About R. Murray Schafer's Composition

                   . . . Music is always something that has to be wrenched out of noise. It is a code of order derived from noises, a ritualization of chaos. Pure noise is destruction, both physically and intellectually. It is a killer. . . This relationship of music to violence is most evident among percussion instruments.

                   The traditional European definition of music as periodic sounds and noise as non-periodic sounds placed many percussion instruments outside music so that they were introduced sparingly and generally only to give a sublime or diabolical touch to a certain passage in the orchestral narrative. That instruments like triangles, cymbals or kettledrums had a pagan association (namely with Turkey and Egypt) lent them a certain infernal charm when they were first introduced into the classical orchestra at the end of the eighteenth century.

                   striking, scraping, yanking, shaking & piercing instruments

                   The methods of striking, scraping, yanking, shaking and piercing instruments into animation is much more conspicuous in the percussion department than with strings or wind instruments. . . One might say that as television brought more violence into entertainment, the increase of percussion instruments brought more violence into music.

                   This background is associated with a drummer whose background is military. That made him (there were no lady drummers at the time) a participant in battle carnage; and the excitement his drumming stimulated among the troops led either to victory or death. Drummers were, then, the communication engineers of the army: Flam, paradiddle, drag, ratamacue: Advance, commence, firing, cease firing, retreat. . . Shadowman inspired heroism and suicide indiscriminately, and any assessment of his modern successor, whether in orchestra, jazz band, or rock group, without taking into account this bloodthirsty past, would be deficient.

                   Of course a drum has other associations, particularly with the hunt, since drum heads were originally animal hides, and many still are. The sacrificing of an animal to make a drum has particular significance if the animal belonged to the same totem as the drummer. That's when the ancestors would speak and communicate their wishes in a kind of tone magic.

                   ancient beliefs about tuning

                   Tone magic. Think about that for a minute. Why should any object struck or scraped produce any sound at all? Obviously if you are struck or scraped you make a sound because you are alive. Then all things must be alive, since everything has its voice! But where does the voice come from, since we can't see any creature vocalizing? Maybe, you don't find this so puzzling today, but in the days of tone magic it haunted all musicians.

                   If the creature can't be seen, it must be a god or a demon. Pythagoras, who introduced the science of acoustics to the Western World five hundred years before Christ, still spoke of the sound of a brass bell as the demon in the brass. And in parts of Africa today "the hollow interior of the slit drum is considered the home of a deity and the home of dead or still unborn sons." (James Blades, Percussion Instruments and Their History; London, 1970)

                   Every musician knows that instruments are willful; they have a temperament of their own, independent of the performer. What is a "wolf tone" if not that"? And why wolf? How did he get into the music? An ancient belief that our tuning systems came from the voices of animals is sustained in the notion that the creatures might actually be present vocalizing inside the instrument.

                   These were some of the thoughts going through my mind as I began to reflect on the piece I was to write for the percussion group NEXUS. A little note, written at this time, reads:

                   

What I want to do is to contrast the terror of percussion instruments with their beauty ("For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror…" -- Rilke). What Burke wrote about the contrast between the sublime and the beautiful is in my mind: The sublime being huge and inhumanly grand, and the beautiful being delicate and intimate. To accomplish this I want to contrast drums with bells; and as a visual reinforcement of the differences, I'd like to have some of the percussionists dressed in black and some in white.

                   For me, each piece is an idea. If the idea is clear, the writing goes quickly. If not, the writing gives no end of trouble. My note mentions drums and bells, darkness and light. Darkness and light have a moral as well as a physical connotation since the terms have been used to distinguish between evil and goodness. They are a syzygy; the one cannot exist without the other. Between them are the shadopws through which we move in the passage of life.

                   Shadowman: That struck me as a good name for the piece I was trying to conceive. And, at once, I had the image of a drummer, beating his way through life, pulled alternatively by the forces of ight and darkness, good and evil, somewhat like a puppet, for his sense of morality (just like ours) is unstable and susceptible to pressure. Are we justified in committing a crime for a good cause? Are there just wars? Should we go to war to save the world from fascism, communism, slavery - or anything else? Was the American Civil War fought for a good cause? And the First World War? And the Second? These are the moral questions confronting Shadowman as the forces of light and darkness wrestle for possession of his soul.

                   Anyway, I had my theme. A drummer, dressed in the tatterred uniform of some army (any army would do), wavering in his allegiance to goodness and evil. The piece, accordingly, was going to have a narrative quality. Although I didn't plan these in advance, a series of titles headed the various sections as they were written. These are the titles with a little commentary.

                   

1. Arrival of the Dark Messengers 2. Quick Step "Seely Simpkins" 3. Retreat 4. Surrender 5. Arrival of the Messengers of Light 6. Dance of Light 7. Zion 8. Cloud of Fire 9. Pierced Soul 10. Tower of Bones 11. Redemption 12. Living Waters 13. Final Riff 14. Alzheimer's 15. Obiit 16. Reincarnation

                   . . . I said at the beginning that my composition possesses a strong narrative line. It describes situations of glory and defeat, both historical and imaginary, ending quietly with the suggestion that my Shadowman returns to his childhood, playing toy drums and shaking baby rattles before passing beyond this life to be reborn, perhaps in a form less destructive to the planet. And that corresponds, more or less, to my belief that the salvation of the earth may only be possible through the transfiguration of humanity, or at least an acknowledgement that every living thing has the right to existence on earth.

                   Note written by R. Murray Schafer (excerpt)

                   Shadowman was commissioned by Michael and Sonja Koerner for NEXUS and the University of Toronto Orchestra

                   Esprit performance: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - "New World" Music - Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Toronto, Ontario