by Semyon Bokman (Music 780.92 Ustvolskaya)
You never know what you’ll learn in books at the Polley Music Library, even for me. In this case, as I was preparing a show on the book The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth by Michael Spitzer a few months ago, I came upon this passage about the Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya: “There is a creeping realization that one of the outstanding composers of our time was a forgotten old lady living in poverty in a freezing St. Petersburg flat. Shostakovich thought that his pupil Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) was a better composer than him, and I would have to agree. Ustvolskaya didn’t write much, but what she did has the weight and killer intensity of a black sun.”
I didn’t know much about Ustvolskaya, but that paragraph sent me looking for her music, which is indeed incredible and maybe the most idiosyncratic among 20th century composers I can think of. I’ve been very taken by her music as well, and in the last few months I think I’ve heard just about every piece she’s written. Some of the music is hard to find, but YouTube has some excellent performances of her work, as well as “Scream Into Space,” a short documentary about her work that was finished in 2005, just a year before her death. Little about her work has been translated into English yet, but a former student of hers, Semyon Bokman, has published Variations on the Theme Galina Ustvolskaya: The Last Composer of the Passing Era, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.
At the outset, a little biographical information is useful, as the book takes an unusual angle into Ustvolskaya’s work and life. Born in Petrograd (later Leningrad), Russia in 1919, she studied at Leningrad Conservatory in the late 1930s and early 40s, and went on to teach composition there from 1947 to 1977. Part of her studies were spent with Dmitry Shostakovich, a fact that is almost always mentioned in conjunction with her work, but late in life she frequently mentioned that she didn’t like his music (or him as a person). In the post WWII Soviet Union, she wrote the kind of music that was often frowned upon by the authorities. Although her work wasn’t officially banned, it was rarely performed, so her life as a composer mostly consisted of what is sometimes called “composing for the drawer,” or writing the material that you’re compelled to create but filing it away for more receptive times.
Like many creatives under Soviet rule, it’s not hard to imagine that her life was hard, living at the edge of poverty and getting little attention for her life’s work until she was in advanced old age. Because of these conditions, we don’t have a deep understanding of her in the way we’d expect to know more about the inner lives of many contemporary composers. We do know that she was very particular about the performances of her works, and once she finally started receiving attention (mostly from other parts of Europe), she was fairly cantankerous in interviews and in her feelings about most recordings of her music. And as you might guess from that Michael Spitzer quote about her from the beginning of our discussion, her music is quite dark, abstract and somewhat impenetrable, though incredibly memorable and moving as well. Ustvolskaya’s husband has maintained a website about her and her works since her death, which includes many of her thoughts about statements made by others about her music and her background, and he has added his own thoughts about books and recordings published since her death. And it must be noted that he has unpleasant things to say about the book we’re discussing today, which largely focus on the structure of the book, which centers its author in a way that he feels is unfair to the legacy of Ustvolskaya. In looking at the Ustvolskaya website, one might get the impression of a grumpy composer, though trying to correct disinformation about yourself would probably get frustrating!
One gets a different impression of Ustvolskaya from Bokman’s book, however. While it’s true that it’s formatted as recollections of the author as a student interacting with her as instructor, he remembers her has having a sense of humor and fun, and many of his impressions run counter to any folklore of her as a cantankerous person. Occasionally he even describes her as cheerful. However, he does observe that she maintains a certain distance from students, thinking of her teaching work as essentially just a job to support her as a composer, and not thinking of students as potential peers. As he observes in chapter 5, “This belief in herself and her work, and in this gigantic ‘I AM,’ helped her withstand her internal struggles and life’s temptations.” And some of this is reflected in the few interviews conducted with her, as well as in her music. She didn’t like to talk about her influences, for example, and asserted that her music existed mostly within its own boundaries. This would be a bold claim for many composers, but her music really does feel like it exists in a self-contained world. She considered her work symphonic in nature; even though most of it was written for small chamber ensembles, she rejected the notion of “chamber music” for not containing the dynamic and conceptual resources required by her music. And although it can be primitive music on some levels, plodding forward through quarter-note motion across most of her work, there is lots of complexity to discover within.
Considering that her brief time spent studying under Shostakovich is usually the first fact brought up about Ustvolskaya, Bokman approaches the subject from two angles: first, he reflects on how she would respond to students when they brought up the subject of Shostakovich. On this subject, he notes that she was dismissive of the question, usually responding with some variation of “this is not interesting.” But he follows this with a question of his own: did he feel there was an influence on Ustvolskaya’s music or work from Shostakovich? Musically, her unique approach stands alone, but perhaps she got some intellectual rigor from him. Bokman recounts a story from Ustvolskaya about doing an in-depth study of all of Beethoven’s major works, which she didn’t want to do, but Shostakovich insisted. He notes, however, that perhaps her knack for orchestration bears some influence from her famous teacher. Although her music avoids using full-size orchestras, she and Shostakovich both have a powerful sense of choosing the right instruments to play the right parts, all the more important for Ustvolskaya’s small-but-massive arrangements.
It’s difficult for Westerners to fully conceive how composers, writers and other artists had to navigate the political challenges of life under Soviet rule. Bokman’s observations about Ustvolskaya’s career choices seem a little perplexing to me at first, but he too lived in that environment and had a better inside understanding. He observes, “Ustvolskaya managed to save herself as an artist by taking little interest in the surrounding world; she did not let it in.” Had she capitulated to the aesthetic requests of Soviet officials, perhaps she would have become much more well-known, but that would have come with the cost of having to forever change her musical style, too. Considering the external pressures on artists under totalitarian rule, the somewhat mysterious image of Ustvolskaya as a kind of musical hermit becomes more complex—perhaps she was inclined to be a far more socially gregarious person, but her commitment to her work necessitated that she keep her head down and those fascinating works mostly put away. Less attention equaled more safety.
Bokman addresses another unusual quote from Ustvolskaya that is frequently mentioned in her biographies: “All who really love my music should refrain from theoretical analysis of it.” This notion is basically the opposite of what everyone does in the classical music world, although some pop musicians have said similar things about their music. There is a mystical, otherworldly quality to her music, and perhaps this idea reflects a position that knowing more about the constituent parts of a deeply moving piece of music doesn’t really explain the ineffable qualities of its power. Of course, Bokman then goes on to interpret broadly what this body of music means to him: “a proclamation of renewal.” His explanation for arriving there, for reconciling the person he knew as relatively warm and friendly with her unforgiving, stark music, is interesting to me, especially because my own response to this music, which is still very fresh in my mind, is almost the opposite! I hear it as very powerful, indeed, but more like calling out to the divine for intercession, while knowing full well that it isn’t on its way. Perhaps music that effortlessly elicits such acute but contradictory responses isn’t likely to be better understood through music analysis, indeed.
Overall, I found Variations on the Theme Galina Ustvolskaya to be a good read, and I didn’t feel like the author overly centered himself in the story — indeed, it’s necessary for him to be present, since most of the book is simply his reporting reminiscences of his time around the composer. Whether his recollections are entirely accurate is hard to say, though I must admit that I find his portrait of the artist to be a kind and warm one compared to what one can put together from her own quotes and her widower’s representation of her thoughts. But given the circumstances of life under Soviet rule, this book is probably the closest we’re going to get to a personal view of Ustvolskaya.
(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography by Michael Kurtz or Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton.)
( Wikipedia entry for Galina Ustvolskaya ) | ( official Semyon Bokman Twitter feed )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
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