R. Murray Schafer

R. Murray Schafer
Background information
Birth name	Raymond Murray Schafer
Born	July 18, 1933 (1933-07-18) (age 77) Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Avant-garde, classical, opera, musical theater
Occupations	Composer, librettist, pedagogue, writer, educator, environmentalist
Instruments	Piano

Raymond Murray Schafer (born 18 July 1933) is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977). He was notably the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.^[1][2]

Biography

Born in Sarnia, Ontario, he then studied at the Royal Schools of Music in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the University of Toronto. At the latter institution he was a pupil of Richard Johnston.

His music education theories are followed around the world. He started soundscape studies at Simon Fraser University in the 1960s.

In addition to introducing the concept of soundscape he also coined the term schizophonia in 1969, the splitting of a sound from its source or the condition caused by this split: "We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape."^[3] Steven Feld, borrowing a term from Gregory Bateson, calls the recombination and recontextualization of sounds split from their sources schismogenesis.^[4]

In 1987 he was awarded the first Glenn Gould Prize in recognition of his contributions. In 2005 he was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize, by the Canada Council for the Arts, one of the top honours for lifetime achievement by a Canadian artist.^[5] In 2009, he received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.^[6]

Schafer is particularly famous for his situational opera The Princess of the Stars.

Selected works

• Brief description of the complete Patria cycle
• Patria
  • Patria: The Prologue, The Princess of the Stars
  • Patria 1: Wolfman
  • Patria 2: Requiems for the Party Girl
  • Patria 3: The Greatest Show
  • Patria 4: The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos
  • Patria 5: The Crown of Ariadne
  • Patria 6: Ra
  • Patria 7: Asterion
  • Patria 8: The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix
  • Patria 9: The Enchanted Forest
  • Patria 10: The Spirit Garden
  • Patria: The Epilogue: And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon
• Carnival of Shadows
• The Tuning of the World (The Soundscape) ISBN 978-0394409665 Arcana Editions
• The Enchanted Forest book & CD Arcana Editions
• Voices of Tyranny: Temples of Silence: Studies and Reflections on the Contemporary Soundscape Arcana Editions
• A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking Arcana Editions
• HearSing Arcana Editions
• The Thinking Ear: On Music Education Arcana Editions
• Ear cleaning: Notes for an experimental music course included in The Thinking Ear above
• The Book of Noise Arcana Editions
• The Composer in the Classroom Arcana Editions
• When Words Sing Arcana Editions
• Patria: The Complete Cycle Arcana Editions
• E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music Arcana Editions
• Wolf Tracks Arcana Editions
• Dicamus et Labyrinthos Arcana Editions
• Ariadne Arcana Editions
• On Canadian Music Arcana Editions
• Music in the Cold Arcana Editions
• The Chaldean Inscription Arcana Editions
• The Sixteen Scribes Arcana Editions
• R. Murray Schafer: A Collection Arcana Editions
• Music for Young Players: Minimusic for instruments or voices Universal Edition (UE 15449) [1]
• The Soundscape ISBN 978-0892814558
• World Soundscape Project
• Adieu Robert Schumann
• The New Soundscape Arcana Editions
• Patria and the Theatre of Confluence ISBN 1-895127-11-4
• Creative Music Education: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher ISBN 978-0028723303
• Sonatina for Flute and Harpsichord (or Piano) (1976) Berandol Music

Further Reading

• Steenhuisen, Paul. "Interview with R. Murray Schafer". In Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0888644749

See also

• Sound culture

References

External links

• Arcana Editions bibliography
• R. Murray Schafer at the Canadian Encyclopedia
• R. Murray Schafer biography at the Canadian Music Center
• R. Murray Schafer at the Living Composers Project
• Music Behind Walls, 3:24 min, R. Murray Schafer (realmedia)
• World Soundscape Project
• A Tribute to R. Murray Schafer - National Arts Centre / Centre National des Arts (Canada)
• Listen, a short film on Schafer - Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement