{"id":21269,"date":"2022-11-16T20:00:55","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T01:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=21269"},"modified":"2022-11-30T16:51:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T21:51:06","slug":"her-kind-sofia-gubaidulina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2022\/11\/16\/her-kind-sofia-gubaidulina\/","title":{"rendered":"her kind: sofia gubaidulina"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The art of music is capable of touching and approaching mysteries and laws existing in the cosmos and in the world.\u201d \u2014Sofia Gubaidulina<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"This week, I had the pleasure of researching and listening to the music of Sofia Gubaidulina\u2014a composer whose studies took place in Soviet Russia. Born in 1931, Gubaidulina is considered one of the foremost Russian composers of the second half of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Sofia Gubaidulina\u2019s Piano Concerto Introitus<\/em> is a one of my favorite pieces of music I\u2019ve listened to recently. The opening unfolds from hollow, plaintive moans in the flutes and rises up in register and orchestration, building momentum to a near unison statement of one of the piece\u2019s primary gestures. I love her choice to use the lowest registers of the flute to open the piece\u2013it creates a beautiful, sacred ambience. Intervals of minor seconds, harmonic and melodic, evoke mysterium and tension.<\/p>\n

The piano enters briefly after the fall of the first climactic moment, and Gubaidulina hovers again in the bass register. The strings prolong mysticism and tension with buzzing tremolos and half steps; the woodwinds create a sustained backdrop in contrast to the other textures being used. It\u2019s surprising how little the piano is really used, considering it\u2019s a piano concerto, but I actually love the way Gubaidulina feels no obligation to keep the pianist active for the majority of the first half of the piece. It\u2019s unexpected, and the limited use of the piano draws more attention to it when it is playing.<\/p>\n

\"\"She makes use of simple ascending and descending scales in layers and layers of canons with the upper voices of woodwinds. The piano\u2019s melody returns, and strings enter in the low register, echoing chords we\u2019d heard earlier in the piano\u2013then echoing the scales we\u2019d just heard in the woodwinds. This time, richer and fuller, the scalar gesture opens up to a brief bassoon\/piano duet which evolves into a call-and-response between the piano and the orchestra.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the piece, there’s a section filled with trills layered one on top of the other which evolves in to these almost bell-like chords chiming in the piano part over a bed of trills in the string section. The strings fade away, and the piano is left alone to play meditative, scalar figures once again\u2014this time, with harmonic seconds floating on top.<\/p>\n

The concerto ends with a haunting trill at the top of the piano\u2019s range that serves in opposition to the concerto\u2019s opening. It seems as if the piece itself serves as an ascent\u2014perhaps to the celestial,\"\" or as a metaphor in line with the “Introitus” title, ascending from the secular to the sacred at the beginning of a religious event. This idea of ascent is also apparent in smaller motives throughout the piece; particularly in the sweeping gesture of the strings that serves as a pillar Gubaidulina keeps returning to. There’s a constant rise and fall that drives forward the concerto until we arrive at the end, suspended above.<\/p>\n

The interaction and consideration between all the voices and textures in this concerto is stunning. The textures and gestures are reminiscent of Debussy and Messiaen perhaps, but Gubaidulina\u2019s voice is strong. Her music was thought of as troublesome during her studies in Soviet Russia, but she was supported by Shostakovich, who in evaluating her final examination encouraged her to continue down her path despite others calling it “mistaken.\u201d I\u2019m grateful he encouraged her, because this piece is quite lovely. If you\u2019d like to take a listen, you can follow this link<\/a> to the her kind<\/em> playlist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The art of music is capable of touching and approaching mysteries and laws existing in the cosmos and in the world.\u201d \u2014Sofia Gubaidulina This week, I had the pleasure of researching and listening to the music of Sofia Gubaidulina\u2014a composer whose studies took place in Soviet Russia. Born in 1931, Gubaidulina is considered one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2262,"featured_media":20955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1334,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21505,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21269\/revisions\/21505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}