his Ezra Pound and Music was a major achievement of musical and literary scholarship. Schafer was actually best known - particularly outside Canada - for his writings on music education and the soundscape. In addition to prose works he also wrote a number of creative literary pieces that included the novellas Dicamus et Labyrinthosand Ariadne, both of which exhibited the composer's calligraphic skills and art work. Schafer's flair for the visual arts can also be seen in the many scores which included illustrations and/or graphic notation, some of which have been exhibited in art galleries.

Appointments; Commissions; Productions 1992-2002

Although Schafer prefers to compose works that employ text, he continued to receive commissions for instrumental compositions. In the 1980s he wrote concertos for flute, harp, and guitar, three string quartets, and various other chamber and orchestral works. Purely absolute music, however, is rare in the Schafer canon, as most of his instrumental works - even the string quartets - contain extra-musical references.

Schafer's work continued to engage imaginations on a wide scale. Restagings or full-scale productions of earlier works have been mounted: his 1982 work The Alchemical Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos was staged in Toronto's Union Station in 1992; Requiems for the Party Girl in 1993 was presented for the composer's sixtieth birthday, as part of the larger celebration 'Schaferscape'; and In Search of Zoroaster and Patria 9: The Enchanted Forest were performed in 2002.

Appointments and Commissions

Schafer continued to receive numerous commissions, such as Four-Forty, commissioned by Music Canada 2000 and Festival Vancouver. The Patria cycle was still active; Patria 8: The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix was staged around a lake near Schafer's home in 2001 and again a few years later in the Haliburton Forest, as was Enchanted Forest. Special concerts of his complete string quartets were broadcast on CBC radio. Schafer was visiting professor at Brandon University(1994); composer-in-residence at the du Maurier New Music Festival in Winnipeg (the first Canadian in that position), the Scotia Festival of Music, the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, and The Royal Conservatory of Music (2010); visiting composer at the University of Toronto (2001); and artist-in-residence at Concordia University (2005); and was often invited to lecture.

Honours and Assessment

The diversity of Schafer's output belies generalizations of style; however, much of his work could be described as a synthesis of 20th-century avant-garde techniques with the spirit of 19th-century romanticism. The highly original result has secured him a special status among Canadian musicians of his generation. He received the Canadian Music Council's first Composer of the Year award in 1977 and the first Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (for his String Quartet No. 2) in 1977. In 1980 he was awarded the Prix international Arthur-Honegger for String Quartet No. 1, in 1985 he received the Banff Centre for the Arts National Award in the Arts, and in 1987 he became the first recipient of the $50,000 triennial Glenn Gould Award. Schafer received numerous commissions through the Canada Council and in 1990 received one of its major awards, an 'Arts Grant A.' Yehudi Menuhin, who presented the Glenn Gould Award to Schafer, praised the composer far beyond his work in music, stating that 'his is a strong, benevolent, and highly original imagination and intellect, a dynamic power whose manifold personal expressions and aspirations are in total accord with the urgent needs and dreams of humanity today.'

Recordings of Schafer's works received Juno awards in 1980, 1991, 1993, and 2004. Carnival of Shadows, a film adaption of Patria 3, won a Gemini award for best sound in 1990. Schafer's Princess of the Stars, as recorded by CBC radio in 1997, won prizes at both the 1999 International Festival of New York and the 2000 Prix Italia Broadcasting Competition. Beginning in the 1990s, Schafer was honoured in other forums for his innovations and commitment. He won the Canada Council Molson Prize for the Arts (1993), the first Louis Applebaum Composers Award (1999), and the SOCANJan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award (2001), the Canada Council's Walter Carsen Prize (2005), and a Governor General's Performing Arts Award (2009). Schafer was named an honorary member of the Society for American Music in 2010.

Schafer is an associate of the Canadian Music Centre. His music was published by Universal Edition, Berandol, and for works written since 1979, by his own company, Arcana Editions. His manuscripts were deposited at the National Library of Canada (Library and Archives Canada); a few are at the University of Calgary.

Selected Discography

• A Garden of Bells (1986)
• Schafer: 5 (1991)
• R. Murray Schafer (1993)
• Patria: R. Murray Schafer (1996)
• The Garden of the Heart (1997)
• Vancouver Soundscape (1973) and Soundscape Vancouver (1996) (1997)
• R. Murray Schafer String Quartets 1-7 (2000)
  
• Once on a Windy Night: The Choral Music of R. Murray Schafer. Vol 2 (2001)
• Letters from Mignon (2007)