The music of Murray Schafer

In his music, R. Murray Schafer, one of Canada's most prominent contemporary composers, returns often to the streams and lakes of his native land. He writes, "A mountain stream is a chord of many notes strung out stereophonically across the path of the attentive listener." ²⁵

Schafer wrote Minnewanka or The Moments of Water for unaccompanied voices to describe various states of water. His Music for Wilderness Lake  ^I was first performed in September of 1979 by 12 trombonists distributed in the trees around a small Ontario lake. The composer directed from a raft in the lake, and the music was recorded by microphones in boats.

Another of Schafer's well known compositions is The Princess of the Stars, a piece which takes place upon a mountain lake. The performance commences at sunrise, rain or shine, so audience participation is somewhat more demanding than traditional concerts. But as Schafer explains:

I think there's a sense of awe when you go to "Princess of the Star" no matter what the weather is like. I've been to performances when it was pouring rain, and they were some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. One really can't believe that these boats are moving in and out of the mist and the dark water. It's magical. ²⁶

Perhaps the most well known Canadian song about water is Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The song tells the tale of the mysterious shipwreck of an iron ore carrier on Lake Superior in 1975. Local mariners said the ship was a victim of the "curse of the eleventh month." None of the 29 crew members were ever found, as the song explains:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call "Gitche Gummee."
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the "Gales of November" came early. ²⁷

Water has served many functions in musical composition; it has been an inspiration, a subject, and even a studio. But in 1989, when thousands of people gathered at the site of a half-built dam on the Oldman River in Southern Alberta, music by popular performers expressed anger at the building of the dam. Songs written to protest the damming of the Oldman focus attention on efforts to protect this part of Canada's natural heritage.

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