The WSP group at SFU, 1973; left to right: R.
M. Schafer, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax, Howard
Broomfield and Hildegard Westerkamp (see photo below)
(also see the "acoustic crew",
2010,
recreating this iconic photo)
Schafer's call for the establishment of the WSP
was answered by a group of highly motivated young composers
and students, and, supported by The Donner Canadian
Foundation, the group embarked first on a detailed study of
the immediate locale, published as The Vancouver Soundscape, and in 1973, on a cross-Canada recording
tour by Bruce Davis and Peter Huse, the recordings from which
formed the basis of the CBC Ideas radio series Soundscapes of Canada. In 1975, Schafer led a larger group on a
European tour that included lectures and workshops in several
major cities, and a research project that made detailed
investigations of the soundscape of five villages, one in each
of Sweden, Germany, Italy, France and Scotland. The tour
completed the WSP's analogue tape library which includes more
than 300 tapes recorded in Canada and Europe with a stereo
Nagra. The work also produced two publications, a narrative
account of the trip called European Sound Diary and a
detailed soundscape analysis called Five
Village Soundscapes. Schafer's definitive
soundscape text, The Tuning of the World published in
1977, and Barry Truax's reference work for acoustic and
soundscape terminology, the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology published in 1978, completed the publication phase
of the original project.
In 2009 the Five
Village Soundscapes was reprinted (with 2 CDs) along
with the results of the Finnish study (Acoustic Environments in
Change) that re-visited those sites. The
publication is available through Granum. In addition, the HTML
Soundscape Composition Documentation
DVD-ROM also published in 2009 contains sound excerpts
and graphics from all of the WSP documents.
The WSP group in the churchyard, Dollar (Scotland), 1975. Left to right: R. M. Schafer, Jean Reed, Bruce Davis (standing), Peter Huse, Howard Broomfield.
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Howard Broomfield at SFU, ca. 1972 |
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The foundation laid by the WSP has been continued through the teaching and research program in acoustic communication at SFU, as well as through Truax's 1984 publication Acoustic Communication (second edition, 2001), which deals with all aspects of sound and the impact of technology, and the compositions of individual composers. One such composer, Hildegard Westerkamp, edited the Soundscape Newsletter (1991-95) and Soundscape – The Journal of Acoustic Ecology (2000-2012), and was instrumental in helping found the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) in 1993 that connects groups and individuals around the world who are concerned with the soundscape.
In 1997, the World Soundscape Project and Cambridge Street Records re-issued the original Vancouver Soundscape recordings from 1973, along with the 1996 soundscape compositions and documentary Soundscape Vancouver 1996, on a double CD. The same year, Truax served on the City of Vancouver's Urban Noise Taskforce and contributed to the educational recommendations of its final report, Urban Noise. In 1999, Cambridge Street Publishing issued the original Handbook as a CD-ROM.
The catalogue of the WSP Tape Library
(including photos from many of the recording sites) and the
Sound References in Literature database is available on the Sonic
Research Studio website, along with
historical and recent photos of the studio. An extensive
collection of the print, graphic and audio documents related
to the World Soundscape Project including the entire
collection of sound recordings from 1972 to the present, plus
interviews and videos, is also available online as the WSP Database. Please
contact Barry Truax (truax@sfu.ca) for guest access.
Hildegard Westerkamp with the WSP Tape Library, ca. 1982.
Related sites: World
Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE)
Soundscape Explorations Video Collection: www.soundexplorations.blogspot.com
