SYMMETRIES AND ASYMMETRIES IN SOFIA GUBAIDULINA’S QUASI HOQUETUS\ud AND ODE TO BROKEN THINGS FOR CLARINET, CELLO AND PIANO\ud

In the first part of this dissertation, I will analyze Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quasi Hoquetus for viola, bassoon and piano. Gubaidulina (b.1931) is a Russian composer whose musical aesthetic features religious and symbolic elements. She often utilizes numerical series to create rhythmic and structural frameworks in her works. \ud Quasi Hoquetus was written in 1984, when Gubaidulina had just started to use numerical series in her works. Therefore, this piece shows how she started to apply the number series in her works, and how she develops her own compositional method, which she calls the ‘Rhythm of Form.’ Also, the piece shows her musical intuition, her free compositional thought processes, more clearly than works that were written from the 1990s on, in which she composed with numerical series more strictly and systematically. In addition, this work features a number of intriguing harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements that demonstrate Gubaidulina’s unique compositional language, especially in regards to the concepts of symmetries and asymmetries. I will focus not only on rhythm but also on other musical structures, so that I can gain insight into her overall compositional process; specifically I will uncover how Gubaidulina applies the concept of symmetries and asymmetries to the formal, harmonic, rhythmic and melodic plans, and how she accomplishes a balance between symmetries and asymmetries throughout the work.\ud The second part of this dissertation, an original composition entitled Ode to Broken Things for clarinet, cello and piano, was inspired by Pablo Neruda’s poem, Ode to Broken Things. I explore the idea of the relationship between the musical tension and resolution created by musical gestures, dynamics, timbre, register, harmonic progression and rhythm. The tension of this piece is represented as ‘invisible’ and ‘deliberate’ but having the power to break the audiences’ expectations, as described in the first verse of Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Things get broken at home like they were pushed by an invisible, deliberate smasher.” The resolution implies the things “which nobody broke but got broken anyway”. \ud \u