Original scientific paper
String Quartets by Sofia Gubaidulina as an Attempt of Opening a Sonoric Space
Swetlana Sarkisjan
; Komitas-Konservatorium, Yerevan, Armenia
Abstract
The conceptuality of sound in Sofia Gubaidulina's music is akin to that conceptuality of form that has already become a tradition in the sense of exceeding the limits of music and of communication with the extra-musical sphere. In this, what is to be understood is the communication by words (literature), by gesture (pictorial presentation), by ritual (dramaturgical structuring; coloured projection of sound) and the sacral (religion; theosophy). By equating the conceptualities of sound and form, Gubaidulina leaves the leading role to the factor of processuality: the temporal-structural condensing and extending, the physicalacoustical changes of positions, the variations and the fundamental changes of tonal setting and timbre.
In Gubaidulina's string quartets, different ways of articulation are posited in a very differentiated manner, aiming towards the construction and the creation of form. Beside the well-known solutions offered by the so-called Polish school (for example, in Polymorphia by K. Penderecki), here new procedures of the creation of sound by the "use of the bow" and "direct touching of strings with fingers" (Gubaidulina's own expressions) are active. These procedures form three spheres of sonoric space in all: the tempered, untempered and acoustical ones, each determined by sound colours (harmonic tones; flageolets). Gubaidulina has carefully developed them, depending on their functions in the particular work, and they exist both independently and in interaction, crossing and confrontation. The space spheres participate in the confrontation of the conscious and unconscious. (Gubaidulina called it the untempered milieu "in the unconscious of the captivated half of the sound being".) It is of no less importance to this composer to achieve, with the help of articulation, "that the acoustical sound be transformed into a symbol". The elaborated transition from one usual sound to a flageolet "with the help of another type of touching", the transition from one basic tone burdened with expression to a harmonic tone - for Gubaidulina, all this is equal to a sudden transfer "from Earth to the Heavens". As a real Easterner, Gubaidulina is interested in the linear perspective of sound dynamics which is divided into horizontal and vertical dimensions. She is also interested in the transforming path (the Armenian composer Awet Terterjan called it the "lonely" path) of one tone, with a potential "to rise up vertically to the Heavens, i.e. to penetrate the soul". After all, this was one of the main reasons why Gubaidulina allowed the high sound register to dominate the whole sound structure in her string quartets (and not only in these compositions).
In connection with the articulation aspect, attention should be also drawn to various ways of sound production on string instruments by the means of direct touching of strings with fingers, which was inspired by playing techniques on the domra and other Oriental plucked instruments. In spite of all differencies in construction, the number of strings and their tuning, the practical use of these instruments is almost identical. If playing techniques in folk music are compared with those which were invented by Gubaidulina herself, the whole spectrum of sound space could be recognized in the way that she understands it.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
43617
URI
Publication date:
1.9.2005.
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