Sofia Gubaidulina, Der Zorn Gottes
Wien Modern Festival
November 6, 2020

On November 6th, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, The Wrath of God was live-streamed from an empty auditorium in Vienna. As a devout Orthodox Christian, Sofia Gubaidulina would perhaps see it as symbolic of the spiritual decay of the age that her orchestral representation of divine retribution could be experienced only impurely: filtered through digital compression, stereo mixing, and the anarchy of consumer-grade speakers and headphones. Examining the effects of low-fidelity audio reproduction on the aesthetic experience of music, Adorno laments, in his essay "The Radio Symphony,"[1] the destruction of the subtle gradations of timbre and dynamic which constitute a vital part of the formal structure of a symphony. Also missing is the enormity of orchestral sound — not just volume, but the enveloping spatial effect — relative to the listener, which allows him to "'enter' the door of the sound as he would enter through the door of a cathedral," merging himself as subject with the objective totality of the piece. Like Beethoven's symphonies, only live performance in a concert hall could do justice to the totality that Gubaidulina has constructed.

The comparison with Beethoven is not hyperbole, but is in fact intended by the composer; the piece bears a dedication to "the great Beethoven," and the first motif is taken from the final movement of his last major work, the String Quartet No. 16. Gubaidulina, who recently turned 90, thus opens her piece by echoing Beethoven's last musical words. In DZG, this iambic and anapestic rhythm, which is also reminiscent of the beginning of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, is first stated gravely, in low, monophonic strings, the dark timbre of each note giving way to a piercing blast of brass. The same motif is then used to construct a flowing chromatic harmony. After an anxious transition, trumpets announce a new falling phrase which takes over the orchestra. The piece then gathers motion, driven by a snare ostinato and crescendo. Tam-tams and chimes further emphasize the unfolding mystery. Wave upon wave of brooding strings and violent brass ensue, until an undiluted major chord breaks through the dissonance, and the piece is brought to a glorious, consonant halt.

The narrative intent is clear — we are witnessing divine retribution, or the events of Revelation. The effect is strong, and the work's surface material immediately draws the listener in, while the evident symbolism hints at deeper levels of truth to be reached via more concentrated listening. Somewhat less adventurous than much of her earlier work, the "accessibility" of the surface material triggers a potential challenge for the listener, common to much program music nowadays: to avoid hearing the piece as the soundtrack to a movie — the movie of Revelation in this case. This is more a symptom of the culture industry's effect on listening than any implication of kitsch — and in any case, DZG would make for an excellent film score — but such is the difficulty of composing and listening to music in the twenty-first century, in which, under reified cultural conditions, everything has the potential to sound like an advertisement for something else. If society no longer reliably yields a consistent aesthetic framework, and if even the immediate sensations of our own minds can no longer be trusted, how can we hope to reach the inner truth of an artwork?

The crisis of modernity thus still confronts aesthetic critique today. In his quartet, Beethoven inscribed above the aforementioned motif the question, Muß es sein? ("Must it be?"), answered shortly thereafter with Es muß sein! ("It must be!") Exactly what he meant is uncertain, but as a central figure in the transition from Enlightenment classicism to romanticism, it seems that his parting question, and the verity of his answer, still task us today. For socialists, this task is the completion of the unfinished project of modernity. For Gubaidulina, the question instead relates to spiritual decay, and the rise of worldly hatred over sacred love. She claims that she wants to offer an alternative answer: "No, it doesn't have to be that way!"[2] Explaining her relationship with music and religion, she has made reference to the literal meaning of the word religion — re-ligio (to bind again) — claiming that the most serious task of the artist is to help re-establish a connection with the Absolute.[3] At this most fundamental level, her aims are no different than any secular composer of worth.

Sofia Gubaidulina. Der Zorn Gottes (2019).

For Benjamin and Adorno, only immanent critique can hope to lift the veil, via exploration of the historical temporality that underlies the truth-content of an artwork. Gubaidulina herself takes very seriously her engagement with the historical traditions of music, as shown in interviews and in various ways by her musical works. It is thus useful to consider how her music relates both to that historical process, and to the approaches taken by other religious composers of her time. The twentieth century was a fertile time for religious music, despite the increasing secularization of society, and its exemplars bear the same cultural stigmata as any other form of serious music.

Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern — in whose shadow the work of every subsequent composer has been cast — all composed major religious works, the latter two composers being devoutly religious. Gubaidulina cites Webern in particular as a major influence, and she wrote several serialist works in the 1960s. She came to the viewpoint, however, that this technique was something a composer should learn and master, before moving past it; before "he take upon himself a new burden."[4] Faint echoes might be heard in the more atonal sections of DZG, but overall, its motivic development and broadly tonal basis place it closer to Beethoven's classicism. Rather than follow her serialist contemporaries down the path of avant-garde formalism, which promised "progress" but left a legacy of repetition and marginalization, Gubaidulina created her own eclectic style by re-synthesizing various elements of classical and modern music, arriving at something both new and familiar.

Another obvious link can be found with Messaien and Scriabin's mystical and highly symbolic religious music. Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps used musical word painting (bird calls) and imaginative section names to symbolize the end of worldly time. This fascination with time is shared by Gubaidulina, who has evoked the temporal concept of "legato" as representative of the divine, as opposed to the fragmented staccato of everyday existence.[3]

In DZG, there is one phrase in particular whose stark simplicity suggests that some kind of extra-musical symbolism might be at play — a slow, ponderous, chromatic descending scale that lasts eight notes, each played in unison. The theme returns again later, but as a series of seventeen ascending dissonant chords. One could perhaps see in this the unity of divine judgement descending upon the world, followed by the resurrection of the multitude of mankind. But why eight notes in the first phrase? It spans a perfect fifth, but perhaps there is more to it.

Gubaidulina's works are frequently inspired by numerology, using natural sequences such as the Fibonacci numbers as an organizational principle. Christian symbols make frequent appearances too, most famously in her piece In Croce (1979/1992), which starts with the bayan (a type of Russian accordion) in high register, and cello in low register; the two instruments gradually come closer in pitch and move past each other, forming the shape of a cross in pitch-time space. This may be an egregious over-interpretation, but the number eight is said in biblical numerology to represent a new beginning: the day after the end of the week (alternatively, the new octave at the end of a seven-note diatonic scale); in DZG, this could perhaps denote the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. As to the symbolism of the number seventeen, I will defer to the professional numerologists.

A final comparison can be made with a group known (often pejoratively) as the "Holy Minimalists." Arvo Pärt (also Eastern Orthodox Christian), Henryk Górecki, and John Taverner all wrote religious music that formed part of the wider minimalist movement championed by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Taking inspiration from medieval sacred chant and Renaissance polyphony, they rejected the modernist serialism that was fashionable in academic circles in favor of a return to simple harmonies and rhythms, and replaced the goal-directed tonality of classical harmony with repetition. While clearly a reaction to the twentieth century musical experience, it could be claimed that their wish was to ignore it, to dissolve history.

In terms of spiritual practice, their approach could be seen as a return to monasticism. Their music is affective and meditative, letting the mind fall into a state of serene consciousness under which, ideally speaking, one might contemplate the Absolute. Alternatively, and perhaps more frequently, the result might be to purchase a product in an advertisement, or to relax after a stressful day of wage labor. One might even be tempted to make an uncharitable comparison with the monks in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who beat God into their heads as they repeatedly chant the Dies irae. According to John Cage: "In Zen they say, if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, 16, 32 and so on. Eventually one discovers it's not boring, but very interesting." In the reified cultural wasteland of the twenty-first century this is equivalent, perhaps, to the interest a prisoner takes in his jail cell.

Gubaidulina instead follows the path of her classical forebears, evoking the Absolute through the objective structure of her music, while also adding extra-musical symbolism to the equation. Her simple starting motif acts as the unifying force for a multitude of intricate elaborations, and by extending the concepts of consonance and dissonance to rhythm, timbre, and texture, she finds additional ways to employ relationships between tension and resolution, unity and multiplicity. However, she avoids the allure of pure objectivity that the serialists eventually fell into. By creating a novel body of surface material, she is able to incorporate her passionately subjective compositional choices. In this way, she combines classical ends with modern means.

If this is the historically mediated truth-content of Gubaidulina's work as it stands today, then it is not a new concept; but could her example indicate a path forwards for music? No composer is capable of reversing the trends in society which have caused listening to regress, and serious music to become marginalized. The elevation of art's role in society would seem to depend on whether the secular ideals of the bourgeois revolution, of which Beethoven remains emblematic, can be consummated through politics, providing a worldly escape — within history — from the eternal transience of capitalist creative destruction. This profane wish correlates with the Christian longing for everlasting life through redemption of suffering, and the end of time and history, as illustrated in Benjamin's enigmatic writings. But whether experienced from a secular or religious viewpoint, Gubaidulina's profound music continues to pose the necessary question: Muß es sein? //

Alban Berg Quartett. Ludwig Van Beethoven. String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 (1826)

Notes

1. "The Radio Symphony: An Experiment in Theory" (1941), T.W. Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. R. Leppert, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 235-6

2. "Wer stoppt den Hass?", F. Amort, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (11/10/2020)

3. "The Fire and the Rose", B. Gavin, BBC (1973)

4. "Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography", M. Kurtz, ed. M.H. Brown, trans. C.K. Lohmann (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 64