Arcana
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227 Douro First Line
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KOL 2B0, Canada
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Books
NEW
R. Murray Schafer: A Creative Life
by L. Brett Scott
Can be found online at Rowman & Littlefield publishing website.
The Enchanted Forest
The
Enchanted Forest is the story of Patria
9: The Enchanted Forest, written
as a narrative by Schafer with illustrations by Diana M. Smith. The book
also contains a CD narrated by the author with some of the children's
songs from the production recorded by La Jeunesse Choir.
Paperback $30.00
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The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World
This
is the book in which Schafer introduces a new field of study: the soundscape.
It is the first attempt ever made to document changes in the acoustic
environment throughout history and across cultures. There are chapters
on the natural soundscape, the post-industrial soundscape, sound symbolism,
music, noise, silence and soundscape design. As such The Tuning of the
World has been adopted by students and researchers as the grammar for
acoustic ecology, necessary today if we are to avoid destroying ourselves
with sound pollution. Appreciated by general readers for its clear and
attractive prose style, The Tuning of the World has been praised by specialists
in many disciplines as a work which will have far-reaching effects on
the future.
'Schafer's book is a consciousness-expanding experience.'
Carl Sagan
'Today it must have top priority.'
Marshall McLuhan
'Schafer is a very original Canadian... The Tuning of the World is an
unusual sensory experience. The original sections will raise your consciousness
of the soundscape to a level of sensitivity you never experienced before.'
New York Times
'This is an extraordinary book, fascinating to read and far-reaching
in its visionary projection.'
Publisher's Weekly
Paperback $30.00
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Voices of Tyranny: Temples of Silence
Studies and Reflections on the Contemporary Soundscape
Consisting
of several important essays on aspects of the soundscape written over the
years since the publication of The Tuning of the World together with new
pieces joining them and bringing them up-to-date, this book is a valuable
collection by the person who first initiated soundscape research. Essays
deal with creation and destruction by sound, the dialectics of the soundscape,
music and the soundscape, and soundscape design. There are studies of Russian
and French soundscapes described by Chekhov and Hugo, a diary of a Canadian
soundscape and observations on the latest examples of soundscape design
from Japan, Germany, and elsewhere.
Hardback $50.00 and paperback $30.00, 168 pages
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A
Sound Education
100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking
This book will be useful to every teacher concerned with improving the listening
skills of children and young people. The exercises could serve as a foundation
for music but they are intended to have a broader application than this.
In today's noisy world it is more important than ever for whole populations
to begin to listen more carefully and critically. Here are exercises dealing
with soundmaking and listening, gradually leading on towards the designing
of soundscapes, both personal and public.
Hardback $35.00 and paperback $20.00, 144 pages
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HearSing
This little book consisting of seventy-five exercises in listening and
creating music, is related to A Sound Education, but
here the exercises are more directly concerned with music-making and creation.
Music composition still remains the missing element in most music education
programs. HearSing is not a course in composition but
it provides some basic sound materials and suggests a way of joining them
that could lead to original creative work.
Paperback $20.00, 100 pages
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The Thinking Ear: On Music Education
Thirty
years ago Schafer began publishing a series of pamphlets on music education
that quickly established his reputation as an original thinker in the
field. The constant theme in these writings is musical creativity: a second
theme is the relationship of music to the acoustic environment. Frequently
the writings also illustrate bridges from music to the other arts.
These pamphlets have remained popular; they have been translated into
several languages and have become influential texts for music educators
in many countries. The five original texts are included in this volume:
The Composer in the Classroom. Ear Cleaning, The New Soundscape, When
Words Sing and The Rhinoceros in the Classroom.
But what makes this collection unique is the addition of all the
more recent writings, hitherto uncollected, including essays on subjects
as diverse as the building of sound sculptures and the training of a community
choir.
This is the only accurate and definitive collection of Schafer's writings
on music education. It belongs in the library of every contemporary music
teacher. Teachers of movement, drama and language arts will also find
this collection full of stimulating cross references to their own arts.
Hardback $45.00 and paperback $30.00, 350 pages
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The Book of Noise
The Book of Noise is intended as an introduction to the problems of
noise pollution in the modern world. It is written in clear simple language
and is therefore suitable for schools or citizens' groups concerned with
noise problems in the community. The hazards of noise are presented and
solutions are outlined. Contact names and addresses are given for further
reading and action.
Paperback $10.00, 36 pages
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The Composer in the Classroom
The first of Schafer's booklets recounting his experience teaching
children and young people. The technique used is Socratic, asking questions
like,
"What is music?" and probing beyond the obvious answers to arrive at
other surprising conclusions.
Paperback $10.00, 37 pages
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The New Soundscape
The first formulation of the now-famous concept of "soundscape" and
its relationship to music. The book has been a standard in classrooms
around the world ever since it was written in 1968.
Paperback $10.00, 65 pages
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When Words Sing
A unique investigation of the middle ground between poetry and song,
containing numerous references to historical work and full of simple
vocal exercises for young people to try out. "Poetry is when words sing" -
6-year old boy.
Paperback $10.00, 50 pages
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Patria: The Complete Cycle
In this book Schafer explains his extensive cycle of music dramas under
the generic title of Patria, a project on which he has been engaged for
30 years. Although the Patria cycle is integrated thematically and many
of the same characters reappear in different works, the panorama over
which the events occur is vast, unfolding across many cultures and drawing
extensively from numerous world mythologies. While some works are intended
for traditional theatrical performance, others are conceived for unique
environments, or for performance at special times of the day, night or
year.
In Patria: The Complete Cycle, Schafer discusses his evolving ideas
of music and theatre in their relationship to mythology, ecology, ritual
and religion. There are chapters on each of the completed Patria works
and notes on those in progress. The book also contains production photographs,
pages from the scores, and two essays on 'The Theatre of Confluence.'
Paperback $25.00, 272 pages
The most wildly imaginative and physically ambitious series of
music theatre works in the history of the Canadian stage. William
Littler, Toronto Star
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E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music
'A welcome and relevant contribution.'
The Musical Quarterly
E.T.A. Hoffmann was a man of diversified talents: an artist, composer,
conductor, critic, lawyer and writer. Although he is best known for his
stories, he was a music critic and composer for years before he wrote
his celebrated Tales. Hoffmann has long been considered an extremely important
force in the shaping of musical romanticism, yet this volume is the first
adequate documentation in English of his influence. Because much of the
primary material on which this study is based has not previously appeared
in English, the author has chosen an unusual but especially appropriate
format in which translations of Hoffmann's musical writings alternate
with chapters providing a critical assessment of them.
Like Hoffmann, Schafer's work moves into numerous fields and his sympathetic
treatment of the subject may also be read as an introduction to many of
his own 'romantic' attitudes towards music.
E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music was a prize-winner for design at the Leipzig
Book Fair.
Hardback $50.00, 202 pages
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Wolf Tracks
A
reader enters a secondhand bookshop. A blue book drops into the reader's
hands from a back shelf. The reader begins to read, discovering that the
book describes a person reading a blue book in a secondhand bookshop.
From there the book takes hold of the reader's life, changing it totally.
When it was first written, Schafer had copies of Wo1f Tracks secretly
planted in secondhand bookshops across Canada and the U.S.A. It may still
be found in many of these places, waiting to transform your life... or
you can order it from Arcana Editions.
Hardback $45.00 and paperback $25.00 144 pages
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Garden of the Heart
This romantic novella binds together a cycle of songs with reminisences of the years Schafer spent in Vienna, woven into a mystery story in which the origin of both the text and the music are gradually revealed by characters from Persia and Eastern Europe.
Paperback $30.00, 78 pages
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Dicamus et Labyrinthos
A philologist attempts to decipher an ancient script from Crete, purportedly
relating to the story of Theseus, Ariadne, the Minotaur and the labyrinth.
But in the course of his work he himself becomes trapped in the labyrinth
of language. Following his disappearance, his notebook is found and published
in order that the archeological profession may decide whether the Cretan
script has been accurately and finally deciphered.
This graphic novel, which deals with mythology, language and translation,
is a key source book for Schafer's Patria cycle in which the myth of the
labyrinth is the central theme.
Hardback $45.00 and paperback $25.00, 148 pages
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Ariadne
'A literary work such as this defies categorization.. a golden thread
of striking originality,' said Quill and Quire of this unusual
book which Schafer describes as a graphic novel.
'He plays with structure and form and visual creations that are not
just clever but are part of the book's gestalt, that are involving, brilliant
and often strokes of genius, that tell a story and create impressions
and convey scenarios.'
Paul Dutton in Open Letter
'The work is visually and artistically a wonder... Each page of this
novel is strikingly original and clearly evinces Schafer's consciousness
of visual symmetry... It is as much a part of him and his times as his
music.'
Barry Edwards in Fugue
Hardback $35.00 and paperback $20.00, 70 pages
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On Canadian Music![book jacket](pix/cdnmusic.gif)
This book consists of essays dealing with various aspects of music in Canada.
Throughout the volume the reader will notice Schafer's own concern for a
Canadian musical style, first, through the manifesto Music in the Cold.
and then in several of his own 'Canadian' compositions. The book concludes
with notes and prefaces to some of these works: North/White, Music for Wilderness
Lake and The Princess of the Stars.
The book is not analytical but is intended for general reading.
'I urge you to buy Schafer's book at once. He's a voice crying in
the wilderness, but it is a magnificent voice - loud and clear and true
to the man who gives it birth.'
Toronto Star
Paperback $20.00, 106 pages
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Music in the Cold
'The snows came early this year. It is the beginning of a new ice age. The
wind howls at our ears as we dig for wood in the snow, and I wonder what
this will do for music?'
Thus begins this manifesto in which Canadian culture is examined in
counterpoint with outside influences. In thirty lively pages Schafer describes
the rise and fall of Canada, behind which the true culture persists. This
is a culture conditioned by climate: it is full of 'tiny events magnified,'
requiring special sensing abilities. 'The scene you miss is the white
hunter with the white bow stalking the white animal.'
This is an essential document for anyone interested in the culture of
the North.
Paperback $10.00, 32 pages
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The Chaldean Inscription
'A typographical jeu d'esprit' is the way Stephen Adams describes this
work in his bibliography of Schafer's writings. Other readers have found
varied meanings in this curious calligraphic book, based on an ancient
Chaldean inscription.
'A poem whose memory seems to recede page by page into a maze.'
'The text is like a mantra: as you repeat it you gradually enter a different
consciousness, one that is actually closer to the essence and mystery
of the original text.'
Paperback $10.00, 38 pages
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Shadowgraphs and Legends
"To begin: a pile of unblemished paper. The
pens are arranged to the side...I have begun to mark up the first sheet...."
So begins this collection of narratives combining fantasy, wit and arcane
knowledge with drawings in a variety of styles from the serious to the
whimsical.
Paperback $15.00, 66 pages
The Sixteen Scribes![book jacket](pix/16scribes.gif)
The King had sixteen scribes and everything he spoke was copied out carefully
by each of the scribes to be sent to the most distant provinces, where
local governors were waiting for the messages. But one day one of the
scribes made a fatal mistake which plunged the entire realm into civil
war.
The Sixteen Scribes invites the reader to find the error: but it also
begs the question, what is an error? Members of the Toronto Handwriters'
Guild collaborated to produce a variety of stunning and beautiful calligraphic
styles.
Paperback $10.00, 36 pages
OUT OF PRINT
R. Murray Schafer: A Collection
The poets bp Nichol and Steve McCaffery edited this collection of Schafer's
writings for the magazine Open Letter. Their aim was to present the writer
through as many perspectives as possible. The collection contains articles
on theatre and the soundscape, a libretto, a musical composition, some
creative writing and a bibliography of Schafer's works.
Paperback $20.00, 225 pages
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