''Stimmen... Verstummen...'' (
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
''Слышу... Умолкло...'',
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
''Voices... Silence...'') is a
symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...
in twelve movements by Russian-Tatar composer
Sofia Gubaidulina. It was written in 1986 and dedicated to the conductor
Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky, CBE (russian: Генна́дий Никола́евич Рожде́ственский; 4 May 1931 – 16 June 2018) was a Soviet and Russian conductor.
Biography
Gennady Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. H ...
, who gave the first performance in West Berlin with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra on September 4, 1986. It takes the two words of its title from a poem by
Francisco Tanzer.
''Stimmen... Verstummen...'' is primarily organized around two themes. The first is that of a major triad, occurring as D-major in the first, third, and fifth movements and as a G-major triad in the tenth and twelfth movements. The second theme, that of "effort and ruin", occurs in the second, fourth, and sixth movement. Movements I, III, V, and VII become progressively shorter according to the proportions of the
Fibonacci sequence
In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a integer sequence, sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start ...
.
The symphony is notable for its careful and innovative use of silence. Though the eighth movement has the largest proportions of the work, the climax actually takes place in the ninth movement when the conductor motions before a silent orchestra. The motions the conductor makes are meant to make his hands move increasingly farther apart from each other according to the Fibonacci sequence. This "conductor solo" is repeated at the end of the work, when after the last note is sounded the conductor continues to motion for several minutes.
{{Authority control
Compositions by Sofia Gubaidulina
1986 in the Soviet Union
Gubaidulina