Sofia Gubaidulina’s Serial Music
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Abstract
The name Sofia Gubaidulina is typically not associated with serial
music, but she experimented with the technique early in her career and
never returned to it. This paper situates Gubaidulina’s serial music in the
context of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1960s, examines her use of serial
techniques, and discusses her reasons for ultimately abandoning the technique.
Gubaidulina was one of the last of her circle to experiment with
serialism, and she produced only a few works that used the technique.
Her earliest attempts at serial music appear in the sonata for piano (1965)
and the five etudes for harp, percussion, and double bass (1965). The
cantata «A Night in Memphis» (1968) represents her most thorough
exploration of the technique. Remnants of serialism can be found in some
of her works of the early 1970s.
In this paper, I will discuss the serial procedures Gubaidulina uses
in two of the five etudes, the piano sonata, and selections from «A Night
in Memphis». These works demonstrate Gubaidulina’s understanding of
classical serial techniques as well as her own idiosyncratic adaptations of
the techniques. The etudes show a fairly strict approach to classical
twelve-tone serial procedures. The piano sonata mixes twelve-tone serial
techniques with tonal and freely atonal sonorities. A night in Memphis
reveals a thorough understanding of creating unity and variety in a largescale
twelve-tone serial work, and contains some innovative approaches
to generating pitch material, including a procedure whereby row forms
are rotated to generate new prime rows. I conclude by looking briefly at
works from the early 1970s that are not serial per se, but show residue of
the technique.
Keywords: serial music of Sofia Gubadulina, serial technique, Soviet
serialism
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References
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