e99 winter diary revisited – homage to r. murray schafer (25′ introduction + 40′ composition + 3′ credits)
Episode NotesBarn on the farm of R. Murray Schafer and Eleanor James, Indian River, Ontario, January 19, 2022 (photo by me)Note: the text below is a transcription of the narration in the episode (sounds are described, with their source where possible)Welcome to episode 99 of the conscient podcast, the last episode of season 3, which you might recall was on the theme of radical listening. (fade in of sound of barn)I invite you to guess what is this space. There are some sonic clues. It’s clearly an indoor space and yet there is a hollowing wind with a deep, rich texture... You can hear the gentle crackling of wood… the occasional slap of a rope… a squirrel. (fade out sound of barn)This soundscape was recorded on January 19th, 2022, in a barn, on a farm that belonged to composer R. Murray Schafer and is now the home of his wife, the singer Eleanor James. The farm is located near Indian River, Ontario, about 20k east of Peterborough which is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Mississauga people adjacent to Haudenosaunee Territory and in the territory covered by the Williams Treaty. I went to the farm to record winter soundscapes for this episode, Winter Diary Revisited, which is a soundscape composition dedicated to the memory of composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist, R. Murray Schafer.1st floor of barn of R. Murray Schafer and Elanor James, near Indian River, ON, January 19, 2022Eleanor James, January 19, 2022, Indian River, Ontario (photo by me)While visiting the farm, I had a conversation with Eleanor James about Murray and his relationship to winter. Here is an excerpt:Claude: I'm with Eleanor James and I just spent some time in your barn. Thank you so much. I recorded a bunch of sounds, and I went into the forest and captured sounds of wind and some of the things that Murray and I did when we did the Winter Diary, which is to do this kind of yelling out, to enliven the space and get a feeling of it. (sound of snowshoeing and distant 'Hey' at the farm on January 19, 2022)Claude: There are so many things that you could talk about Murray. Any thoughts about soundscapes but also around recording and winter sounds? Eleanor: There's a couple of things come to mind, which are in his creative output and one of them is Music in the Cold. It's a lovely little manifesto done in an artistic style about how it's better to be in the North than in the South and that music in the cold is tougher and hardier and more austere and (laughs) so he goes into a diatribe about that kind of thing. He really is a Northern personality. So, you have to forgive him for going on a rant about it, but, of course, it was an artistic creation, so it was intended to be hyperbolic. I think it's quite delightful. It's got a midnight blue cover and then the title Music in the Cold.Speaking of which, he has written a wonderful string quartet called Winter Birds which the Molinari quartet of Montreal have recorded, in which his own voice occurs in the very last movement where he describes the winter of 2005 looking out his studio window at the birds feeding. We used to fill the feeders with seeds, and we'd have all kinds of little birds coming and fluttering and going and making little soft sounds. In the string quartet, he describes a whole event of birds, just fluttering and coming and going and the total silence surrounding them, not only acoustically, but visually as well. Nothing but the snow, just like it is today, with snow heaped everywhere and just these little birds making tiny fluttering sounds with their wings.There's also the piece that he wrote for choir called Snowforms which is actually quite popular, and he wrote it as a graphic score and it's written on a sort of pale turquoise green paper, and the choir reads the shapes of snow and again, those shapes were something that he observed looking out his studio window and drew graphically and then composed it so that pitches were associated with these tones. It's just a marvelous description of winter and so for Murray, all of the soundscape work that he was so interested in fed into his artistic abilities and his artistic gifts as a composer.Note: See String Quartet no. 10 - Winter Birds (extrait) / R. Murray Schafer for an excerpt of Winter Birds performed by the Molinari Quartet. See Snowforms for a performance of Snowforms by the Vancouver Chamber Choir.I re-read Murray’s Music in the Cold book when I got back home to Ottawa, which he wrote in 1977, when I was 17. It’s interesting to look back at this piece of artistic reflection and provocation. Here are the last 11 lines of the book: Saplings are beginning to sprout again in the moist earth.Beneath it animals can be heard digging their burrows.Soon the thrush will return.The old technology of waste is gone.What then remains?The old virtues: harmony; the universal soul; hard work.I will live supersensitized, the antennae of a new race.I will create a new mythology.It will take time.It will take time.There will be time. (fade in recording of Eclogue for an Alpine Meadow)I remember back in August of 1985, the late composer Robert Rosen, Murray and I produced a series of ecological radio programs to be performed at Spry Lake, near Canmore, Alberta. Murray was in Banff to present his music theatre piece Princess of the Stars. We each wrote a piece of music for this space. Mine was for bass clarinet and trombone called ‘Eclogue for an Alpine Meadow’ . You can hear me on bass clarinet. Murray was a mentor to Robert and myself on this project, sharing his vast experience in writing music for and with a natural environment. Note: You can hear the entire piece on the Whom Am I page of the conscient podcast website. Robert Rosen, R. Murray Schafer and me in Banff in 1985 during ecological radio programs project (photo credit unknown)Excerpt of first page of my ‘Eclogue for an Alpine Meadow’ for bass clarinet and tromboneMe and trombonist (name not known) at Spray Lake, Alberta, recording ‘Eclogue for an Alpine Meadow’ for bass clarinet and trombone (photo credit unknown)Murray’s music, and in particular his research in acoustic ecology, have had a deep influence on many composers, educators, researchers and sound artists around the world, including myself. Among other things, Murray taught me how to listen deeply, both with my ears and with a microphone.Me, Kozo Hiramatsu and R. Murray Schafer at Hör Upp! Stockholm acoustic ecology conference, Stockholm, Sweden 1998 (photo credit unknown)I remember having long conversations with Murray about listening, radio, acoustic ecology, field recording, technology, including how it make a living as a composer. Here is a short excerpt from a conversation I had with him in July of 1990 in a restaurant in Peterborough. I apologise for the poor quality of the recording, but I think you’ll enjoy listening to Murray speak about the art of listening:You probe by asking further questions. Was it inside? Was it outside? Are there a lot of people assembled there? Is there nobody there? Is this in Canada? Is it outside of Canada? Is it in Europe? You heard a train. Is it Canadian train whistle or a European train whistle? You heard a language. What language was it you heard? Any of these cues that you might have heard that would help you identify where you were and then tell them afterwards where the actual recording was made but force them to really use their ears. Did you hear any birds? Did you hear any of this, did you hear any sounds that would help you to localize? I'm just saying that that's one sort of type of exercise, which I think someday somebody should put together a package, an educational package.I just feel that one has to constantly go back to nature and listen again, look again, learn again. It’s as simple as that. Anytime you get too far in touch with it, you're probably going to be in trouble. If you don't know how to come, go back and look at a butterfly, because you're so spell bound by strobe lights or something, I think you're in trouble, which is not to say that you can't go back and look at it and reanalyze it. It will change things and then you go back to your old environment and see things differently. In nature, what you're so conscious of is a cycle of life and death, and rather the interchange, that almost sine wave of life and death, but also of silence and activity and that there are certain times when certain creatures are far and certain other times when they speak and that you take in the natural soundscape. Sometimes it's hard to find those rhythms in a modern urban soundscape where everybody sounds so aggressively trying to catch the attention of everyone else.Claude: they lose touch with the balance of their lives.Murray passed away on August 14, 2021, at age 88 in his farmhouse.Home of R. Murray Schafer and Eleanor James, Indian River, Ontario, January 19, 2022Studio of R. Murray Schafer, Indian River, Ontario, January 19, 2022Shortly after his passing, I was honoured to be asked to write a remembrance piece about my personal experience with Murray. This request came from Eric Leonardson, president of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) an organization that Murray helped found in 1993 at the Banff Centre and that continues its good work to this day. Kirk MacKenzie and Robin Elliott of the University of Toronto also approached me to write a remembrance piece about Murray for a series of memorials they are producing about Murray and his legacy. I decided to produce a soundscape composition instead of writing an article for this remembrance piece. Here’s the story.In 1996, Murray received a commission from the Akustische Kunst department of the West German Radio, the WDR, in Germany, produced by Klaus Schöning, to record a radio program about the winter soundscapes of rural Manitoba called Winter Diary. Murray had produced many radio pieces before for the CBC and the WDR, but he needed a hand with this rather large-sc