R. Murray Schafer

Murray Schafer is one of Canadas 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 makingenvironmental sound research. This comprehensive critical survey of his life and works reveals the unifying pattern within an amazingly productive and varied career. Adams examines Schafers extensive writings, which form the intellectual 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. Adam traces the development of Schafers music from his early works in a mild neo-classical vein to his experimentation with various modernist proceduresserialism, electronic sound, stereophony, graphic notations, and elements of chanceall of which he fused together in his first stage of work or audio-visual poem, Loving, in 1965. This volume includes a full bibliography, discography, and catalogue of his works.