The main components of Gubaidulina's aesthetic result from the interaction of purely musical and philosophical criteria. The former contingent has received thorough examination in the context of the above analyses. Several connections have been established between the handling of musical parameters and their underlying semantic conception. The following chapter seeks to enumerate the philosophical and introspective concepts lying at the heart of Gubaidulina's general aesthetic, regarding them as products of the composer's contemporary perspective and spiritual consciousness.
One of the major semantic themes of Gubaidulina's music is that of inner spiritual turmoil. Clearly, inward struggle and the spiritual battle with adversity have formed a very real part of the composer's life, owing to the harsh living and working conditions imposed by the communist state. In her music, the "spirit" exerts a noble and impassioned struggle. Continually resisting forces of destruction, its creative energy fends off surrounding danger, proceeding resolutely to wield an impregnable cycle of life about it.
This conceptual optimism reflects a positive attitude to life in general, expressed in Gubaidulina's admiration for those who, like herself, have resisted the evils of spiritual assimilation:
"...we were living in Kazan, and in a state of real poverty. Money was in short supply, and we were reduced to selling furniture and clothes in order to eat... I witnessed before me both death and life, the birth of a new people, and because of this I felt such respect for my parents, who, in conditions as difficult as these, never once lost the least part of their honesty and purity."
Another consistent undercurrent in Gubaidulina's music, likewise rooted in a response to life's hardships, is the coexistence of music and religion. Gubaidulina's childhood memory of this profound association has already been discussed in an earlier chapter. In a more recent interview with Valentina Cholopova1 she discusses with the expressive facility of an adult's perspective the interrelationship of music and religion and the place it occupies in her artistic objective:
"I am a religious person, of orthodox faith, and by "religion" I mean re-ligio, the recomposition of a bond, the recomposition of the binding-together of life. Life divides man into many pieces. Something is needed to restore a sense of integrity - and that is, religion. There is no weightier occupation than the recomposition of spiritual integrity through the composition of music."
One of the most important contingents of Gubaidulina's philosophical aesthetic is that which responds to an awareness of her contemporary artistic environment. In an analysis of the symphony Stimmen... Verstummen...Cholopova discusses the extent to which this work, and Gubaidulina's music in general, owes itself to contemporary musical currents, especially those pertaining to the symphonic genre.2 She attributes to the influence of modern objectivity Gubaidulina's rejection of romantic "individualism", and the absence in her music of any "moment of subjective, lyrical reflection", an element inseparable from the symphonies of Mahler, Shostakovich or Schnittke. In saying this, Cholopova does not imply the absence of dramatic or subjective dimensions in Gubaidulina's music. She proposes, rather, that in terms of historical inheritance, these have more in common with the classical principle of antithesis that with that of the self-absorbed nineteenth century tradition. In terms of the 20th century symphonic tradition (one which she also relates to that of other genres), Cholopova outlines a certain conceptual hurdle that continually confronts today's composer: namely, the unstated obligation to address the evolution of the genre. In an interview with Julia Makeyeva3, Gubaidulina herself observes how this very same problem of reinterpreting the genre becomes intensified in this century, where every work must address a new technical and/or conceptual theme:
"At first music developed within a whole millenium in one and the same direction, and then, for a time, was shaped in one direction for the duration of the century, and later there followed a time in which several schools of composition were assigned there own direction. Today, however, we are moving to the stage whereby only a single work is written in a certain technique and with a certain formal conception, one which, naturally, for this reason, is more difficult to create."
Gubaidulina's response to this situation has been a general avoidance of classical genres, in favor of more individual titles not reliant on classical form models. In the same interview, Makeyeva proposes that Gubaidulina has, in every piece of music, "posed and solved a new problem"; to which she replies: "Yes, for every new work I pose a conceptionally new task, and attempt to find something that has not yet existed in the preceding work."
In an interview with Dmitri Kadanzev, Gubaidulina discusses the Soviet and international avant-garde in terms of their similarities and points of difference. This conversation concludes with a few observations about the contemporary artistic scene and the universal elements that unite it. When asked, finally, where she believes the "peculiarity" of the present society's consciousness would lie, she replies as follows:
The greatest peculiarity is our life in the era of the real apocalypse. In no other period of history was the end of the world so imminent. That leaves its mark on all areas of our life, on all our deeds.
In her analysis of Stimmen... Verstummen..., Cholopova identifies precisely this kind of theme lying at the core of the work's dramaturgical structure:
The total catastrophe which marks this symphonic development causes the confrontational, opposing powers of the beginning to collapse like a burning dome, and to become rubble and ashes... The symphony...is a point of discussion with existential questions pertaining to humanity, the earth and the universe, with questions of their continued existence in view of the imminent cataclysm of the apocalypse.
Thus the element of cataclysmic collapse already observed in In Croce and Garten von Freuden und Traurigkeiten is indicative of a spiritual concept underlying Gubaidulina's music in general, which forms a significant component of her religious and psychological awareness. As with every contingent of her artistic aesthetic, this one can be associated with a philosophical counterpart existing within a deeply personal and inwardly-spiritual consciousness. Thus when she claims to have devoted herself in her composition "to that highest philosophy of the world's origin", she refers to a quest whose significance extends beyond the phenomenon of creation. For Gubaidulina, the act of composition unites those elements in life which she holds most dear - namely religious faith, spiritual survival and artistic beauty, and this combined ideology, conversely, has formed the basis for her creative inspiration.
1 Valentina Cholopova, Musyka Spaset Mir ("Music Will Save the World"), "Sovetskaya Muzyka", 9, 1990, p.46.
2 Der Sinfonische Kosmos Sofia Gubaidulinas, Valentina Cholopova, "Sowjetische Musik im Licht der Perestroika", Danuser, pp. 124-8.
3 Sofia Gubaidulina im Gesprach mit Julia Makeyeva, "Musik im Licht der Perestroika", Danuser, pp. 248-52.
© Fay Neary, 1999