In memory of Sofia Gubaidulina, Russian composer (October 24, 1931–March 13, 2025)
During a family vacation at the age of five, Sofia saw an icon for the first time. She was fascinated, even spellbound by the impression the icon made on her. Perhaps she sensed something of what Dostoyevsky meant when he called the icon a “window.” A window into another world, but not a world impossibly far away: for Orthodox believers, the spiritual world is immanent in the icon itself. The icon represents—truly makes present—what is depicted. And just as the icon makes the life and weaving of the spiritual world visible, Sofia Gubaidulina’s music makes it audible. Sofia’s life-changing inner experience with the icon occurred in 1936. Both her religious and artistic impulses were awakened in this moment. She told her parents of the experience, and they were shocked, telling her not to speak of it to anyone. These were the years of Stalin’s Great Purge. Nearly every family lost someone, and no one felt safe. Instead of religion, communism was given as the doctrine of salvation. Few churches and monasteries remained. Into such times and circumstances, Sofia was born—as was Alexander Men (1935–1990), a priest born in Moscow and now known far beyond Russia. Two stars rising in dark times, beacons against persecution, terror, and destruction.
Soon after the five-year-old’s experience with the icon, Sofia had her first profound musical experiences. A grand piano was brought into her home, which she regarded as a living being, experimenting with it while listening intently. She ran her fingers over the keys, the strings, the soundboard—eliciting all possible sounds from the instrument; it was another fascinating, even heavenly experience for her, which she equated with her experience of the icon. Religion and art found their way to her soul in very unique ways. Her musical art, composing and improvising, began here as a religious act of creation, with the goal to continuously reconnect heaven and Earth. Her family history also connected different worlds: her father’s father was Tatar, a Muslim imam; her father, a mining engineer; her Russian mother [of Polish-Jewish descent], a teacher. The music school in her hometown of Kazan (over 500 miles [800 km] east of Moscow) became her “temple of childhood” during these times of terror and war. She studied piano and received her first lessons in composition. With Stalin’s death in 1954, the years of political thaw began. Solzhenitsyn was eventually allowed to publish his first work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [1962]. Sofia received a scholarship and continued her studies in Moscow.
In 1959, at 28 years old, she had a significant encounter with composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975), who, already in those times, was held in the highest esteem, almost revered. Without him, Sofia later recalled, “I couldn’t have lived and worked in those years; without him, I couldn’t breathe.”1 At the request of her composition teacher, Nikolai Peiko, Shostakovich invited Sofia to his home. She was to play the symphony she composed the previous year for her exam. When she’d finished, Sofia remembers he gave her some general compliments. But as she was leaving, he said a few words to her that left an indelible impression: “Be yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. I wish you to continue on your own, ‘wrong’ path.”2
With this encouragement, she developed a rich musical oeuvre over the decades that followed and attracted ever wider circles. Michael Kurtz traced her development step by step in his comprehensive biography published in 2001 [in German and 2007 in English]. Sofia was invited to Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, and in 1992, she moved to the Hamburg area. I first met her at the Goetheanum in June 1998 during the music and cultural conference dedicated to her: Sofia Gubaidulina und die Verwandlung der Zeit [Sofia Gubaidulina and the transformation of time].3 I was especially impressed by her spontaneous improvisations on a wide variety of instruments, including the bayan [Russian accordion]. The “transformation of time” through music was immediately palpable: this music is unpredictable, always in becoming, opening new spaces, generating pure presence, and calling forth sounds and rhythms from out of the spirit.
After this first friendly encounter, I met her again on a flight from Hamburg to Moscow. We just happened to book seats next to one another! This gave us the chance to get to know each other better, and I remember she was reading Novalis’ Hymns to the Night. At the time, I was working in the leadership of the newly founded Christian Community Seminary in Hamburg. I had an idea. I visited her twice to ask her if she would be willing to compose music for the ordination of priests. We’d been working on the text for the ordination. She gladly agreed and even immediately had some initial ideas for a composition! When I asked about her fee, she simply replied, “For this, God gives me my wages.” Deeply moved, I pursued the idea further. In the spring of 2003, Sofia participated in the priest ordinations in Hamburg for the first time. Unfortunately, due to my departure from Hamburg, the project was not able to be realized.
From the rich œuvre of Sofia Gubaidulina, a few pieces deserve special mention. In 2000, she composed the powerful St. John Passion [Johannes-Passion] on commission from the Stuttgart International Bach Academy [Internationalen Bachakademie Stuttgart], in which she juxtaposed the text of the Gospel of St. John with passages from the Apocalypse. In 2001, she added an oratorio, John’s Easter [Johannes-Ostern]. She described this whole two-part work—requiring four vocal soloists, one hundred choir singers, and one hundred orchestra musicians—as her “opus summum” [supreme work], a kind of crowning achievement of her entire oeuvre. Her second violin concerto [In Tempus Praesens, “In the present tense”] is also worth mentioning, which she composed for Anne-Sophie Mutter, and which premiered in Lucerne in 2007, conducted by Simon Rattle (who once called her a “flying hermit” because of her extensive travels). The theme of this work, “From Both Sofias”—as Gubaidulina sometimes called it—is the Divine Sophia, so highly revered in the Eastern Church, “divine wisdom,” God’s power of creation. Lastly, we mention her work Über Liebe und Hass [On love and hate], composed in 2015/16, shortly before her 85th birthday. It can be seen as a kind of legacy, a final appeal to humanity to make peace and reconnect heaven and Earth. Sofia Gubaidulina died on March 13, 2025, near Hamburg at the age of 94.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Sofia Gubaidulina, July 1981. Photo: © DSmirnov
Footnotes
- Michael Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); originally published in German in 2001.
- Ibid. “I am aware that my musical path is oriented more toward the archaic than the classical world, and perhaps the reason for this lies in my origins, my nationality. The symbol is a living phenomenon and, like every organism, passes through various phases of life: it’s born, grows older, and dies. What is a symbol? In my opinion, it’s the maximum concentration of meanings, the consolidation of meanings. And the moment when the symbol enters the world is the moment when it flashes into existence with all its manifold origins on every level of human consciousness. In the real world, symbols can express themselves in a single gesture.”
- Cf. Sofia Gubaidulina, “Die Verwandlung der Zeit” [The transformation of time] in Überkonfessionelles Christentum: Festschrift aus Anlass der Öffentlichen Festtage des Priesterseminars Hamburg [Interdenominational Christianity: Commemorative publication on the occasion of the public celebrations of the Hamburg Seminary], edited by Günther Dellbrügger and Andreas Laudert (Hamburg: Stiftung Priesterseminar Hamburg der Christengemeinschaft [Foundation for the Priests’ Seminary of the Christian Community in Hamburg], 2002).
