Fine Arts Commons^™

Eco-Theatre, R. Murray Schafer, Eleanor James, Sarah Ann Standing

Publications and Research

Born in Sarnia, Ontario, in 1933, and widely considered Canada’s leading living composer, Raymond Murray Schafer is also a librettist, educator, writer, and “soundscape” theorist. Schafer composes for symphonies as well as chamber orchestras, solo instruments (he has even composed a piece for snowmobile), and vocalists. His compositions have played throughout the world. Schafer’s operatic cycle Patria—a masterwork almost forty years in the making—consists of ten episodes, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue The Princess of the Stars and epilogue And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon (also known as the Wolf Project) comprise an eco-theatre where Schafer places …