Home Slovenská hudba 2010 Slovenská hudba, Vol. 36, No 1, p. 5-26

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Slovenská hudba, Vol. 36, No 1, p. 5-26

Title: Galina Ustvolskaja – život za železnou oponou
Author: Lenka Kılıç
Abstract: The submitted study dedicated to the life and work of the Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919–2006) is based on the author’s PhD thesis (2003). A monograph written by the Saint Petersburg musicologist Olga Gladkova Muzyka kak navažděnije (Music like Enticement, Muzyka, Saint Petersburg, 1999) served as a source for the work. Despite the fact that the monograph was compiled under the supervision of Galina Ustvolskaya a lot of information or reflections included in the book are excessively subjective. The list of compositions consists of “only” 24 pieces, but, looking through other sources Lenka Kiliç succeeded to supplement the list to 37 pieces and it is possible that other compositions not included in the list still exist.
Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya studied composition at the Saint Petersburg conservatory and taught at the school later. Boris Tishchenko and Vadim Veselov belong to her pupils.
In the 1950s the composer wrote several pro-regime pieces. Very early she ranged among the music vanguard exponents and represented the Soviet music creation at important music festivals, e.g. Warsaw Autumn. Already in this period she possessed an obviously distinctive music language (e.g. 12 Preludes for Piano). It is known that Dmitry Shostakovich regarded her one of the most gifted pupils and admired her work and taste. No wonder he offered marriage to her in the 1950s but he was refused. We can only guess why, and why she later talked about her teacher and friend so nastily. Ustvolskaya and Shostakovich were fatally close to each other and the reason of their separation may be conditioned by their different attitudes to life. Shostakovich, 13 years older, got stuck in the machinery of devastating Soviet mechanism which he was not able to resist. Ustvolskaya closed herself into an inner emigration, hence both were joined by the endeavour to live through the totalitarian regime and to find some reference point. Each of them chose their own way.
Around 1961 Ustvolskaya’s life mate Yuri Balkashin died and after 1964 a 7-year creative break followed. After it the composer’s work acquired a very uncompromising and unique, ascetic appearance possessing a strong spiritual zest, inner order with religious inscriptions. Let us mention at least the first of them, Composition No. 1 ‘Dona nobis pacem’ for piccolo, tuba and piano from 1970–1971. Beside three Compositions with different instrumentation Galina Ustvolskaya continued her symphonic work and composition of piano sonatas, six in all. She closed her life work with the 5th Symphony possessing a symbolical title “Amen” on the text of the prayer Our Father in Heaven (1989/1990), and sixteen years later she closed also her earthly chapter.
Many of Ustvolskaya’s compositions only got to concert stages many years later and her work was presented to the “West” not until the beginning of the 1990s (a cycle of author’s evenings at the Wien Modern festival in 1998).
Ustvolskaya’s work is distinguished by several significant peculiarities explicit already since the 1950s. It is mostly the rhythmical aspect of her compositions, using the regular pulse of quarters, ostinatos and dotted rhythm in various tempi. Her utilization of general pause and long rests is specific and expressive. Although generally chamber in instrumentation her pieces sound unusually concisely. The composer works with new timbres and with possibilities of classical instruments, using their range in full and sets them against each other. In dynamics she alternates sharp contrasts of several p and several f, omitting gradual crescendo or decrescendo. The voices are often led in counterpoint.
Artistic creation – it is not “only” masterfully handled craft. The creation of one’s own discernible characteristic style is the first requirement on which something elusive, abstract and original is superimposed: the inner life of the artist, his/her spiritual characteristics, intelect, gift, humbleness and belief. Galina Ustvolskaya was an extraordinarily gifted musician, what was counterweighted by her peculiar reclusive character.
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Year: 2010, Volume: 36, Issue: 1 Page From: 5, Page To: 26


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