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Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography. By Michael Kurtz. Trans. by Christoph K. Lohmann and ed. by Malcolm Hamrick Brown.

2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ml/gcn105

1477-4631

Ivana Medić,

Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies

This biography is the latest in the scholarly series Russian Music Studies, founded by Professor Malcolm Hamrick Brown and published by Indiana University Press since 1990. Kurtz's original text (written in German and published in Stuttgart in 2001) has been slightly expanded and updated, and it is aptly translated by Christoph K. Lohmann. This is the first comprehensive biography of Gubaidulina to appear in English; in fact, Kurtz's bibliography reveals how little has been written and published on Gubaidulina by English-speaking scholars. Hence this book is intended to fill a major gap, and it succeeds in many ways. It starts rather unpromisingly, with a Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich, a painfully shallow ode to Gubaidulina, apparently included here in order to boost her Western ranking. However, things soon get better, and Kurtz is careful to prepare us for what follows by stating ‘what we in the West would disparage as speculation or mysticism is entirely acceptable in Russia’ (p. xvi). Therefore we should not be puzzled to find that 90 per cent of Gubaidulina's statements, confessions, and musings are about her religious/mystical experiences and how they affect her music. Kurtz's own observations imply that he believes that there is no such thing as ‘art for art's sake’ in Russia. He also prepares us for many a hagiographical meme on Gubaidulina by her friends and admirers by reminding us that ‘in Russia, especially Moscow, illustrious artists command admiration and fervor bordering on religious devotion’ (p. 44). Indeed, Gubaidulina and almost all of her most prominent ‘non-conformist’ Soviet peers, such as Alfred Schnittke, Galina Ustvolskaya, Arvo Pärt, and Valentin Silvestrov, cast themselves in the roles of spiritually evolved creators, practising believers, ascetically devoted to their art. Many Soviet listeners projected their own suppressed metaphysical ideas and spiritual values onto music, and concert performances of Gubaidulina's, Schnittke's, or Artyomov's music became substitutes for banned religious observation, sites for pilgrimage or mass exorcism—just as premieres of Shostakovich had been. We find plenty of evidence of this throughout Kurtz's book, and he himself never questions or, Heaven forbid, deconstructs the Gubaidulina cult.