R. Murray Schafer

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

Raymond Murray Schafer, CC (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

In his memoirs, My Life on Earth and Elsewhere, Schafer described serving as a novice deckhand aboard the oil tanker Imperial Windsor in 1955.[3]

Born in Sarnia, Ontario, he studied at the Royal Schools of Music in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the University of Toronto. At the last 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."[4] Steven Feld, borrowing a term from Gregory Bateson, calls the recombination and recontextualization of sounds split from their sources schismogenesis.[5]

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.[6] In 2009, Schafer received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts.[7] In 2013, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada "for his contributions as an internationally renowned composer of contemporary music, and for his groundbreaking work in acoustic ecology".[8]

Schafer is a practitioner of graphic notation.[9]

Selected works

Compositions

Written works

See also

References

  1. ↑ "World Soundscape Project". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2007-02-26.
  2. ↑ Schafer, Raymond Murray (1977). The Tuning of the World. Random House Inc. ISBN 0-394-40966-3.
  3. ↑ R. Murray Schafer (2012). My Life on Earth and Elsewhere. The Porcupine's Quill. pp. 30–34. ISBN 9780889843523. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
  4. ↑ Mathieu, W.A. (1994). The Musical Life. Shambhala. p. 223. ISBN 0-87773-670-7.
  5. ↑ Feld, Steven; Keil, Charles (1994). Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues. University of Chicago Press. pp. 265–271. ISBN 0-226-42957-1.
  6. ↑ "Composer R. Murray Schafer wins Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts" (Press release). Canada Council for the Arts. 8 November 2005. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
  7. ↑ "R. Murray Schafer biography". Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  8. ↑ "Governor General Announces 90 New Appointments to the Order of Canada". 30 December 2013.
  9. ↑ R. Murray Schafer at National Arts Centre ArtsAlive web site. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
  10. ↑ Brief description of the complete Patria cycle and an Overview of the Patria Cycle
  11. ↑ The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix
  12. ↑ R. Murray Schafer – CAML Review

Further reading

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