Sofia Gubaidulina, who fused the realms of sound and spirituality, dies at 93

Sofia Gubaidulina, the grande dame of new music, and considered the most important Russian composer of her era, died on March 13, 2025, at her home near Hamburg, Germany. She was 93. Her publisher, the London-based Boosey & Hawkes, announced her death. 

Throughout her career, she drew inspiration from a deep faith. Her interest in the world, in people and in the spiritual touched everyone who met and worked with her. In her work, she always focussed on the elementary, on human existence and the transformative power of music. She is like a ‘flying hermit’, said conductor Simon Rattle, because she is always “in orbit and only occasionally visits terra firma. Now and then she comes to us on the earth and brings us light and then goes back into her orbit.”

Conductor Andris Nelsons once noted that “Sofia Gubaidulina’s music — its intellect and its profound spirituality — is deeply touching. It really gets under your skin.”

Her works are almost always about something that goes beyond the purely musical. This could be a poetic text underpinning the music or hidden between the lines, a ritual or an instrumental action. Some of her scores bear witness to an intensive preoccupation with mystical ideas, Christian symbolism or literature.

Despite all of this, her work can hardly be divided into sacred and secular compositions. Until the end of her life, she was interested in rare Russian, Caucasian and Central and East Asian folk and traditional instruments, among others, on which she improvised and found completely new sound worlds. 

(The Chicago Symphony Orchestra most recently performed her Fairytale Poem in concerts Nov. 21-23, 2024, under Hannu Lintu. In addition, the CSO gave the world premiere of her Viola Concerto on April 17, 1997, with Yuri Bashmet as soloist and Kent Nagano conducting.)

"[Sofia Gubaidulina] is like a ‘flying hermit’, because she is always in orbit and only occasionally visits terra firma. Now and then she comes to us on the earth and brings us light and then goes back into her orbit.” — Simon Rattle 

Born in 1931 in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of Russia, the composer suffered from repressive measures and restrictions imposed by the Soviet government. After her works found their way into Western concert programs in the early 1980s, thanks in part to the efforts of violinist Gidon Kremer, she decided to leave her homeland and emigrate to Germany.

Gubaidulina studied piano and composition at the Kazan Conservatory and then enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory in 1954. Her teachers included Yuri Shaporin and Nikolai Peiko, an assistant to Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1959, Peiko introduced his student to Shostakovich. After hearing her music, Shostakovich said, “Don’t be afraid to be yourself. My wish for you is that you should continue on your own, incorrect way.”

One of her first works to be heard by Western audiences was Offertorium, her first violin concerto, which Kremer premiered in 1981. Based on a theme from Bach’s Musical Offering, its main theme is dissected, expanded and reconstructed. She wrote two more violin concertos: In Tempus Praesens for Anne-Sophie Mutter in 2007 and Dialogue: I and You for Vadim Repin in 2018.

Since 1992, Gubaidulina had lived near Hamburg in a tranquil town in the Geest and Marsch region of southern Holstein. She was a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg and the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm; she received honorary doctorates from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Tianjin Music Conservatory and the University of Chicago, and many prizes, including the Rome International Composer’s Competition in 1974, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in 1999 and Sweden’s Polar Music Prize in 2002.

Gubaidulina was convinced that faith in God is directly related to the creative drive. She viewed composing as a sacred act and the resulting work as a kind of sacrifice. She was known for her charisma and her ability to convey her artistic and philosophical views in a captivating way, even in conversations or workshops with her interpreters.

When asked how she thought her music could contribute to fostering peace in a world in disarray, Gubaidulina said, just a few years before her death: “The art of music, like any other artform, is affected by an existential feeling. Why? Because this artform in particular has to do with a material that directly connects the finite with the infinite. In this sense, sonic art in particular has the means by which man could be stopped in his rapid fall.”