Gubaidulina's Canticle

[foxandpeng]

I wrote this on another forum about Gubaidulina:

Back in 2020 (aka the year that hell officially broke loose), I took a seven month absence from work amidst the panic and uncertainty that was happening around this time. In this particular period, there were a lot of composers that were kind of on my "backburner" so to speak and Gubaidulina was one of them. For years, I found her music difficult and just too austere for my tastes, but I would say the work that broke the mold for me was Sieben Worte (Seven Words). I became obsessed with this piece and read as much as I could about it. I found it endlessly fascinating (and still do), but this was the piece that enabled me to lift the fog from her music and pursue it with an open-mind. I only owned a couple of her recordings, but I ended up with probably double what I owned after I got deeper into her music. A lot of listeners and historians have attached her music to religion or say it's spiritual. I wouldn't disagree with this as religion is vital to her existence, but it's not the only element in her style. I think her music has a vicious, snarling quality to it as well. She is obviously avant-garde in the way she employs unusual timbres and extended techniques within many of her works, but none of it is ever out-of-place or feels like she's just "note spinning". Hard to believe she's in her early 90s now. I hope she still has much life in her to give us more music. She has become one of my favorite composers.

Thanks for this helpful piece.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Thanks for this helpful piece.

Thank you. One of the many fascinating things I've read about her is when she's writing a new work, she conceives of the ending first and everything else comes after. So, in this way, she actually works her way backwards. Truly remarkable.

[foxandpeng]

Thank you. One of the many fascinating things I've read about her is when she's writing a new work, she conceives of the ending first and everything else comes after. So, in this way, she actually works her way backwards. Truly remarkable.

Agreed!

[CRCulver]

Thank you. One of the many fascinating things I've read about her is when she's writing a new work, she conceives of the ending first and everything else comes after.

I'm not sure how this squares with her well-documented use of numerical mysticism: starting from the mid 1980s, she structured her pieces using the Fibonacci sequence and other such series. One can find sketches, for example, where the proportional skeleton was the first thing set down for a work. Did she then write the second half first?

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

I'm not sure how this squares with her well-documented use of numerical mysticism: starting from the mid 1980s, she structured her pieces using the Fibonacci sequence and other such series. One can find sketches, for example, where the proportional skeleton was the first thing set down for a work. Did she then write the second half first?

I'll let Frau Gubaidulina explain: