SOFIA GUBAIDULINA 

Composer Sofia Gubaidulina, born in Chistopol, at the Tatar Republic of the ex-Soviet Union, in 1931, of a Tatar father and a Russian mother, began her musical studies at the Conservatorium of Kazan, and later specializes in composition with Nikolai Peiko at the Conservatoire of Moscow, where she gets her music degrees under the tutelage of Vissarion Shebalin.

A resident in Moscow until 1992, this same year she moves to the city of Hamburg, in Germany, where she will settle.

Her work in the field of composition is characterized by the tactile exploration and improvisation based on the folkloric elements typical of the Caucasian, Russian and Asian cultures, using several ritual instruments that the artist has collected together with the ensemble Astreia, of which she is a co-founder, with her friends Victor Suslina and Vyacheslav Artyomov, in 1975. 

The composer, experimenting with musical tempo and these instruments, attains sonic responses that up to then had been unknown to any musicians, in a creativity that takes the best advantage of all the tools available to it, from the most traditional to the most avantgarde.

Likewise, this special interest to compose that has taken her to international recognition, has been stimulated by her particular personalization and internalization of the Western techniques typical of the New Music, that the artist has absorbed fast enough, this being a typical trait of all the composers in her country and generation, in a post-Stalin era that gave way to these Western influences in the cultural universe of these countries. On the other hand, Gubaidulina has a tremendous faith in the mystic proprieties of music. All this will no doubt be reflected on her music.

Previous Page (Articles/News)