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R. Murray Schafer (1933-)
Biography - Canadian Series
Blog R. Murray Schafer
R. Murray Schafer has achieved a national and international reputation as a composer, an educator, environmentalist, scholar and visual artist. Born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1933, he was raised in Toronto. After receiving his Licentiate Royal School of Music at the Royal College of Music London, he studied at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music for a short period of time. He then pursued autodidactic studies in literature, philosophy, languages, music and journalism in Austria, Italy and Britain. During the five years in Europe, Schafer drafted three books, E.T.A. Hoffmann & Music, British Composers in Review, and Ezra Pound & Music. All were later published.
Returning to Canada in 1961, Schafer became director of the Ten Centuries Concerts series. After 1965, he taught for ten years in the experimental Communications Centre at Simon Fraser University, developing two areas for which he is internationally recognized: music education and "soundscape" research. His most important book, The Tuning of the World, documents the findings of the World Soundscape Project, which he founded.
Through his teaching years and since, Schafer has composed prolifically. He developed graphic notations, to the extent that pages of some scores have been exhibited by art galleries. He has composed more than 70 works. Many of these are environmental and/or dramatic works which create opportunities for greater audience participation and awareness, aurally and visually. Works of more conventional form, the three string quartets, for example, stand among the most important of the contemporary repertoire.
Throughout his career, Schafer has received an impressive number of awards and commissions. He is the only North American recipient of the Prix Honegger (1980, String Quartet No.1). He also received the Fromm Foundation Award (1972, Gita), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1974), P.R.O.'s Wm. Harold Moon Award (1974), The Canadian Music Council's annual Medal (1972) and its first "Composer of the Year" award (1976) plus the Jules Leger Prize for New Chamber Music (1977, String Quartet No.2). In 1980, he received an honorary LL.D. from Carleton University, Ottawa. Most recently, Schafer was the first to be awarded the Glenn Gould Prize for Music and its Communication (1987). [Biography Courtesy the Canadian Music Centre]
The Great Books: R. Murray Schafer
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R. Murray Schafer - Canadian Series
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