De Profundis

In the field of New Music, Sofia Gubaidulina’s “De profundis” has already achieved the status of a classic. It is not only an attainment of the New Music that instruments are capable of approaching the human voice in their sound, or that they can imitate areas of expression found in language and linguistic articulation. But the avant-garde has surely expanded the spectrum to a considerable extent. The piece for solo bayan is an impressive example of this.

The listener witnesses a slow and inexorable intensification from the “rattling” of the lowest accordion register up to the pure, tender tones of the highest register. It is “an ascent from the lowest to the highest, from the breath and soul to the world’s soul or wisdom”, as Gubaidulina’s friend and colleague Viktor Suslin once expressed it. With the means of sound, Gubaidulina transfers a symbol of life onto the music: breathing. Breathing distinguishes the living from the dead. What other instrument, other than the winds, perhaps, could better lend expression to this characteristic than the accordion? In contrast to the wind instruments, however, the accordion is not an instrument into which the player breathes and creates breathing sounds - instead, the instrument itself assumes this function. It breathes through the pulling apart and pressing together of the bellows.

As the basis of her composition, Gubaidulina chose the lines of the Psalm 130 “From the depths, o Lord, I call to you” for the characterisation of her interlaced message. Shadowy chorale melodies are occasionally heard, but the fundamental idea of ascent remains decisive. Sharp insertions and expressive gestures, intrusive glissandi and nervous vibrati repeatedly disturb the direction of movement. And then we hear consciously the integrated breathing of the instrument - breathing slightly, hardly audible, opposing the powerful chord blocks.

The musicologist Valentina Cholopova once said of this: “All these sounds confront solemn chords richly ornamented with figurations, but there is also a long, monodic melody running through the entire symbolic path of the work – from the depths all the way up to the brilliant heights.”

The work is dedicated to Friedrich Lips!