Patria (Latin for 'homeland') is composer R. Murray Schafer's life's work, a cycle of ten related music dramas created and performed over the last thirty years. Each play in the cycle has a common theme - the search of two lovers for one another through the many labyrinths of life on Earth. Though many of the same characters reappear in different sections, the scale of the cycle is vast, unfolding across many cultures and drawing extensively from numerous world mythologies. Many of these works are conceived for performance in unusual environments: on the surface of a lake, deep in a forest or even in a deserted mine. Some begin at dawn, sunset or midnight and some last for as long as a week.

This definitive edition of Patria contains all ten parts of the cycle, plus photos, pages from the scores (complex visual artworks in their own right), commentary on the performance of the pieces and Schafer's personal essays on aestheticism. In these remarkable works, the arts court one another: theatre meets ritual, mythology fuses with art, and the line between performer and audience blurs.

Born in Sarnia in 1933, R. Murray Schafer is an internationally-acclaimed composer, environmentalist, educator, scholar, visual artist and writer. Despite only one formal diploma (the LRSM -- Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music in London), Schafer has taught at Memorial and Simon Fraser universities, and received honorary degrees from Trent, Simon Fraser, Carleton, Toronto, and Concordia universities in Canada, and from Mendosa (Argentina) and Strassbourg (France). His music is widely praised and performed all over the world. His major achievement, the epic Patria cycle, is more often praised than produced, since it requires wilderness settings and performances that last all night -- or longer. Schafer lives in Indian River, just outside Peterborough, Ontario.

R. Murray Schafer's profile page