Sofia GUBAIDULINA
(b. 1931)
Born in 1931 in Christopol
in the former Soviet republic of Tatar,
Sofia Gubaidulina was a pupil of Shostakovich
and went on to become one of the most
significant post-Schnittke modern Russian
composers as well as one of today's
best known women composers. Her work
has a sense of great profundity, often
drawing on her religious faith, reminiscent
in some respects of the music of Arvo
Pärt, but in other ways more complex
and more dynamic. Her sound-world is
serious, sombre and spare but in its
pared-down beauty often moving. She
regards her music as standing between
the East and the West, as her birthplace
does geographically, drawing on both
in equal measure.
A keen pianist from
the age of five, who also began composing
at a young age, Gubaidulina began her
professional musical studies in piano
and composition in the regional capital
of Kazan aged 17. She moved to Moscow
where she studied with Shostakovich
who encouraged her 'to continue along
your mistaken path'. The violist Yuri
Bashmet, for whom she wrote a concerto
- the only female composer amongst the
48 dedications he has received - in
1997 went on to say,
'and at the end
of this journey are nothing more nor
less than the questions of human existence:
Burton's death, love and hatred, beautiful
and the oddly, good and evil -- as with
Shakespeare, but in a different way.
In the process she uses a whole range
of expressive devices, including specific
orchestral effects, and draws on an
infinite number of sources such as religious
things, the storehouse of more than
300 years of Tartar history and so on.'
Visits from Luigi Nono
and Pierre Boulez to the Moscow Conservatoire
were also influential for Gubaidulina
and during the 1960s she explored a
wide range of approaches including serialism
and electronics. This can be heard in
her first String Quartet, in which the
musicians move back from the centre
of the stage as the work progress -
physically as well as musically 'fading
out'. The music explores the concepts
of 'connection' and 'separation'.
Her interest in innovative
technical features of performance has
continued. The most recent of her string
quartets, Number Four (1993), involves
simultaneous playing by a live quartet
and a taped quartet, the pre-recorded
and live music being a quarter of a
tone apart. The sound of rubber balls
being bounced on the strings of the
instruments is also used. The composer
says of this work:-
'It’s a quiet conversation
between the real and the recognised,
the unreal and the unrecognised, darkness
and light. There's no crashing moment,
no conflict or clash. It's an intimate
conversation, serious and calm.'
Her string quartets
all inhabit avant-garde territory but
some of the other parts of her significant
output of chamber music are more accessible
for the listener despite their use of
less conventional forces.
The theme of light
and darkness recurs in the later work
- 1994 - 'Music for Flute, Strings
and Percussion'. This involves the
string orchestra being divided into
two halves, one half having their instruments
tuned down a quarter tone. Gubaidulina
has written several works for the flute,
culminating in the recent concerto for
the Israeli flautist, Sharon Bezaly,
which I have reviewed
previously here.
Like other Soviet composers,
including her teacher Shostakovich and
her contemporary Schnittke, Gubaidulina
supported herself by writing music for
films and for the theatre. Even in her
purely musical works, a wide range of
extra-musical sources play a significant
part - religious texts, poetry, history,
philosophy, mythology. T S Eliot's Four
Quartets - which she set for an
Octet at the request of Gidon Kremer,
adding soprano voice - she describes
as having a very profound effect on
her when she first read them.
Traditional Russian
music has also played its part in her
musical activities; she has been part
of a group, established to perform traditional
music and in her concert works she has
included writing for the bayan, a
Russian type of accordion, notably in
the Last Seven Words from the Cross
and in the solo piece De
Profundis.
A significant proportion
of Gubaidulina's work is inspired by
religious or spiritual sources: her
cello concerto for Rostropovich, 'Canticle
of the Sun', is inspired by a prayer
of St Francis of Assisi; her recent
flute concerto, The Deceitful Face
of Hope and Despair has Ash Wednesday
themes; the inspiration for the solo
accordion work De Profundis is
from the psalms; and the early piano
concerto Introitus takes its
name from a section of the mass. Although
she has not composed music specifically
for use in church, she has created a
major choral setting of the St John
Passion - a stark and haunting work
for unaccompanied voices.
Championed outside
the USSR by the violinist Gidon Kremer,
Gubaidulina first visited the West in
1985. Shortly after this, she moved
permanently and lives near Hamburg,
Germany, remaining closely associated
with Kremer and with the Lockhausen
chamber music festival. This was followed
by an intense period of creative output,
with two string quartets, the vocal
and chamber work Hommage à
T.S.Eliot and a symphony, Stimmen
.....Verstummen being produced in
the following year.
Since then her international
reputation has grown significantly and
she has received a large number of commissions
from European and American sources.
These have included significant concerti
for viola (q.v.); for cello, a beautiful
and uplifting work dedicated to Rostropovich;
and for flute (q.v.) as well a large-scale
St John Passion which received
its British premiere at the 2002 Proms.
A major retrospective of her work formed
the BBC's Composer Weekend in 2001.
Julie Williams
MAJOR WORKS
De Profundis
Introitus - Piano Concerto
1978
Offertorium - Violin
Concerto for Gidon Kremer 1980
Last Seven Words from
the Cross 1982
Stimmen .... Verstummen
.. 1986
Hommage à T
S Eliot (1987)
String Quartets 1-4
1971,1987, 1987, 1993
Music for Flute, Strings
and Percussion 1994
The Canticle of the
Sun - Cello Concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich
1997
Viola Concerto (for
Yuri Bashmet) 1997
St John Passion 2002
Flute Concerto - for
Sharon Bezaly 2004
