Abstracts
Abstract
Canadian composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer is known for his outdoor works. Other scholars have considered the collaboration between musicians and the physical world in Schafer’s compositions and have linked performer-environment interaction with Canadian identity and environmentalism. Yet the role and meaning of outdoor acoustics in Schafer’s music remains understudied. This article investigates the aesthetics of echo in Schafer’s outdoor theatre work The Princess of the Stars (1981–4). Echo not only sends an original sound back from a surface but also offers insight into the role that musical sounds play in prescribing an interpretation of nature.
Résumé
Le compositeur canadien et écologiste acoustique R. Murray Schafer est connu pour son travail artistique en extérieur. Un certain nombre de chercheurs ont examiné l’interaction entre musiciens et environnement physique dans les compositions de Schafer et ont établit un lien entre ces interactions et l’environnementalisme ainsi que l’identité canadienne. Le rôle et les implications de l’acoustique extérieure dans la musique de Schafer sont toutefois encore négligés par la recherche. Cet article examine l’esthétique de l’écho dans l’oeuvre théâtrale de Schafer intitulée The Princess of the Stars (1981–4). On montre ainsi que l’écho renvoie non seulement un son d’origine par l’entremise d’une surface, mais qu’il offre aussi un aperçu du rôle des sons musicaux dans la prescription d’une certaine interprétation de la nature.
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Appendices
Biographical note
Tyler Kinnear is instructor of arts at Western Carolina University. His teaching and research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, music and the environment, and histories and theories of listening. His written work has been published in such journals as Ecomusicology Review, Music & Politics, and Organised Sound. Currently, he is principal investigator of Sonic Histories, an interdisciplinary research initiative studying how students experience histories of race, class, and (dis)ability at an institution of higher learning through sounds heard and imagined.
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