Hildegard Westerkamp Explained

Hildegard Westerkamp
Birth Date:8 April 1946
Birth Place:Osnabrück, Germany
Nationality:Canadian
Field:composer, radio art, acoustic ecology
Alma Mater:University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University
Works:Fantasie for Horns I (1978)A Walk Through the City (1981)Harbour Symphony (1986)Cricket Voice (1987)Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989)Beneath the Forest Floor (1992)Gently Penetrating Beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place (1997)Into the Labyrinth (2000)Attending to Sacred Matters (2002)MotherVoiceTalk (2008)

Hildegard Westerkamp (born April 8, 1946, in Osnabrück, Germany) is a Canadian composer, radio artist, teacher, and sound ecologist.[1] She is known for her contributions to and development of acoustic ecology, soundscape composition, and soundwalks, particularly through her work on the World Soundscape Project in the 1970s-'80s. She has written extensively on these topics for journals and conferences, including Organised Sound.

Westerkamp studied flute and piano at the Conservatory of Music in Freiburg, West Germany from 1966 to 1968, then moved to Canada to study for a Bachelor of Music from the University of British Columbia, which she earned in 1972.[2] During this time as a student she encountered both Barry Truax and R. Murray Schafer, and began working for Schafer as part of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 1973.[3] She later enrolled as a student in the communications department and completed her thesis, entitled "Listening and Soundmaking: A Study of Music-As-Environment," for a Master of Arts in 1988;[4] she taught acoustic communication at Simon Fraser until 1990. In 2024, Westerkamp received an honorary doctorate from SFU in recognition of her contributions to acoustic ecology, music composition, and sound studies.[5]

Westerkamp became a naturalized citizen of Canada in 1975. In 1972, she married the Canadian poet and playwright Norbert Ruebsaat and collaborated with him on a number of projects before their separation. She later maintained a long-term relationship with Peter Grant, who passed away in 2014 and to whom her 1997 piece Talking Rain is dedicated.[6]

Creative, Public, and Scholarly Work

Music

Many of Westerkamp's compositions deal with the acoustic environment, a method of composing known as soundscape composition.[7] [8] As part of her work with the World Soundscape Project she listened to and catalogued the Project's field recording archives,[9] and has since dedicated the majority of her work to pieces that involve the layering and manipulation of field recordings. She additionally popularized the creative method/experience of soundwalking, which she defines as "any excursion whose main purpose is to listen to the environment."[10] Works such as Kits Beach Soundwalk are inspired by this practice.[11]

Collaborations

She collaborated with director Gus Van Sant, with whom she seemed to share work that explored similar concepts. To quote Randolph Jordan, "Her compositions are ideally suited for helping to flesh out Van Sant's portraits of young people adrift in worlds from which they are seemingly detached, but who might well be pointing towards alternative modes of environmental awareness."[12]

1973–91

From 1973–80 Westerkamp worked as a research associate along with R. Murray Schafer at the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University. This work fed into Schafer's book The Tuning of the World.[13] In 1974 she began working as a producer and host at CFRO (Vancouver Cooperative Radio). Through her work with Schafer and with radio, she developed a deep interest and concern for noise and the acoustic environment, which greatly influenced her style of composition. After this time, she began to experiment with recording, processing, and mixing environmental sounds in the recording studio.[14]

Westerkamp was involved in several other research projects on noise, acoustic ecology and music. From 1974 to 1975, she was a researcher with the Noise Abatement Project of the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation in Vancouver.

Throughout the 1980s, she developed an interest in music for live performance, and in creating installations and other "composed environments" (sometimes in collaboration) for specific sites. In 1982, she was a researcher for the Women in Music project at Simon Fraser University. She is also a founding member of the World Forum on Acoustic Ecology (WFAE).

1991 - present

After 1991, Westerkamp devoted herself to more fully to composing, lecturing, and writing, disseminating her compositions and ideas at concerts and conferences. She was editor of The Soundscape Newsletter[15] from 1991 - 1995 and joined the editorial committee of Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology,[16] for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology in 2000.

She has also composed soundtracks for radio dramas and film and her music has been featured in movies by Gus Van Sant including Elephant (2003) and Last Days (2005). She collaborated with Jesse Zubot on the electronic score for Koneline (2016).[17]

Some of Westerkamp's works are directly related to feminism. In 1990, she composed "École Polytechnique", which was commissioned by Montréal Musiques Actuelles/New Music America. According to Andra McCartney and Marta McCarthy, "Hildegard Westerkamp's (1990) composition École Polytechnique is an artistic response to one of Canada's most profoundly disturbing mass murders, the 1989 slaying of fourteen women in Montreal, Quebec."[18]

Discography

Recordings featuring Westerkamp's compositions, chronologically:

List of works

Compositions

Composed environments and sound installations

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Kirk MacKenzie. "Westerkamp, Hildegard." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed December 5, 2015.
  2. Web site: Hoolboom . Michael . Frise . Heather . Hildegard Westerkamp . September 16, 2024.
  3. Book: Clarke . Michael . Inside computer music . Dufeu . Frédéric . Manning . Peter . 2020 . Oxford University Press . 978-0-19-065968-4 . New York, NY, United States of America.
  4. Web site: Hildegard Westerkamp - Monoskop . 2024-09-17 . monoskop.org.
  5. Web site: Deneault . Tessa Perkins . Communication alumnus and renowned acoustic ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp receives honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from SFU . 2024-09-17 . www.sfu.ca . en.
  6. Web site: Westerkamp Talking Rain (1997) . 2024-09-17 . Hildegard Westerkamp . en.
  7. Westerkamp . Hildegard . April 2002 . Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology . Organised Sound . en . 7 . 1 . 51–56 . 10.1017/S1355771802001085 . 1469-8153.
  8. Truax . Barry . August 2008 . Soundscape Composition as Global Music: Electroacoustic music as soundscape . Organised Sound . en . 13 . 2 . 103–109 . 10.1017/S1355771808000149 . 1469-8153.
  9. Web site: Hagood . Mack . January 9, 2023 . Hildegard Westerkamp: A Life in Soundscape Composition . September 16, 2024 . Phantom Power . Podcast Interview.
  10. Web site: Agosto Foundation :: Soundwalking . 2024-09-17 . agosto-foundation.org . en.
  11. Listening is Action: A Soundwalk with Hildegard Westerkamp . 2023-06-05 . Velasco-Pufleau . Luis . Zenodo . 2024-09-17 . 10.5281/zenodo.7679234 . Zenodo.
  12. Web site: Jordan . Randolph . The Work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Films of Gus Van Sant . Offscreen . 5 December 2022.
  13. Book: Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World. Knopf. 1977. 0771079656.
  14. Web site: Hildegard Westerkamp . 2015-12-05 . The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  15. Web site: WFAE Soundscape Newsletter Archive. wfae.proscenia.net. 2015-12-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304071141/http://wfae.proscenia.net/library/newsletter/index.html. 2016-03-04. dead.
  16. Web site: World Forum For Acoustic Ecology. wfae.proscenia.net. 2015-12-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20151208170735/http://wfae.proscenia.net/journal/. 2015-12-08. dead.
  17. Web site: Music and the Movies: Koneline: our land beautiful. Ennis. Paul. 10 June 2016. the WholeNote. 7 February 2018.
  18. Web site: McCartney . Andra . McCarthy . Marta . Choral. Public, and Private Listener Responses to Hildegard Westerkamp's École Polytechnique . Hildegard Westerkamp (Inside the Soundscape) . University of Guelph . 11 December 2022.
  19. Web site: KRAAK Various This Place is Dreaming . 2024-09-16 . www.kraak.net.
  20. Web site: Into India, by Hildegard Westerkamp . 2024-09-16 . earsay music . en.
  21. Web site: Breaking News, by Hildegard Westerkamp . 2024-09-16 . earsay music . en.
  22. Web site: Klavierklang, by Hildegard Westerkamp and Rachel Iwaasa . 2024-09-16 . earsay music . en.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hildegard Westerkamp".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2025, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.