Sofia Gubaidulina, the most important Russian composer, dies at age 93

Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski is sad to announce the passing of Sofia Gubaidulina, the grande dame of contemporary classical music, aged 93 at her home near Hamburg.

Sofia Gubaidulina, the grande dame of new music, has passed away on 13 March 2025, aged 93, at her home near Hamburg, Germany. She was considered the most important Russian composer of the present day and a person who 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 has noted that “Sofia Gubaidulina’s music – its intellect and its profound spirituality – is deeply touching. It really gets under your skin”.

Typical of Gubaidulina's work was the almost complete absence of absolute music. 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 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 ritual instruments, among others, on which she improvised and found completely new soundworlds.

Born in 1931 in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of Russia, the composer was the victim of a number of repressive measures and restrictions imposed by Soviet cultural policy at the beginning of her career. After many of her works found their way into Western concert programmes in the early 1980s - thanks in part to the energetic efforts of violinist Gidon Kremer - she decided, like many other Russian composers, to leave her homeland and emigrate to Germany. Since 1992, she has lived near Hamburg in a tranquil little 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, received honorary doctorates from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Tianjin Music Conservatory and the University of Chicago, was made a member of the Order ‘Pour le mérite’ in 1999 and received numerous prizes.

‘Music connects the finite with the infinite’ – Sofia Gubaidulina

Gubaidulina was convinced that faith in God is directly related to the creative drive of man. She always saw composing as a ‘sacred act’ and the resulting work as a kind of ‘sacrifice’. Her endearing charisma and her ability to convey her artistic and philosophical views in a captivating way, even in conversations or workshops with her interpreters, was unique.

When asked how she thought her music could contribute to bringing people to their senses and creating peace in a world in disarray, Sofia 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.’