R. Murray Schafer

257 Pages·1983·13.54 MB·English

by  Stephen Adams

R. Murray Schafer
Murray Schafer is one of Canada's few composers to have achieved
an international reputation. His innovative and often controversial
work extends beyond music into the areas of education, literary
scholarship, journalism, theatre, and graphics, as well as a new field of
his own making - environmental sound research. This comprehen­
sive critical survey of his life and works reveals the unifying pattern
within an amazingly productive and varied career.
Adams examines Schafer's extensive writings, which form the intel­
lectual context of his music. Though Schafer is both avant-gardist
and self-confessed romantic, his writings solve this apparent paradox
and show, as well, the central position of the 'soundscape' in his
thought. Adams traces the development of Schafer's music from his
early works in a mild neo-classical vein to his experimentation with
various modernist procedures - serialism, electronic sound, stereo­
phony, graphic notations, and elements of chance - all of which he
fused together in his first stage work or 'audio-visual poem,' Loving, in
1965.
This volume includes a full bibliography, discqgraphy, and cata­
logue of works.
is an associate professor in the Department of English
STEPHEN ADAMS
at the University of Western Ontario.
R. Murray Schafer, 1975
STEPHEN ADAMS
R. Murray Schafer
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
University of Toronto Press 1983
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-5571-0
Canadian Composers/Compositeurs Canadiens 4
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Adams, Stephen, 1945-
R. Murray Schafer
(Canadian composers, ISSN 0316-1293; no. 4 - Compositeurs
canadiens, ISSN 0316-1293; no 4)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-5571-0
i. Schafer, R. Murray (Raymond Murray), 1933- . Works.
I. Title. II. Series: Canadian composers; no. 4.
ML4IO.S32A32 78o'.92'4 C82-O94923-X
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for
the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and a grant from the Publications Fund of the University of Toronto
Press.
Excerpts from Divan i Shams i Tabriz, Son ofHeldenleben, String Quartet No. i,
East, Gita, Arcana, and Hymn to Night used by permission of European American
Music Distributors Corporation, sole agent in Canada for Universal Edition.
Excerpts from Minnelieder, Loving, Train, Requiems for the Party-Girl, Threnody, and
Epitaph for Moonlight used by permission of Berandol Music Limited.
Contents
PREFACE Vil
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ÍX
I
Biography 3
2
Writings 31
3
Early works 1952-9 61
4
Stylistic experiment 1960-5 71
5
Loving (1965) 92
6
Lustro (1969-72) loo
7
Instrumental works since 1965 109
8
Vocal and choral works since 1965 137
vi Contents
9
The Patria sequence (1966- ) 171
io
Epilogue (1979- ) 178
Notes 187
APPENDIXES
Appendix i: Compositions by R. Murray Schafer 199
Appendix 2 : Discography 207
Appendix 3: Synopsis of Loving 209
Appendix 4: Synopsis of Apocalypsis 214
Appendix 5: Synopsis of Patria 221
BIBLIOGRAPHY 227
INDEX 234
Preface
This is a book about Murray Schafer in mid-career. The primary
function of such a book is to bring together the most relevant
information about that career in one place, because even for earnest
devotees of contemporary music, experience of a prolific, currently
active composer like Schafer is fragmentary - hearing a piece here,
reading an article there. This book offers an opportunity to see the
complete pattern, even while it is emerging. The pattern, of course, is
still open-ended, and one of my worries while writing has been to keep
up with my rapidly developing subject. But the lines are clearly in place,
at least to date, and in his lifetime of less than fifty years, Schafer has
already produced material enough for a much larger book than this one.
Not all this material is music. In his amazingly diverse career, Schafer
has been composer, graphic artist, dramatist, creative writer, educator,
social critic, literary scholar, and journalist. But I have given most of my
attention to the compositions. The first chapter is biographical. The
second uses the prose writings (not all of them, or they would have
taken over the book) as a means of sketching Schafer's intellectual
loyalties. All the remaining chapters are given to the music: first
Schafer's acquisition of a contemporary technique is traced, and then,
after the turning point of Loving (1965), the works are surveyed by
genre, for after 1965 the lines of development become too difficult to
disentangle. Activities since 1979 are summarized in an epilogue.
Schafer's development curiously epitomizes the growth of Canadian
music over the middle decades of this century. A reading of George A.
Proctor's invaluable Canadian Music of the Twentieth Century makes
this quite clear. Proctor details how Canada, a musical backwoods in
1940, caught up with developments elsewhere in the world in the space
viii Preface
of about thirty years, turning from a Stravinskian neo-classicism in the
19405 and 19505 to a more romantically expressionistic serialism in the
19605, until finally (with the centennial year, 1967, as a convenient
marker), it has become fully modernized. Schafer - a few years younger
than the generation of Somers, Beckwith, and Papineau-Couture - has
followed this pattern exactly. Thus, for all his apparent idiosyncrasy, he
is not only a dominating personality in our music but one who truly
typifies the musical experience of the nation.
Throughout his career, Schafer has consistently displayed two general
qualities. The first is a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for surprise.
There are recurrent preoccupations and mannerisms of style, of course,
but, wholly apart from the qualities of the music itself, Schafer's
strength as a composer has been his unique ability to invent a reason for
writing yet another piece. His pieces as a result tend to be much unlike
each other, none of them wholly 'representative.' A second quality of
his music is its audience-appeal. Despite Schafer's mature idiom, which
must be called (for lack of a better word) avant-garde, and despite the
posture of indifference or antagonism to the audience that he sometimes
strikes, Schafer's best pieces almost always make some kind of sense to a
concert audience on first hearing - whether through programmatic
subject matter, lyrical expression, or theatricality.
Many people have made contributions to the writing of this book, but
my thanks must go above all to Murray Schafer himself. My personal
gratitude dates back to 1970 (see page 19), and since then not only has he
suggested me as the author of this book for the Canadian Composers
series, but his behaviour as its subject has remained exemplary. He has
co-operated in every way, answering questions and opening to me
private files of tapes, papers, and correspondence; and his factual
comments on initial drafts have been incorporated wherever appropri-
ate. Beyond this he has refused to interfere: he declines to analyse his
own music, and he has not questioned my pronouncements upon it. So if
he has been an immediate presence, he has at the same time allowed me
to feel that this book is my own.
'Every great man nowadays has his disciples,' said Oscar Wilde. 'And
it is always Judas who writes the biography.' To write a dull book about
Murray Schafer would be betrayal indeed, but if I have accomplished it,
the feat is mine alone.
Acknowledgments
Chief among those who have contributed to this volume is John
Beckwith, most patient and meticulous of editors. Special thanks are
also due to Alan Gillmor, who made his bibliographic work available to
me, and to John Fodi, for his expert musical copy. I owe particular debts
as well to Jack Behrens, Peter Racine Fricker, Richard Johnston, Allen
Noon, Marcus Reinkeluers, Jean Schafer, Robert Skelton, and Gordon
Tracy. At the University of Toronto Press I must thank Margaret Parker,
who could always spot the error where I saw only perfection, and Will
Rueter and Ron Schoeffel. I must also thank Berandol Music Limited and
European American Music Distributors Corporation for providing me
with many necessary materials, as well as for permission to print
musical examples.
Anyone concerned with Canadian music realizes how indispensable
is the Canadian Music Centre. This book, like others in the Canadian
Composers Series, was initiated and commissioned by the Canadian
Music Centre. There I must also thank two former directors, John
Roberts and Keith MacMillan, as well as Henry Mutsaers, Norma
Dickson, Chris Wilson, and Karen Kieser. Of many typists, the greatest
burden has fallen to Launa Fuller at the University of Western Ontario.
And of many librarians, the others will forgive me if I single out my
wife, Ruth, whose help and support are beyond acknowledgment.
I wish to express my gratitude to several other individuals whose
presence in my life made writing this book possible: at the University of
Toronto, to Maria Rika Maniates, to Douglas LePan, and to the late
Marshall McLuhan; at the University of Minnesota, to Domenick
Argento, who did his best to fend off my failure as a composer, and to
Charles McHugh, for hours of conversation that are not forgotten.