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R. Murray Schafer, composer

Broadcast Date: Jan. 13, 1975

Composer R. Murray Schafer says people just don't listen carefully enough. In 1975 Schafer is a professor at Simon Fraser University who is intensely interested in the sounds that surround us, as well as the noise that annoys. As part of the World Soundscape Project, he's recorded the "soundmarks" that any Vancouverite would recognize. In this interview with CBC Radio's Michael Enright, Schafer discusses noise pollution, his soundscapes and his music.

R. Murray Schafer, composer

• R. Murray Schafer was born in Sarnia, Ont. in 1933, and studied in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto. After spending some time in Europe he returned to Canada and taught at Memorial University in St. John's and Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. In 1975, the year of this clip, Schafer moved to rural Ontario.

• The problem of noise pollution and other aspects of the acoustic environment inspired Schafer to write several books, including The Tuning of the World, Ear Cleaning, The Thinking Ear and The Book of Noise.

• Schafer has been composing music since the 1950s, creating choral and orchestral works to be performed in milieus both traditional and novel. In his 1979 production Music for Wilderness Lake, 12 trombones play around the edges of a small rural lake. (A performance of it near Bancroft, Ont. was later made into a film.) Another site-specific piece, Patria 6: RA, lasted 11 hours and took its audience to 29 different locations around the Ontario Science Centre when it premiered. It is one of a 12-part series of compositions Schafer began in 1966.

• "I've always considered myself a composer above everything else," Schafer said in 1997. "The other things have been done at different times of my life partly in order to make a living, because no composer of serious music makes a living in this country. I've had to write. When I was at the university, I had to do research, which is how the Soundscape work came into existence. I think now [my] productions are done certainly not to make money, but are done as a kind of relaxation from the strain of sitting at the drafting table writing music all the time. Music is a social activity, and I need to have some contact with other people."

R. Murray Schafer, composer

Medium: Radio

Program: This Country in the Morning

Broadcast Date: Jan. 13, 1975

Guest(s): R. Murray Schafer

Host: Michael Enright

Duration: 39:19

Soundscapes used with permission of the World Soundscape Project, Simon Fraser University, and Cambridge Street Publishing. 

Photo: CBC Image Research Library

Last updated:
May 5, 2009