Schafer, R(aymond) Murray

(b Sarnia, ON, 18 July 1933). Canadian composer and writer. He studied briefly at the University of Toronto with John Weinzweig (composition), Alberto Guerrero (piano) and Greta Kraus (harpsichord), and was also exposed to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan before being expelled for rebellious behaviour in his second year. Apart from a few additional lessons with Peter Racine Fricker, he was basically self-taught. From 1956 to 1961 he worked as a freelance journalist and BBC interviewer in Europe, during which time he prepared a BBC performance of Pound’s opera Le testament de François Villon.

Returning to Canada in 1961, Schafer founded the Ten Centuries Concerts, a Toronto organization for the performance of new and rarely heard music. After a period as artist-in-residence at Memorial University, Newfoundland (1963–5), the first of many such appointments, he joined the music department at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, where he taught until 1975. His experience there led to a series of innovatory writings on music education, proposing Cage-influenced activities that focus on creative listening and sensory awareness. In 1972, a grant from the Donner Foundation enabled him to undertake research into acoustic ecology, a field that he virtually invented, combining such disciplines as acoustics, geography, psychology, urbanology and aesthetics. This led to his book The Tuning of the World (Toronto, 1977) and the founding of the World Soundscape Project (now the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology). Schafer’s book on E.T.A. Hoffmann (Toronto, 1975) and his edition of Pound’s music criticism (New York, 1977) also constitute substantial contributions to music literature. After retiring from Simon Fraser in 1975, Schafer moved to rural northern Ontario, but continued to travel widely as a guest speaker and visiting professor.

Schafer’s music ranges from instrumental and vocal compositions to works for the stage. His concert music tends to be highly theatrical and programmatic, often inspired by literary, philosophical, mythological or other extra-musical sources. His texts frequently feature obscure, ancient or invented languages. The earliest works of the 1950s, most notably the harpsichord concerto (1954) and the vocal cycles Minnelieder (1956) and Kinderlieder (1958), are neo-classical in style. In 1960 he turned to serialism and experimented with avant-garde approaches in a five-year effort to modernize his work. During this period he became interested in glissandi, extended range and extended vocal techniques, the acoustic exploitation of space, electronic sound, graphic notation and, to a limited degree, indeterminacy. Examples of his compositional exploration include the cantata Brébeuf (1961) and the Canzoni for Prisoners (1961–2), written on a 76-note cantus firmus to honour the founding of Amnesty International. In 1965, Schafer consolidated his new musical language in the ‘fluid audio-visual poem’ Loving (1963–6), commissioned and broadcast by CBC television.

Many of Schafer’s orchestral works reveal an ambivalence towards the orchestra as a social institution. He wistfully parodies its repertory in Son of Heldenleben (1968), iconoclastically sabotages its concert conventions in No Longer Than 10 Minutes (1970) and introduces a snowmobile onto the stage in North/White (1973). In Lustro (1969–72) players and solo voices are distributed to all parts of the auditorium. Cortège (1977) includes choreography. Works such as East (1972), Dream Rainbow Dream Thunder (1986) and Manitou (1995) draw on the philosophies of Asian and Inuit peoples. Chamber works, including six string quartets (1970–93) and a harp quintet (Theseus, 1983), also reflect his philosophical interests. The Second Quartet, based on the rhythms of ocean waves, incorporates staged movement, as does the Third Quartet.

Schafer’s compositions for voice include a substantial number of frequently performed choral works, such as Epitaph for Moonlight (1968), written primarily in graphic notation. These reach their climax in the dramatic oratorio Apocalypsis (1977), a highly charged realization of the Vision of St John followed by a nearly static paradisal Credo. Works for solo voice combine vocal romanticism with powerful texts that become arresting dramatic statements. Requiems for the Party Girl (1966) depicts suicidal hallucinations. Adieu, Robert Schumann (1976), written for Maureen Forrester, sets Clara Schumann’s diary account of her husband’s last days to music that incorporates Schumann’s work in collage. Hymn to the Night (1976), Garden of the Heart (1981) and Gitanjali (1991) are all based on mystical texts.

In 1979 Schafer’s career took its most dramatic turn. Commissioned to write a work for a trombone society, he created Music for Wilderness Lake (1979), a composition for 12 trombones situated around the shore of a small isolated lake at dawn and dusk. ‘The big revolutions of musical history’, he noted, ‘are changes of context more than changes of style’. Thus he created ‘environmental music’, works that demand special types of attention from their audience. This concept is at the core of the Patria cycle (1966– ), a sequence of 12 interrelated works of music theatre. The first two works in the cycle, Wolfman and Requiems for the Party Girl, use outrageous stagecraft, texts in invented languages and obscure symbolism, and place the audience at odd angles with respect to the action. The Princess of the Stars (1981), a prologue to the cycle, begins 90 minutes before dawn at the edge of a wilderness lake; the action is performed by speakers in highly decorated canoes on the water, while the musicians remain invisible around the shore. The music culminates with the sunrise. The Greatest Show (1977–87) is music theatre cast in the form of a country fair. The audience wanders from exhibit to exhibit, accosted by strolling performers, and tries to win admission to one of three musical sideshows. Ra (1979–80), a musical dramatization of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, lasts through the night, combining music, drama, dance, taste and scent in a ritual that demands the participation of each audience member. And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon, the epilogue to the cycle, is an eight-day wilderness camping trip. The audience prepares props and costumes, learns their parts and gathers on the final day to perform an enormous ritual. Each of these works stands independently, though they are all variants on a common mythology involving a princess, wolf and three-horned enemy, and are musically connected by a common note row. Schafer’s occasional works of fiction are commentaries on the Patria cycle.

Schafer has received the Fromm Foundation Award (1972), the Jules Léger Prize for chamber music (1977) and the Prix Honegger (1980). In 1987 he became the first recipient of the Glenn Gould Award. Upon the presentation of the award, Menuhin described him as ‘a strong benevolent, and highly original imagination and intellect, a dynamic power whose manifold personal expressions and aspirations are in total accord with the needs and dreams of humanity today’.

WORKS

Principal publishers: Universal, Arcana Editions

music theatre

instrumental

vocal

electro-acoustic and environmental

WRITINGS

The New Soundscape (Don Mills, ON, 1969,3/1972)

The Book of Noise (Vancouver, 1970,2/1973)

When Words Sing (Scarborough, ON, 1970,3/1972)

The Public of the Music Theatre: Louis Riel (Vienna, 1972)

‘The Graphics of Musical Thought’, Sound Sculpture, ed. J. Grayson (Vancouver, 1975, 98–125; repr. in Festschrift Kurt Blaukopf, ed. I. Bontinck and O. Brusatli (Vienna,1975),120–40

E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music (Toronto, 1975)

Creative Music Education (New York, 1976/R as The Thinking Ear: Complete Writings on Music Education) ed.: Ezra Pound and Music (New York, 1977)

The Tuning of the World (Toronto, 1977/R)

Open Letter, iv/fall (1979) [Schafer issue]; repr. The Sixteen Scribes, ed. Arcana (Bancroft, ON, 1981)

Dicamus et Labyrinthos: a Philologist’s Notebook (Bancroft, ON, 1984)

‘Acoustic Space’, Dwelling, Place and Environment, ed. D. Seamon and R. Mugerauer (Dordrecht, 1985), 87–98

Patria and the Theatre of Confluence (Indian River, ON, 1991); repr. Descant, xxii/sum. (1991)

A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound-Making (Indian River, ON, 1992)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Mather: ‘Notes sur “Requiems for the Party Girl”’, Canada Music Book, i (1970), 91–7

D. Bates: ‘Murray Schafer Interviewed by Duane Bates’, Canadian Music Educator, xxii/wint. (1981), 7–13

S. Adams: R. Murray Schafer (Toronto, 1983)

D. Armstrong: ‘Schafer: Prize Winner and Cultural Pioneer’, Music, x/Sept (1987), 6–9

S. Adams: ‘Murray Schafer’s Patria: the Greatest Show on Earth?’, Journal of Canadian Studies, xxiii/spr. (1988), 199–207

P. Dutton: ‘The Broken Thread: Ariadne in the Works of R. Murray Schafer’, Descant, xix/fall (1988), 47–79

K. MacKenzie: A Twentieth Century Musical/Theatrical Cycle: R. Murray Schafer’s Patria (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1991)

E. Waterman: R. Murray Schafer’s Environmental Music Theatre (diss., U. of California, San Diego, 1997)

STEPHEN ADAMS