Podcast Episode Details

e99 winter diary revisited – homage to r. murray schafer (25′ introduction + 40′ composition + 3′ credits)

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Season 3 Episode 99

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Episode Notes

Barn on the farm of R. Murray Schafer and Eleanor James, Indian River, Ontario, January 19, 2022 (photo by me)

Note: the text below is a transcription of the narration in the episode (sounds are described, with their source where possible)

Welcome to episode 99 of the conscient podcast, the last episode of season 3, which you might recall was on the theme of radical listening. 

(fade in of sound of barn)

I invite you to guess what is this space. There are some sonic clues. It’s clearly an indoor space and yet there is a hollowing wind with a deep, rich texture... You can hear the gentle crackling of wood… the occasional slap of a rope… a squirrel. 

(fade out sound of barn)

This soundscape was recorded on January 19th, 2022, in a barn, on a farm that belonged to composer R. Murray Schafer and is now the home of his wife, the singer Eleanor James. The farm is located near Indian River, Ontario, about 20k east of Peterborough which is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Mississauga people adjacent to Haudenosaunee Territory and in the territory covered by the Williams Treaty. 

I went to the farm to record winter soundscapes for this episode, Winter Diary Revisited, which is a soundscape composition dedicated to the memory of composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist, R. Murray Schafer.

1st floor of barn of R. Murray Schafer and Elanor James, near Indian River, ON, January 19, 2022

Eleanor James, January 19, 2022, Indian River, Ontario (photo by me)

While visiting the farm, I had a conversation with Eleanor James about Murray and his relationship to winter. Here is an excerpt:

Claude: I'm with Eleanor James and I just spent some time in your barn. Thank you so much. I recorded a bunch of sounds, and I went into the forest and captured sounds of wind and some of the things that Murray and I did when we did the Winter Diary, which is to do this kind of yelling out, to enliven the space and get a feeling of it.

 (sound of snowshoeing and distant 'Hey' at the farm on January 19, 2022)

Claude: There are so many things that you could talk about Murray. Any thoughts about soundscapes but also around recording and winter sounds? 

Eleanor: There's a couple of things come to mind, which are in his creative output and one of them is Music in the Cold. It's a lovely little manifesto done in an artistic style about how it's better to be in the North than in the South and that music in the cold is tougher and hardier and more austere and (laughs) so he goes into a diatribe about that kind of thing. He really is a Northern personality. So, you have to forgive him for going on a rant about it, but, of course, it was an artistic creation, so it was intended to be hyperbolic. I think it's quite delightful. It's got a midnight blue cover and then the title Music in the Cold.

Speaking of which, he has written a wonderful string quartet called Winter Birds which the Molinari quartet of Montreal have recorded, in which his own voice occurs in the very last movement where he describes the winter of 2005 looking out his studio window at the birds feeding. We used to fill the feeders with seeds, and we'd have all kinds of little birds coming and fluttering and going and making little soft sounds. In the string quartet, he desc

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Published on 3 years, 10 months ago