Imagery and semantic dramaturgy in the cantata "Now always snow" ("Jetzt immer Schnee") by S. Gubaidulina

Shirieva Nadezhda Velerovna PhD in Art History Associate professor, Department of Choral Conducting, Kazan State Conservatoire named after N. G. Zhiganov 38 Bolshaya Krasnaya str., Kazan, 420015, Russia, Republic of Tatarstan hormeister@rambler.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Sofia Gubaidulina is a classical composer of the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. Her music sounds with constant success from scenes all over the world, and new works almost immediately receive the status of masterpieces. The pattern of universal recognition of the composer is due to the deep ethical orientation of her compositions. The creative "face" of S. Gubaidulina is determined by the subtlest moral sense of the state of humanity. She obeys the established moral laws for herself, which are inextricably linked with the concept of spirituality.

A considerable layer of Sofia Gubaidulina's creative heritage consists of choral compositions. Large–scale frescoes such as "Alleluia" (1990), "The Passion of John" (2000), "Easter according to John" (2001), "Oratorio on Love and Hate" (2015-2016), as well as works of a more chamber type - "A Night in Memphis" (1968), "Dedication Marina Tsvetaeva" (1984), "Rejoice before the Lord" (1989), "Sonnengesang" (1997) "From the Book of Hours" (1991) are among the most outstanding examples of choral and vocal symphonic music of the mid-XX – early XXI centuries. The emphatically existential content of these works provided food for the critics' minds and was reflected in musicological works ^{[1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6]}.

In the cantata "It's Always Snowing Now" (1993) for chamber choir and chamber ensemble, as in all the composer's works, there is a high spiritual tone. At the same time, it is also one of the composer's most enigmatic works, organically combining the finest facets of sound recording, inspired by a flight of fantasy, with a strictly rational construction of form. Such a synthesis of ratio and emotio could not but arouse the interest of researchers in this work.

Literary review

Sofia Gubaidulina's choral music has been the subject of research attention more than once. This layer of her work was the material for analytical studies in the repeatedly republished monograph by V. N. Kholopova, the most authoritative specialist in the field of "Gubaidulin studies". The musicologist examines the composer's works from the perspective of dramaturgy, closely related to the principle of paired contrasts (or, as Sofia Gubaidulina herself calls them, binary oppositions), permeating all parameters of the musical fabric; vocal expression, manifested in the finest modulations of the human voice "from a whisper to a scream"; the specifics of shaping, based on the operation of timbre and numerical calculations; sound symbols.

V. N. Kholopova considers the cantata "Now it Always Snows" to be one of the composer's best works of the early 1990s, emphasizing that in it S. Gubaidulin touches on apophatic theology, which is not reflected in Russian music, declaring comprehension of the essence of God not through his manifestations in the world (cataphatic teaching), but through mystical illumination as the only one the method of knowledge of God due to the inaccessibility of the Deity to cognitive acts performed by the human mind. The researcher develops the "relationship" of cataphatics and apophatics along several main lines: timbre – parts using the human voice (cataphatics) and purely instrumental parts (entitled "Recording: Apophatic"); verbal – parts where G. Aiga's poems sound and where there is no verbal component; the ratio of discrete and continuous sounds – parts, in which the sonority is interrupted by pauses and parts in which it goes in a continuous stream; articulatory-pictorial – parts where the winter landscape is depicted by means of articulation in its various states, from a quiet snowfall to a picture of a snowstorm, and parts where the sound of brass instruments reminds of Doomsday ^{[1, p. 298]}.

Speaking about the composition of the cantata, V. N. Kholopova emphasizes that "Now it always snows" is one of the most calculated compositions in the work of Sofia Gubaidulina. Mentioning that "using the numerical series of Luke, Fibonacci and derivatives from them, she organizes both the rhythm of phrases and the large "rhythm of the form" of each of its parts" ^{[1, p. 305]}, in his study, the musicologist does not delve into the composer's calculation system, focusing more on the dramaturgy of the composition.

The role of number in S. Gubaidulina's music is highlighted by the work of another major researcher of the composer's work, V. S. Tsenovoi. In the famous monographic work "Numerical Secrets of Sofia Gubaidulina's Music", she examines the use of numbers from three positions: as a symbol, as a formative factor (in terms of time and rhythm) and as the conceptual basis of the composition, its artistic idea ("numerical plot"). Analyzing S. Gubaidulina's precompositional rough recordings for the cantata "Now it Always Snows", the musicologist discovers an interval system in them, which then served as the basis for creating an "individual sound-pitch project" (V. S. Tsenova) ^{[6, p. 144]}. This system is based on the principle of dualism: the interaction of dissonant intervals of seconds and septima, shaded by consonant chords or pure fifths. Already in this very idea, the symbolism of the number "shines through": 2, 5 and 7 numbers of the Gospel series ¹, which V. S. Tsenova writes about ^{[6, p. 30]} The composer builds the method of calculating the composition on the use of numerical proportions, with the help of which, starting from the "tempo model" ^{[6, p.146]}, she organizes the beginning of each movement and the onset of the central section of the cantata. The analysis of "Now It Always Snows", performed by V. S. Tsenova, demonstrated a complex and detailed system of numerical calculations that permeate the entire tempo-rhythmic structure of the composition, and convincingly revealed the dominant role of number in the true Pythagorean sense: as order, system and beauty ^{[6, pp. 143-151]}.

I. V. Batyuk considers the artistic and figurative specifics of "Now It Always snows" as a result of the close relationship of G. Aiga's poems with S. Gubaidulina's music ^{[7, pp. 141-149]}. The author interprets the idea of "denial" as a rebellion of the human spirit against the events taking place ("Dummy Country", "The Era of such a Corpse"), violating the divine purity of the world. Analyzing the intonation and textural relief of the cantata, I. V. Batyuk comes to the problems of its performance, revealing the difficulties that the choral group will face in the process of mastering the composition.

The above review exhausts the range of studies of the cantata "Now it always snows". Perhaps its limitations are caused by the chamber nature of the work in comparison with other vocal and symphonic opuses by S. Gubaidulina, surpassing "Now It Always Snows" in terms of the scale of the idea and its embodiment. In the works of the above-mentioned authors, the analysis of this work is either intended to demonstrate the evolution of the composer's style (V. N. Kholopov), or is a partial confirmation of the general theory (V. S. Tsenov), or stands among the works that give an idea of the landscape of modern Russian choral music. For all its methodological value, the brevity of the analytical studies does not allow us to form a complete picture of the cantata, the musical text of which certainly deserves special consideration.

Methods

As can be observed, the originality of the composition's sound field also caused a difference in analytical angles. However, the multidimensional space of the cycle's music, saturated with symbolic images, requires, in our opinion, closer attention to the problem of the organization of timbres, through which both the "reification" of these images in the musical fabric and the dramaturgy of the entire cantata are carried out. In our opinion, the analysis of the textured landscape of "Now it always snows" can shed light on this problem by applying the hierarchical classification of sound types by the German composer Helmut Lachenmann. The relevance of this approach, which was first used to analyze the music of another author, is justified by the creative method of X. Lachenmann, based on the aesthetics of "rejection", inherited by him from the Francoeur school of philosophy and projected on compositional practice. In the interpretation of X. According to Lachenmann, this meant "the rejection of established stilted ideas and "worn-out" interpretations conservatively "shaping" the listener's perception and directing it into the channel of spiritual inertia" ^{[8, p. 4]}. The practical implementation of this idea is achieved by creating a language that the composer himself calls specific music, implying the inclusion in its thesaurus "the entire sound world, that is, not only what we used to understand by the word "music", but also extraneous sounds surrounding us in their originally natural form..." ^{[9, p. 28]}.

The Lachemann method of composition implies the operation of sound not as an element that is part of any structure (melodic, harmonic, serial), but as an independent musical event. The chain of such events develops into one or another sound type, the sequence of which, in turn, forms the dramaturgy of the composition.

The first type is cadence sound, which H. Lachenmann characterizes as a sound process. It is distinguished by the impulsive nature of its occurrence and natural attenuation. The varieties of cadence sound include actually pulsed, oscillating and fading sounds. The following types are attributed by H. Lachenmann to the sound state, since their duration can be prolonged for quite a long time. These are timbre, fluctuating, textured and structural sounds. Fluctuating sound is a periodically recurring process (trills, tremolos, etc.). A characteristic feature of textured sound is its polyelementality, i.e. saturation with various and different-quality sound components merging into a single timbre. The highest in the hierarchical system of H. Lachenmann is the structural sound. Outwardly resembling a textured one, inside it is characterized by strict calculation and structuring of all elements, and thus is able to generate a shape. The temporal "being" of textured and structural sounds consists of the "own" (V. S. Tsenov) time of all its components ^{[10, pp. 405-408]}.

The splitting of the musical fabric into "atoms" and the compilation of a new sound space from them, which is not subject to the laws of tonality, receives an impulse in the work of composers of the Novovensky school. However, the difference from the experiments of H. Lachenmann's novoventsevs is that, firstly, as already noted above, his sound does not perform an official role in an abstract sound system, and secondly, its timbre itself is formed as a result of specific handling of the instrument on which it is extracted. Thus, sound is freed from the burden of the historical tradition of creating musical fabric and is perceived directly in all the diversity of its physical nature. Such a sound also generates openness to interpretation by the listener, who finds himself in a situation of perception, unencumbered by the entire existing array of compositional practices.

Agreeing with N. G. Gorshkova that the desire to "wash away all kinds of layers from the ballast sound, erase the associative series, return it to a pre-mathematical state has much in common with the concept "neutral writing" by R. Barth..." [9 p. 29], we emphasize the methodological significance of the Barth concept for the analysis of the verbal series of S. Gubaidulina's work, where the word, ignoring the shackles of syntagmatics, becomes an independent semantic phenomenon.

Discussion and results

Lachenmann's purpose of music as an existential message that has rejected the shackles of tradition is incredibly close to S. Gubaidulina. The composer has repeatedly stated her belonging to the archaic, her preference for the pre-cultural state of the artist, not bound by the fetters of style ². This is precisely the reason for the variety of her experiments with sound, including unusual combinations of instruments, the maximum expansion of their range and unconventional ways of using them, experiments with electronic music and noise, generation of microtonal harmonies caused by different instrument settings. This also includes S. Gubaidulina's love for exotic instruments, in which she sees a huge sonic potency. She explains her interest in such instruments, usually folklore, by its purity from the cultural context: "I really want to be with the instrument, as if there is no tradition, there is no culture, no repertoire, there is nothing at all – but only a sound source and I, as if I were a primitive being"³.

S. Gubaidulina's understanding of sound as a means intended to "convey knowledge about the world in the widest possible way"⁴ is consonant with G. Aiga's desire to reproduce the sound of the world as a Universe. He sees this opportunity for himself only in overcoming the boundaries of the usual literary word and form, up to the point of "leaving" the classical language, thereby creating a new form of literature.

The most unique figure of his time, the Chuvash poet Gennady Aigi, whose work categorically did not fit into the Procrustean bed of socialist realism poetry and was not recognized in his own country, over time gained truly worldwide fame as the creator of an absolutely new direction for Russian poetry, called Russian surrealism.

G. Aiga's desire to enter a new poetic dimension, leaving the limits of conceptual language, is in line with the historical metamorphoses described by R. Barth, which Literature has undergone from the classical period to the present day. Having begun as a special "closed" (R. Barth) system of identification marks, which distinguished the literary word in the "dense mass of all other possible ways of expression" ^{[11, p. 306]}, at the next stage Literature takes the form of a "sealed, in-depth word full of mystery", hiding within itself "an additional force, unrelated neither with its structure, nor with its euphony" [ibid., p. 307]. The third stage is the destruction of this crystallized form-object, the solidification of which led to the existence of a "form-for-itself" in which the language experiences a state of euphoria of self-admiration. The destruction of a literary word with a long history led to the emergence of a new type of writer, unencumbered by the heredity of language and capable of generating "pure" writing – in other words, "to the emergence of a writer without Literature" [ibid., p. 309]. It is at this stage, which R. Barth calls the zero degree of writing, that the Word itself comes to the fore as an absolute Sign.

We are interested in the Bartovian concept in relation to the peculiar poetry of G. Aiga, which is based on a special attitude to the self–sufficient meaning of the poetic Word as an energy bundle possessing unconditional "creative power" ^{[12, p. 144]}. The word for G. Aiga is a Logos combining a "visible" (inscribed) and an "invisible" (semantic, spiritual) sign, giving the poetic text the appearance of a "verbal" temple", which itself, being some common sign, shines through with more "specific" internal signs of its content" [ibid., p. 155].

Are not the "essential nouns" ^{[13, p. 43]} of G. Aigi a living embodiment of the Bartowski concept of the Word, likened to "a column deeply immersed in the indissoluble soil of meanings, semantic reflexes and echoes" ^{[11, p. 329]}? The Word that absorbs the whole range of its meanings and becomes like "a full-length straightened sign" [ibid.]? The poet's rejection of the "official and communicative" function of language in favor of the word "John's, creating a new existential space around itself" ^{[14, p. 43]} turns the poem itself into a "sacred symbol" ^{[13, p. 43]}.

The word as "a concept that provides contact with the world, artistic expression itself" ^{[12, p. 166]} is incredibly important for S. Gubaidulina. She spoke about the poetry of G. Aiga: "I have long noticed that from his poems I receive an impulse to that state of mind in which I find an outlet to the heavenly, most, highest beginnings of the world" [Cit. according to: 7, p. 144]. This is probably due to the amazing closeness for the poet and composer of the concepts enclosed in sign words and being the semantic epicenters of G. Aiga's poems. They have been analyzed in detail by researchers of his work [see 13, 14, 16, 17]. We will focus only on those that are present in the texts of G. Aiga selected by S. Gubaidulina for the cycle – "You are my silence", "Now it always snows", "Record: apophatic" and "Oh yes: Homeland". They contain three central symbolic images that permeate the entire work of the poet. This is the image of God, the image of silence and the image of snow.

In G. Aigi's poetics, the concepts of God, snow and silence are inextricably linked. The whiteness of the snow is identified by him with the purity of the soul and the Lord, who can only be found in silence. And the "place of God" is also the place of "the highest creative power" ^{[12, p. 238]}. Therefore, silence for the poet is not peace, but that inner state in which, meeting with "a certain Absolute" [ibid., p. 292], he creates a Religious Word endowed with the potency of restoring connection with the Truth [ibid., p. 146].

The creative power of G. Aiga's Religio-Word is identical to the role of a link between man and the higher principle, which, according to S. Gubaidulina, is performed by art. This is the peculiarity of the view of both artists on art as a manifestation of the essential basis of existence.

The composer's idea of the space of silence also coincides with G. Aiga's concept of silence. Silence is an important semantic overtone for S. Gubaidulina, who has another name for it – Emptiness. For both the musician and the poet, silence exists only when it is audible, when it sounds. Only in this case, silence is fraught with the potency of creativity. ⁴

The penetration of G. Aiga into the semantic space of the word is consonant with the same immersion of S. Gubaidulina into the thinnest layers of sound. The intimate depths of meanings that attract both artists reflect their inherent propensity for mystical knowledge of the world, possible only in figurative and symbolic form. This is probably why symbols in G. Aiga's poetics and S. Gubaidulina's music are the most important constructive elements of their artistic method. Let's try to show how these figurative and semantic structures are expressed in the musical fabric of the cycle "It's always Snowing now".

At the beginning of the first part of "You are my Silence", the composer recreates the image of a ringing void by superimposing two fluctuating textured layers – choral and orchestral. The orchestral layer consists of gliding up and down flageolet tremolos of cellos and double basses, coupled with a ricocheting "tremor" of violins. Choral sonority consists of canonical imitations of one motif, separated by pauses (Musical example 1). The gradual reduction of the moments of silence between the intros of the voices creates a reverberation effect that enhances the feeling of empty space. Both of these layers create a continuously vibrating background on which the poetic text of the soloists sounds.

In the course of the developing musical and poetic mystery, choral polyphony begins to represent a polyphony of phonically interpreted verbal texts organized according to three parameters: high-pitched register, manifested in imitations of the initial motif "scattered" over timbres; phonic, consisting of counterpoint of pure singing and breathy singing with sprechgesang with approximate and indefinite height; temporary, formed by various intervals of voice entry, variable intra-field pulsation, a combination of accurate and aleatorically interpreted rhythmic pattern. The textured "crescendo", which grows into a choral super-polyphony, forms a textured sound. As its intensity wears off, it gradually "shrinks" vertically by turning off female voices and turns into an initial fluctuating sound: the trembling part of the strings returns, the texture is thinned to a state of transparency – the poetic text of the baritone solo is interspersed with oscillating echoes of the initial motif, gradually melting into silence.

Through the change of sound types in the first part of the cycle, S. Gubaidulina achieves two goals: builds a form in which the features of the reprise of three parts are clearly traced, and organizes a drama demonstrating that "silence and tranquility are only the upper layer, behind it is a terrifying struggle outside our being, and at the heart of it is a tragic beginning"⁵.

The second (orchestral) part of the cycle is entitled "Recording: Apophatic". Its sound relief consists of a polyphony of timbres: the mystical sound of percussion, trumpet and trombone exclamations, going back to the tradition of "tuba mi r um", and the cues of the counter-bassoon and oboe.

The second part is the realm of structural sound. The calculation of its elements is based by Gubaidulina on the operation of numbers 3 and 5 and arithmetic progression. The "game" of numerical ratios is manifested in the alternation of rhythmic units: in bars – three quarters and five quarters; in fractions – three eighths and five eighths, five thirty-second and three eighths.

The arithmetic progression is found at three levels: clock, where one can observe a gradual increase in the number of bars containing five quarters in relation to three-quarters; rhythmic, revealed at the level of increasing or decreasing the number of rhythmic units in the counting fractions in the percussion group; register, changing the ratio of the duration of ascending and descending timbre lines for brass and woodwind, described in the klangfarbenmelodie technique.

If the arithmetic progression, which organizes the texture of the second part, performs a formative function, then the numbers 3 and 5 here it seems possible to consider in the aspect of Christian numerology. If 3 is a stable designation of the Divine Trinity, then 5 has a broader interpretation in the Bible. These are the five points forming the cross, and the five wounds of Christ, and the five loaves with which the Savior sated about 5,000 people… In the context of the title of the part, referring to apophatic theology, which denies the rational path of knowledge of God and recognizes the approach to its essence only through spiritual experience, the numbers used by the composer are represented by "non-man-made signs" of God.

The picture of the "cleansing snowstorm" ^{[1, p. 306]}, so clearly depicted by the composer in the third part of work ⁶, consists of several components: trembling glissandi and "treble-like figures" (V. N. Kholopov) for strings, gamma-like "vortex" passages of woodwind, short-second "moans" of one of the violas the parts intoning the text of G. Aiga's poetry, accompanied by echoing echoes of the soprano, and the chorale sound of the other voices. Thus, the polyphony of the layers is observed. Due to the repetition of their constituent elements, mobile layers of texture can be attributed to the fluctuating type of sound, and stable ones to the timbre type. Their intersection, forming a textured sound, forms a symbolic cross, which at the climax becomes even more pronounced due to the semantics of the register movement of choral voices: the descending chromatic movement of the lines of some parts is "crossed" by the ascending one in others (Musical example 2).

Drawing the symbol of the cross in the third part of the composition by means of musical texture, S. Gubaidulina remains true to herself. As she says in one of her many interviews: "The symbolism of the cross is fundamental to me. The cross is a symbol of life. I see vertical and horizontal everywhere. This is so important to me that it is present in almost every one of my works. Any topic suddenly turns out to be associated with this symbol"⁷. In this sense, "It's always snowing now" is no exception. The symbol of the cross, which appears in the third of the five movements, in the mediastinum of the cycle, reflects the composer's understanding of the place of a person standing "at the crossroads, in the middle of the cross between the vertical and horizontal"⁵. And the choice – to be saved or not to be saved – depends on his ability to resist evil, on his ability to rise above the horizontal of earthly life.

However, in the fourth part of the work, entitled, like the second, "Recording: Apophatic", through textured and register symbols, the difficult way for a person to overcome his sinful nature is shown. The desire to enter a different spiritual dimension is represented by diagonally growing clusters of chorus from bottom to top, quasi-cluster movements of strings and woodwinds. S. Gubaidulina's timbre sound, which arises in this way, occurs four times in this part, and from time to time the "attempt" becomes more and more extended in the clock dimension and more and more expanding in the register plan. And three times this sound is destroyed by the descending solo movement – clarinet, trombones with counter bassoon, cello. The fourth sound rise is the longest. The combination of stable and mobile elements of texture gives it great tension – against the background of the slowly spreading chromatic cluster of the choir, the orchestra's lines can be heard incessantly soaring and collapsing. At the climax, the sonority, having reached a thirty-eight-voice cluster complex, breaks off, dividing into two clearly differentiated timbre layers. The first one, vertical, is represented by the synchronous rhythmic sound of woodwind and copper clusters. This layer is organized by means of an arithmetic progression of quarters in each bar: 1, 3, 5, 7. The second layer – horizontal – arises from the fluctuating motifs of the string group brought together using a proportional canon. Moreover, here we can again observe the operation of the numbers 3 and 5, which are used by the composer for rhythmic organization within the fractions in the beat. Thus, compositionally, this episode represents a construction characteristic of structural sound. The semantics of the vertical and horizontal layers of texture, enhanced by the meaning of the timbres of the instruments, is clearly "godmother" – the horizontal of human life intersects with the vertical of "essential time" (S. Gubaidulina). For all the structuring of this episode, it is at the same time the most unstable in terms of meaning: it is at this point that a bifurcation point arises, passing through which will determine whether a person will break out of his earthly essence. And S. Gubaidulina gives her answer to this question, bringing down all the sonority and ending the climactic section with a "singing departure" chorale of brass (Musical example 3). But – "at my end is my beginning." Pain and trials are the only condition under which the human march on earth will end with ascension to heaven… And the cathartic finale of S. Gubaidulina's cycle demonstrates this mental position of hers.

The fifth part, titled "Oh, yes: Homeland," is divided into two sections. The first one (cc.103-121) can be attributed to the structural sound type. Its organization is based on the binarism of discrete and continuous sound. Short phrases from different voices of the choir are layered on an infinitely long melody of a solo violin. The duration of this melody, based on a twelve-tone scale, as V. N. Kholopova noted, is 144 bars ^{[18, p. 464]}. The numbers 12 and 144 have a certain meaning in biblical numerology: one hundred and forty–four thousand is the number of all the righteous from the twelve tribes of Israel who will be saved at the end of the world. Thus, the composer again turns to numerical symbolism, starting from it in compositional solutions.

The discrete sound of the choral part in the section is replaced for the only time in c. 113 by continuous singing from baritones. This is the culmination of the section, located at the point of the golden section, calculated by S. Gubaidulina from the ratio of the number of bars from the beginning of the part to the end of the solo violin ⁸.

The second section serves as a reprise of the entire cycle. Compositionally, it is organized like the first movement. S. Gubaidulina also uses fluctuating sound: the micropolyphony of choral voices intoning the initial motif "You are my silence" is superimposed with fading impulses and aleatoric arco flexatones. In the finale, the composer turns off the continuity factor, leaving only a discrete sound: a baritone voice, through pauses intonating poetic text, alternates with flexaton "highlights" and tremolo. Thus, S. Gubaidulina loops the cycle using the same means as at the beginning of the composition, in a textured crustacean: the linear multilayered sound breaks up into "atoms", gradually dissolving into silence. And in complete silence, the last one hangs – "peace is purity." The interval of the large septim in the upward movement turns this statement of G. Aiga into a question (Musical example 4). Thus, S. Gubaidulina seems to emphasize her credo, which consists in her own words: "creative consciousness is just better <...> be in the zone of questions, not answers"⁹, and the purpose of music is to raise these questions.

Conclusion

The analysis of S. Gubaidulina's cycle "Now it always Snows" revealed the harmony of the words-concepts central to G. Aiga's poetics, reflecting his view of the world and creativity, with the ideological views of Sofia Gubaidulina. This coincidence manifested itself already in the very choice of the poem by the composer and gave rise to a situation of adequate embodiment of its figurative and semantic categories in music, where the semantic triad of G. Aiga Snow-God-Silence appears as the equivalent of God's Presence. The system of sound types by H. Lachenmann, applied to the analysis of the musical language "Now it always snows", allowed, firstly, to clarify the system of expressive means used by S. Gubaidulina to reflect a particular image or symbol; secondly, to identify the dramatic logic of each part, built on the interaction of one or another type of sounds; in particularThirdly, to see in the compositional idea of the composition a confirmation of the principle of the artist's work: "I want to liberate matter, and give the law to the form" ^[19].

Notes

1. The Gospel tells of a miracle performed by Jesus, who fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, and four thousand people with seven loaves.
2. Sofia Gubaidulina: "Inspiration comes as soon as concern disappears": interview with Svetlana Polyakova. URL: https://www.belcanto.ru/07020802.html.
3. A total of 160 bars from the beginning of the part to the end of the episode in c. 121. The cantilevered sound begins with the 100th bar (99+61/ 99=1,61616162).
4. Sofia Gubaidulina: "You can't get involved in hate": interview with E. Eremenko. URL: http://russkoepole.de/ru/rubriki/tochka-zreniya/2024-sofiya-gubajdulina-nelzya-vklyuchatsya-v-nenavist.html
5. Khramova, S. Sofia Gubaidulina – the last great composer // VZGLYAD. September 4, 2006 URL: https://vz.ru/culture/2006/9/4/47678.html
6. Sofia Gubaidulina: "From my point of view...": Dmitry Smirnov was interviewed by phone from St. Albans to Appen on June 9, 2001. URL: http://www.forumklassika.ru/showthread.php?t=14257
7. Sofia Gubaidulina: "I live the way I should": Maxim Rader's text. URL: https://www.mmv.ru/interview/30-09-1999_gubaid.htm
8. Sofia Gubaidulina: "I believe in salvation and in the Savior": interview with Tamara Unanova. URL: http://rus.postimees.ee/681030/sofija-gubajdulina-ja-verju-v-spasenie-i-v-spasitelja
9. The third part has the same name as the entire cycle as a whole – "It always snows now".

Application

Musical example 1 is a fragment of the manuscript of the cantata score for chamber choir and chamber ensemble. Gubaidulina on G. Aiga's poems "Now it's always snowing" (1993). I part "You are my silence", vol. 1-6).

Musical example 2 is a fragment of the manuscript of the cantata score for chamber choir and chamber ensemble by S. Gubaidulina based on poems by G. Aiga "Now it always snows" (1993). III part "It's always snowing now", vol. 57-60).

Musical example 3 is a fragment of the manuscript of the cantata score for chamber choir and chamber ensemble by S. Gubaidulina based on poems by G. Aiga "Now it always snows" (1993). IV part "Recording: apophatic", c. 100, t. 107-115).

Musical example 4 is a fragment of the manuscript of the cantata score for chamber choir and chamber ensemble by S. Gubaidulina based on poems by G. Aiga "Now it always snows" (1993). IV part "Oh yes: homeland", c. 135, t. 235-243).