My Life on Earth and Elsewhere - Softcover

Schafer, R. Murray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 088984352X ISBN 13: 9780889843523

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill, 2012

Synopsis

My Life on Earth and Elsewhere, a memoir by the internationally-acclaimed Canadian composer, music educator and writer R. Murray Schafer, traces the author's life and growth as an artist from his earliest memories to the present. Scenes from his youth as an aspiring painter, a music student at the University of Toronto and a sailor on a Great Lakes freighter give way to memories of his several years of work and wandering in Europe, where he gained a deeper understanding of his vocation, and found, especially in Greece, the inspiration for much of the astonishing music he would create after his return to Canada.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Sarnia in 1933, R. Murray Schafer is an internationally-acclaimed composer, environmentalist, educator, scholar, visual artist and writer. Despite only one formal diploma (the LRSM -- Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music in London), Schafer has taught at Memorial and Simon Fraser universities, and received honorary degrees from Trent, Simon Fraser, Carleton, Toronto, and Concordia universities in Canada, and from Mendosa (Argentina) and Strassbourg (France). His music is widely pr

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

(from UNIVERSITY)

Despite the pleasure of working with Weinzweig and Guerrero, and meeting McLuhan, I was having difficulty in several other courses. Things were building to some kind of climax around Christmas time of my second year. In many ways, the university was a place that cared for authority rather than invention. For one thing, attendance was compulsory and a roll-call preceded every lecture. I hated these rules, which seemed the very antithesis of imaginative scholarship.

In those days the university choir was conducted by Dr. Richard Johnston, a tempestuous Texan whose face burned red during the temper tantrums that he seemed incapable of controlling. We used to call him `Furnace Face'. I resented having to sing in his choir since I had sung and was still singing more interesting music in the Grace Church Choir. The English choral tradition was still quite strong in Canada in those days, with a repertoire that extended back to Elizabethan times. When you've sung Thomas Tallis and William Byrd motets, or Handel's Messiah with multiple choirs and orchestra, as we did each year in Massey Hall, the prospect of sappy pop songs is not at all inspiring. So I used to take large art-books with me to the rehearsals and calmly inspect them while the choir floundered through a repertoire of tasteless and toothless choral music.

`Choir stand up!' commanded Dr. Johnston from the top of the chair he always stood on. The choir stood up. `Choir sit down!' came the abrupt contravening order. The choir sat down. `Choir and Mr. Schafer stand up!' bellowed the commander. Schafer calmly turned the pages of his book on Rouault or Cezanne. `Schafer!' screamed the doctor. `Stand up!' Several girls began to swoon, recognizing the symptoms of the well-known tantrum that would sour the mood for the rest of the evening. `Come up here!'

Nonchalantly I wandered to the front carrying my precious book. `Sit there!' ordered Il Duce, pointing to an empty chair directly in front of him. `Now, once again, CHOIR AND MR. SCHAFER, STAND UP!' The choir stood up. Schafer opened his book and began to read. `SCHAFER!' It was the loudest sound the school had ever heard. The dust rose from the windowsills and the lights flickered. Dr. Johnston leapt in the air, landing with such force that his feet went clear through the seat of his chair. I looked up to see him furiously waving his baton only a few feet in front of my nose. I did the only natural thing. I got up and ran away. He lunged after me but the legs of the chair trapped him and he came clattering to the ground. As I darted out the door, I saw girls hurrying to pick him up off the floor.

Now, before I go on, let me say that Richard Johnston and I grew to be friends in later years. We never spoke of that incident again. More important concerns united us. Chief among these was the fight to establish Canadian music as a subject fit to be taught and performed in Canadian schools and universities. The good doctor went on to establish an enviable collection of Canadian musical manuscripts and memorabilia at the University of Calgary and several of my manuscripts eventually found their way into this collection.

The other professor with whom I had a run-in at the U. of T. was Professor Rosy-Rear, also an American. Rosy-Rear was not his name but it is close enough. Of all the courses I had to take, his was the stupidest. Music education has never been distinguished by imagination but there are limits to how much stupidity a person can handle. It was during the Christmas exam that matters came to a head. I am not sure whether the questions on the exam were designed by a blockhead or for blockheads. I remember two of them. One was: `What would you use rice for in cleaning a violin?' I have since asked many violinists this question without ever receiving a satisfactory answer. I even asked the famous violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, who didn't know either. The other question was: `How would you teach a hare-lipped boy to play the clarinet?' I answered this by saying I'd suggest another instrument. The rest of the questions were equally stupid and I rose to leave the examination hall after ten minutes; but the invigilator stopped me, by saying that I had to remain for a minimum of one hour. That was the rule. So I filled in the time by writing a little essay for Rosy-Rear on the subject of how music education might be more inspiringly taught. I didn't expect this to strike home and, in any case, it was probably a silly essay since I hadn't given the matter any advance thought. I recall that I concluded rather flippantly by telling him that it would please me greatly if he would give me zero on the exam because then, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom I had been reading, I would have the distinction, if not of being better than my fellow man, at least of being different.

I expected to get zero on the exam but I suppose the essay was a little thick for the good professor with the result that he simply handed it over to the faculty director, Dr. Arnold Walter. Dr. Walter was a brooding Spenglerian sort of man who reserved his smiles for his dinner; at least, no one had ever seen him smile in the faculty corridors. He was, to be fair, an excellent lecturer, illustrating talks on Beethoven and Wagner with rhapsodic piano accompaniments. With him, after lectures, I would venture to talk about Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre. I don't know what he really knew about these people but, to the sophomoric mind, he seemed to know a great deal and I admired the latitude of his learning. He and McLuhan were the only two lecturers who really set me thinking in those days.

Anyway, I was summoned that day to Dr. Walter's office. When I entered he was clenching his fists into little balls and squeezing himself. Suddenly he pounded the desk and roared: `I too haf read Jean-Jacques Rousseau!' The violence of the assertion was startling. It seemed to preclude any rational discussion of Rousseau's philosophy. I was told that I must apologize in writing to the two wounded professors or I would have to leave the school. A picture was painted of a young man forced forever to do menial work because he lacked a university education. A contrasting picture was sketched of an ambitious scholar going on to graduate school for which scholarships were tantalizingly touched on. Princeton University was mentioned. I was given twenty-four hours to think it over.

I returned the next day without having thought it over at all. I was hoping that, when his temper cooled, Dr. Walter might be persuaded to discuss Rousseau's philosophy, and I hoped to learn something from him. It was a brilliant crisp day in mid-winter. The sun was shining brightly and the snow was sparkling. I entered Dr. Walter's office and he said, `Vell, haf you made up your mind?' I was just about to reply when I noticed the way the sun was shining through his ears. He had big ears -- what the French call `les etoiles.' I could see the little blood vessels in them. Then a strange thing happened. I laughed. It was one of those nervous little laughing fits boys get before they are to be punished. `Get out!' said Dr. Walter. `I can see the sun shining through your ears,' I replied. `Get out! Get out! GET OUT!' His voice echoed down the corridor as I left, never to return.

Years later I began to receive letters from the alumni association of the University of Toronto and began to think that somehow I had indeed graduated. Many years later the University of Toronto offered me an honorary doctorate and in my acceptance speech I told the story of my departure from the Faculty of Music more or less as I've just narrated it to the merriment of both the graduating class as well as the Chancellor and faculty.

(R. Murray Schafer)

About this edition

• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 088984352X
• ISBN 13: 9780889843523
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280