Gubaidulina’s experience with Astraea broadened her musical horizons in many ways. According to Kurtz, Gubaidulina remembers that the members of the ensemble tuned their zithers according to four different collections: the pentatonic, the diatonic, the twelve-note, and the quarter-tone system.[1] Her work with the ANS synthesizer gave her the means to experiment with not only new timbres, but also new developments in the realm of pitch. The synthesizer employed a glass plate as an input device as opposed to a piano keyboard or other conventional musical instrument (Kurtz 2007, 83; see Schmelz 2009b for a complete description with photographs). As a result, composers had access to a continuum of pitches and were not bound by discrete, conventional pitches. Pyotr Meshchaninov, who was a full-time employee at the lab at around the same time (and who would become Gubaidulina’s third husband), strongly felt that the twelve-tone system was too restrictive. Meshchaninov based his music theory on a division of the octave into 72 different tones, a division that he believed he could justify as the next logical evolutionary step in music history. The ANS synthesizer, along with its more famous predecessor, the theremin, were embraced by the Soviets because they pointed to technological developments in the realm of music that put them ahead of their Western counterparts. Visiting composers and musicians even expressed their admiration for the possibilities afforded them by these new instruments (Schmelz 2009b).
Meshchaniov’s views had quite an impact on Gubaidulina. According to Schmelz, after her experience at the Scriabin Museum, she began to move away from pitch as a structuring principle for her music. She moved toward timbral constructs—some of which had already been appearing in her music and some of which she was developing in the electronic studio—and began using pure sound as a structuring force.
Quarter tones begin to appear in her music in the mid-1970s: she credits her colleague Victor Suslin with introducing her to the technique (Lukomsky 1998). There are two ways that Gubaidulina uses quarter tones in her music. First, she often speaks of the quarter-tone universe as a “shadow” of the 12-tone universe. She tells Lukomsky:
The second thing that attracts me is an exploration of quarter-tone temperament. I understand it as a unification of two spaces: the first is the twelve-semitonal space, and the second is another twelve-semitonal space a quarter tone higher. For me this is a metaphor of the image and its shadow, or a day and a night. From my point of view, in the twelve-tone compositions of the twentieth century, everything is as in the day-time; everything is enlightened and rationalized; there is no place for “night.” “Night” existed as a supplement of the diatonic system: the diatonic sphere was “day,” whereas the chromatic sphere was “night:” one could go there and return. That blessed situation gave us classical and romantic composers. In twelve-tone compositions we lost “night:” everything became “day.” But within the twenty-four tone scale, we may have not only “a day,” but also “a night” (Lukomsky 1998, 11).
The evolutionary tone here is very closely aligned with Meshchaninov’s thinking. Meschaninov argues that certain intervals inherent in the harmonic series became characteristic of entire epochs of music. In the early history of music, the fifth and the octave were the most significant intervals: they appear first in the harmonic series. In common-practice tonal music, thirds and sixths became the most prominent intervals. In the early twentieth century, seconds and sevenths predominated. The next logical step would be to move further away from the bottom of the harmonic series toward smaller, more dissonant intervals that will ultimately be smaller than a semitone.[2]
Second, she occasionally uses quarter tones as expressive “chromatic” passing tones. Example 1 comes from the cello part to In croce (1976):
The cello sustains an E2 beginning at rehearsal 1 and then moves to an E-quarter-sharp2 at the end of the sustained tone. The E-quarter-sharp2 is effectively an upper neighbor to the sustained E (or, I suppose we could argue that the sustained E2 is a lengthy appoggiatura to the E-quarter-sharp2; the bayan part makes the case for the former interpretation). The passage at rehearsal 3 clearly shows E-quarter-sharp2 as a micro-chromatic passing tone between E2 and F2. In the third measure after rehearsal 3, the opening sustained passage is repeated, this time sequenced up a quarter step.
In Quaternion for four cellos (1996) we see a variety of quarter-tone techniques in practice. Gubaidulina requires cellos 1 and 2 to tune normally and cellos 3 and 4 to tune down a quarter step. This effectively divides the ensemble into two choirs: cellos 3 and 4 are the shadows of cellos 1 and 2. This shadowing is present not only in the domain of pitch, but also in the rhythmic interaction between the two pairs. Example 2 contains the opening seven measures of the work.
The hocket played by cellos 1 and 3 creates a line that ascends by quarter tone from F3 to G3. The hocket played by cellos 2 and 4 creates a line that descends by quarter tone from B-flat2 to A-flat2. The orchestration here is particularly clever. Gubaidulina is able to create an ascending micro-chromatic line using quarter tones as chromatic passing tones. At the same time, the interaction between the two choirs suggests a separation of worlds: the night and day that she mentions. The separation also suggests a dependency between the two pairs: the line cannot be completed without the participation of both cello pairs. In m. 4, the four cellos come together, playing an A-flat2—G3 dyad. This moment suggests a unification of the two spaces: both are playing in the “day” of the usual twelve-tone chromatic. Passages such as this recur throughout the work.
Later in her output, Gubaidulina began to employ microtonal sonorities in a different way. She became interested in the harmonic series and its relationship to the equal-tempered system. Her work Light of the end (2003) is an exploration of the relationship between these two systems: the natural harmonics and the artificial equal-tempered scale. In the preface to the score, she states that “The drama is caused by the conflict between the intrinsic character of instruments—brass instruments in particular—to produce the sounds of the natural overtone row and the necessity of adapting them to the sounds of 12-tone tempered tuning.” The clearest manifestation of this conflict occurs in a duet between French horn and cello about two-thirds of the way into the piece. Both instruments play the same melody, the French horn using natural harmonics and the cello using equal temperament.
[1] This same hierarchy of collections governs her piano concerto Introitus, to be discussed in the next chapter. See Lukomsky (“Eucharist in my fantasy”) for more.
[2] See Kurtz (2007) 83-84 for more on Meshchaninov’s theories.