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| Galina Ustvolskaya and Reinbert de Leeuw, 2011 |
Exclusive,first-person article on Galina Ustvolskaya on Andrew Morris's blog Devil's Trill. Please read it here - it's a significant addition to what we know of the reticent Galina Ustvolskaya and opens out new areas of research. Ustvolskaya is coming out from under the shadow of Shostakovich. Whatever the nature of their relationship, Ustvolskaya's music is utterly distinct from his, so original and so uncompromising that it's unlikley she'll ever be as popular as he is. But what amazing music she wrote ! Read HERE about her Symphony no 3 Jesus Messiah, save us ! from the Berlin Musikfest with Valéry Gergiev and the Münchner Philharmoniker.
Whether or not Shostakovich compromised with the Stalinist regime, he managed to balance on the edge. Ustvolskaya wasn't sent to Siberia, but seems to have struggled on in a kind of external exile. Perhaps her reputation for being a recluse protected her - she's not unlike many mystic visionaries in Russian history. The integrity in her music comes from very deep sources, influenced by Slavic tradition, but also decidedly modern. Her association with Shostakovich is misleading, She's closer to Stravinsky and the "primitivism" of the Rite of Spring, and to the brief explosion of modernity which flourished in the early years after the Revolution, and produced works like Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry (1925-6) Ustvolskaya's music even connects to the fierce awkwardness of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass, and indeed to Messiaen's ground-breaking masterpieces like Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Follow this link HERE to a discussion of Ustvolskaya, her place in Soviet music and her relation to Shostakovich. Also, this excellent documentary, made when Ustvolskya was, at last, being valued for her own sake. She was nearly 90 when the film was made but her mind is sharp. She knows who Reinbert de Leeuw is and what he stands for.
Perhaps someone should folow up on Sister Andre Dullaghan. For example - what was her order, and which convent did she live in ? Her manuscript and papers may remain in the convent library. Or the nuns might know what happened to her effects, and put researchers in touch with her family, or someone who might know. Two fascinating, independent women, who should be remembered.
Sister André Dullaghan was a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and taught for many years at Rathmore Grammar School in the southern fringes of Belfast. I was one of her many students there.
ReplyDeleteI believe that she moved to London around 1993 and worked at Marymount, and then at Allen Hall. She was living in Ealing at the time of her death, presumably at the Sacred Heart of Mary convent there; I found notices of her in the bulletin of the Parish of Ongar and Doddinghurst. The convent and the parish office would probably be the best jumping-off point for inquiries.
Thank you so much ! I will pass thius on to my friend who is researching Ustvolskaya. What an interesting person Sister must have been !
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