Composed: 1959
Premiered: 1962, Vancouver
Duration: 7 minutes

The Canadian musician R. Murray Schafer is internationally known and respected for his decidedly iconoclastic writings on music education, and as the father of “acoustic ecology”, the study of the world of sounds and noises which surrounds us all. His compositions have developed from these interests, as well as his sense of ritual, and the interaction of words, gestures, and music as more generally understood.

In Memoriam Alberto Guerrero was composed in 1959, shortly after the death of this distinguished pianist, who was Schafer’s piano teacher during his brief period as a young man at the Royal Conservatory. Guerrero was born in 1886 and grew up in Chile, where he was one of the few musicians introducing modern works. He moved to Canada in 1919, and lived for the rest of his life in Toronto, playing occasional recitals and teaching. Among his many pupils, the most famous was Glenn Gould. Schafer did not become a concert pianist, but revered his teacher, Guerrero for his “ideas beyond music”. In Memoriam: Alberto Guerrero was performed by the Vancouver Symphony and recorded in 1962.

Program note by the late Dr. C.W. Helleiner