Music | Sofia Gubaidulina, Composer Who Provoked Soviet Censors, Dies at 93
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Sofia Gubaidulina, 2021. She was part of a group of important composers in the Soviet Union, including Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, who found disfavor with the authorities but acclaim abroad. Credit… Mario Wezel for The New York Times Blacklisted at home but finding acclaim abroad, she sought to bridge East and West, the sacred and the secular, in vivid, colorful compositions.
Sofia Gubaidulina, 2021. She was part of a group of important composers in the Soviet Union, including Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, who found disfavor with the authorities but acclaim abroad. Credit… Mario Wezel for The New York Times
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
March 13, 2025 Sofia Gubaidulina, a Tatar-Russian composer who defied Soviet dogma with her openly religious music and after decades of suppression moved to the West, where she was feted by major orchestras, died on Thursday at her home in Appen, Germany. She was 93.
Carol Ann Cheung, of Boosey & Hawkes, Ms. Gubaidulina’s publisher, said the cause was cancer.
Ms. Gubaidulina (pronounced goo-bye-doo-LEE-na) wrote many works steeped in biblical and liturgical texts that provoked censors at home and, beginning in the final decade of the Cold War, captivated Western audiences. She was part of a group of important composers in the Soviet Union, including Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, who found disfavor with the authorities but acclaim abroad.
She explored the tension between the human and the divine, and sought to place her music in the service of religion in the literal sense of repairing what she believed to be the broken bond between man and God. Using musical terms, Ms. Gubaidulina often spoke of her work bringing legato, a sense of connected flow, into the fragmented “staccato of life.”
Soloists who performed her work, among them the violinists Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sofie Mutter, often spoke of the emotional intensity that the music required. Conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Charles Dutoit and Kurt Masur, were strong advocates for her music.
Folk traditions also fascinated Ms. Gubaidulina, who credited her Tatar roots with her love for percussion and shimmering sound colors. She favored soft-spoken or tenebrous instruments including the harp, the 13-stringed Japanese koto and the double bass.
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Ms. Gubaidulina in 2009 at a music festival in Berlin. She credited her Tatar roots with her love for using percussion in her compositions. Credit… Kai Bienert/ullstein bild, via Getty Images Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
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