The weekend has been a costly one for the world of art music. Two estimable composers – England’s Hugh Wood and Canada’s R. Murray Schafer – have gone silent.

Though Wood earned much of his daily bread as a teacher of composition, at Cambridge and elsewhere, he yet managed to complete something in the ballpark of 65 pieces.

Given that much of his music reflects his interest in the 12-tone school of Arnold Schoenberg, I am astonished – and delighted – to have discovered this, his last completed work, which at times sounds positively Waltonian (as in William Walton). I wonder if he ever before composed such an “English”-sounding piece?

“Epithalamion” is a setting of John Donne’s 1613 “marriage song,” written for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James I, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire (1610 to 1623) and “winter king” of Bohemia (1619 to 1620).

Wood first conceived the work in 1955, but carried it through to completion only in 2014. This recording is from a performance at the BBC Proms in 2015.

Wood’s Cello Concerto, composed between 1965 and 1969, is much more characteristic. He once claimed he was less interested in serial technique than in the philosophy behind it.

An interview with Hugh Wood on the occasion of his 70th birthday:

https://www.classicalsource.com/article/hugh-wood-at-70-bill-newman-interviews-the-composer/

Sadly, we’ve also lost the grand old man of Canadian music. R. Murray Schafer died on Saturday at the age of 88. Schafer developed some fascinating ideas about, and interesting insights into, the relation of sound and music to the environment. His is not music for the morning rush hour, perhaps, but it is undeniably stimulating.

The composer walks us around his property, plays with our heads a little bit, and directs us to listen:

“Mimiwanka” (1971), employing American Indian texts, is meant to reflect on the various states of water. This video is particularly interesting in that it also displays Schafer’s unique style of graphic notation.

A selection from “Music for Wilderness Lake” (1979)

“Bird calls” infuse his String Quartet No. 8 (2000-01)

This obituary and appreciation, assembled by the CBC, encompasses the man and the artist much more satisfyingly than I ever could.

https://www.cbc.ca/music/r-murray-schafer-composer-writer-and-acoustic-ecologist-has-died-at-88-1.5404868

Lives well spent. R.I.P.

PHOTOS: Schafer (top) and Wood