Gubaidulina Sofia A.
Date of birth:
- 1931
Place of birth:
- Chistopol, Russia
Gubaidulina Sofia A.
Membership in the Academy:
- corresponding member – Department of Music and Musicology (19/5/2022 – …)
Curriculum Vitae
Sofia A. Gubaidulina, born in 1931 in Chistopol, Russia (then USSR), has been considered for a number of years to be one of the most important representatives of the European New Music in the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Since 1991 she permanently resides in Germany. She is the recipient of many awards and honours in Germany, France, Italy, Monaco, Japan, and elsewhere.
An outstanding feature of Gubaidulina’s oeuvre is the almost complete absence of so-called absolute music. The greatest part of her oeuvre has extra-musical connotations either in the form of a poem set to music, sometimes hidden between the lines, or in the form of some sort of instrumental ‘action’. Her literary interests and starting points are very broad and heterogeneous, from ancient Egyptian and Iranian poetry to twentieth-century and contemporary authors, among whom a special place is occupied by Marina Tsvetaeva. On the other hand, some of her compositions are infused with mystical ideas and Christian symbolism, as well as the influence of some Oriental philosophies. The greatest influence among composers on her oeuvre was exercised by the works of Dmitri Shostakovich and Anton Webern, which generally confirms that her musical and broader artistic orientation is universally humanistic and broadly international in its character. According to her personal statement, an ideal relationship towards both tradition and the new compositional techniques is one in which the master conquered both the old and the new, although in such a way that the artist does not bend to either of them. She explicitly considers her compositions not to be ‘constructed’ but ‘cultivated’.
Since Sofia A. Gubaidulina has been established for decades as an exceptionally important international composer, great orchestras from all over the world commission and perform her works. In 2011 she was elected member of the prestigious International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), whose honorary members were, among others, some of the greatest composers of the 20th century such as Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schönberg, Jean Sibelius and Igor Stravinsky.
Sofia A. Gubaidulina collaborated in and was present at numerous performances of her works at the Zagreb Music Biennale. In fact, a whole evening was consecrated to her oeuvre at the 23rd Biennale in 2005, and individual works were performed, for example, at the 20th (1999), 27th (2013), 28th (2015), 29th (2017) and 30th (2019) Biennale as well as at some other musical events held in Croatia.