Library Person

R. Murray Schafer

Canadian composer who founded the World Soundscape Project and the field of acoustic ecology.

R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021) founded the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in the late 1960s, coining “soundscape” and “schizophonia” and arguing for listening to the total acoustic environment as a form of composition. His 1977 book The Tuning of the World — reissued in 1994 as The Soundscape — became the foundational text of acoustic ecology.

Works in the Library