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Sofia Gubaidulina: Music
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On October 24 the internationally famous Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina turned 70. A festival of Gubaidulina's music, timed to her jubilee, was held in Moscow last week. Gubaidulina was born in the Russian republic of Tatarstan in 1931. After graduating from the Kazan and Moscow Conservatories, she became a freelance composer. Independent-minded and self-determined, she developed her own, original style, shaped by the late 1960s, and has remained faithful to it throughout the past 4 decades. Having found her theme, a subject for creative research, she devoted herself entirely to it - a lonely human soul struggling to comprehend itself, isolated from the outer world and yearning for dialogue with its Creator.
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Hermann Conen in the CD booklet: "Sofia Gubaidulina has accepted the challenge of attempting to capture the great mystery in sound. Although the seven movements are, at least initially, clearly separated by string passages, there is no parallelism of word and sound in the traditional sense. It is more a matter of the instruments 'uttering' what cannot be sung or said; they 'speak' with 'instrumental, metaphorical gestures' (Gubaidulina).The cross symbolism palpable throughout the 'Seven Words' begins on the instrumental level: the cello, coming from the art music of 'high culture', stands for what is 'lofty'; the bayan, a button accordion from the sphere of Russian folk music. Although the sound production is totally different (bowed strings, metal reeds vibrated by air), the two instruments reveal astonishingly similar sonorities, sometimes to the point of indistinguishability...The music of the string orchestra is devised as a contrast to the harsh chromaticism of the cello/bayan and remains clearly separated during the first two movements. From the very first sound a ritualised musical meditation begins, its individual core elements unfolding almost imperceptibly at first and then growing inexorably towards one another."
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopal, a town in the Tatar Republic, in 1931. She completed her studies in 1963 at the Moscow Conservatory. Though intensely occupied with ethnic musical culture, her avant-garde leanings did not sit well with the Soviet authorities. Her music is characterized by deep-rooted spiritualism and avoidance of virtuosity for its own sake. She ... favors unusual and unlikely instrumental combinations. Violinist Gidon Kremer's steadfast advocacy and support of Gubaidulina helped establish Gubaidulina's reputation on the other side of the Iron Curtain in the mid-eighties.
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union in 1931. She studied piano and composition in Kazan and Moscow. During the Soviet times, she was a freelance composer, gaining her living by writing film scores. Her music was not recognized in the Soviet Union because of its modern language. She immigrated to Germany in 1991, and lives near Hamburg. Her music is now performed all over the world.
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in 1931 in the Tatar Autonomous Republic. She was a student at the Kazan Conservatory and the Moscow Conservatory. Her rnusic style shows the influence of Scriabin and Bartok. Private lessons from Viennese-born Philip Herschkowitz ... influenced her early music. Schnittke and Denisov were also students of Herschkowitz, who was himself a student of Webern. In the 1960's Gubaidulina and her colleagues were responsible for introducing serial, aleatoric, sonoristic, and collage techniques into Russian music.
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol 24th of October in 1931. When she graduated from the Kazan conservatory, she entered into the Moscow one, studio of Nikolai Peiko, one of the pupils of Dmitry Shostakovich. This composerhad a big influence in her life. "Way and style of his life were my guides…", - told Sofia Gubaidulina. Non-conformist by her nature she could not inscribe in generally accepted frames, musical critics treated her music skeptically. A foundation of experimental- improvising group "Astreya" together with Victor Suslin and Viacheslav Artemov only worsened her status.
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