Volume 10 Issue 10 - July/August 2005

R. Murray Schafer: rooted in the Enchanted Forest
by Allan Pulker
If there were such a thing as a Canadian "composer laureate" R . the World Wildlife Federation and the
Murray Schafer would be it. Despite - or perhaps because of- tak- Sierra Club. At a time when clearing
the road less travelled - he gave up an academic position at Si- cutting of virgin forests is still toleratmon
Fraser University in 1975 to live in rural Eastern Ontario to de- ed here, Schafer's productions draw
vote his time to writing and composing - he has achieved interna- attention to the reality of what is lost
tiona! distinction as both an author and a composer. His awards every time a forest is sacrificed on
range from the Jules Leger Prize in 1977 to an Ontario Arts Coun- the high altar of profits. In Schafer's
cil Lifetime Achievement Award 1999 and beyond. The Esprit Or- words, " Haliburton Forest is a quiet,
chestra's recording of his Dream Rainbow, Dream Thunder won a meditative place, where audiences and
Juno in 1986, his first five string quartets were recorded by the Or- performers alike can feel transported
ford String Quartet, and Montreal's Quatuor M.olinari has recorded into a magical realm . The natural
all eight, receiving a Juno for the eighth. Still active as a composer, lighting, sounds and acoustic envihis
Ninth String Quartet will be premiered at the Winnipeg New Mu- ronment, coupled with the smell of
sic Festival next February and his tenth the same month by Radio the fresh outdoors, will enrich the ex-
France, which commissioned it.
perience and make it unforgettable."
His great "environmental theatre" work of the last 35 years, his This year's production of The Enchanted Forest will take place from
12-part Patriq Cycle, has been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle. August 24 to 28 and August 3 I to September 2 . To reserve tickets •
Unlike the Ring, which requires an opera house, the Patria Cycle phone 416-596-8585 or e-mail admin@patria.org. Maps to the Hallpieces
require unusual venues: Hermes Trismegistos, Union Station; burton Forest can be found at www.patria.org and
The Princess of the Stars, dawn beside a lake; The Palace of the www.haliburtonforest.com.
Cinnabar Phoenix, a lake but at night; and The Enchanted Forest, a Next year's performance will be The Palace of the Cinnabar ?hoeforest
at night.
nix; 2007's production will be The Princess of the Stars ; 2008, The
At the end of February, Schafer and Peter Schleifenbaum, the Greatest Show, and in 2009, a revised version of And the Wolf Shall
owner of the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve, announced a Inherit the Moon, the epilogue to the Patria cycle. Each promises to
partnership to present one part of the Patria Cycle in the Haliburton be a night, a dawn or a day to remember.
Forest. each summer.for the next five years. I recently attended a For a short while longer (till August 15) the full text of Paul Steengathen~g
near Uxbndge celebrating the new partnership and its first huisen's series-launching Composer to Composer interview with R.
productiOn, a remount of The Enchanted Forest. After the formalities Murray Schafer is available for reading at www.thewholenote.com
I had an opportunity to sit down with Schafer.
and www.torontohearandnow.com
We talked about the effect of a performance space on a performance
and the reasoning behind the outdoor settings of his "operas" That t 1·me 1 • 0 .that place
or "music dramas" as he referred to them in Paul Steenhuisen's interview
with him in WholeNote in 2001. It is his vie~ that staging
by Catherine Muir
performances indoors is historically an aberration that began in 17th Before sounds could be recorded and played again, music was a desticentury
Europe, but that even in our time about 90% of music nation, defined by a place and a time, a fleeting series of sounds never
worldwide is performed out of doors. Acoustically, he said , en- repeated exactly. Before music became portable, available at the whim of
closed spaces are so different from outdoors that they affect the way the listener, people had to travel to hear music. That connection of muwe
hear music harmonically. Socially, too, indoor performance sic to place is so much rarer these days. Today's venues get c)losen for
makes it possible to control who will hear the music and who will qualities like convenience, price, or necessity. Combine that with the
not. Music indoors begins and ends in silence, while music out of ability to hear recorded music anytime anywhere, and the connection of
doors is in constant interaction with naturally occurring sounds. An- music to location has be~n eroded with time.
other interesting difference is tl'!at music performed outdoors has no Except that something special happens every summer; the flourishing
dynamics; it is performed as loud as possible all the time. Dynamic of festivals across the country. Small towns, big cities, open countryvariations
can occur only as a result of variations in the distance be- side; parks, fields, churches, by lakes and by rivers, celebrations of mutween
the performer(s) and the listener(s).
sic are happening everywhere. It is as if the places themselves are calling
At the root of Schafer's outdoor works is his concern about the out for the music to be made there.
negative impact of human activity on the environment. In our time , Still, it takes a special person to hear the call. It requires love of muhe
told me, "the environment is downtrodden and oppressed." There sic, love of a place, and countless hours of hard work. I talked to six
was a time , he said, when artists considered it their responsibility to such people: Ge.orge Jackson, artistic director at the Uptown Jazz Festibe
politically "engage, " to put their weight and their art behind what val, Brad McEwan, chairman of the Mill Race Festival, Father Fernand
w~s right and to oppose what was wrong. Voltaire's expression Lindsay, founder and artistic director at the Festival de Lanaudiere
"Ecrasez l' infame" comes to mind . While some literary and visual Noel Edison, founding member and artistic director at the Elora Fe~tiartists
have engaged in supporting the cause of the environment, al- val,, volunteer Deborah Schnarr at the Kincardine Festival, and Rob
most no composers have. Perhaps this is because music is a per- Saunders at the Huntsville Festival. For each, place was high on the list
formance art so most composers, along with 80 % of us, live in cit- of what they wanted tp talk about.
ies . One of Schafer's priorities is to build awareness by staging his Mill Race happens in the historic town of Cambridge, Ontario, "a
productions in places where audiences will make a kind of pilgrim- nineteenth century town along the Grand River" says Brad McEwan.
age from their urban dwellings to a forest environment where they "The festival areas are all within walking distance: Mill Race Park; the
~ill be in contact with the sounds and rhythms of nature. These per- Main Stage, an outdoor amphitheatre built in the ruins of a stone mill
tormances , he observes, have an impact quite incommensurate with overlooking the river; the civic square, next to the old town hall and fire
the amount of time they take. " People have told me, " he said, hall museum; and Main Street, with its historic storefronts, shut down
"about how vividly they remember a performance of The Princess of to traffic for thf; festival." Lanaudiere takes place in "the Amphitheatre
the Stars that took place twenty-five years ago."
de Lanaudiere, a place unlike any other" says Father Lindsay ."A mag-
Schafer's environmental thrust makes the partnership with Sch- nificent tree-lined avenue leads to a luminous arch overlooking a spectacleifenbaum's
60,000+ acre Haliburton Forest tick . Haliburton is ular site. At the crest of a hill, we find ourselves gazing upon a stage
Canada's first "certified sustainable forest", meeting the stringent below ." At Elora Festival, says Noel Edison "it was a love of this
standards of the "Forest Stewardship Council", a NGO supported by village [of Elora] that started this festival. We have the good fortune of
10 WWW.THEWHOLENOTE.COM ) U LY 1 -SEPTEMBE R 7 2005 .