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Interview with Masguda Shamsutdinova
• Some believe the Composers’ Union, as a creative organization, has outlived its purpose and is no longer needed. What’s your view?
Masguda: I believe the Composers’ Union should be preserved and supported by official authorities.
• Which composers from the older generation of our republic were or are close to you in spirit? Perhaps you shared a long friendship—share your memories of this composer (teacher, friend, colleague, etc.).
Masguda: : I was lucky to live during the time of Zhiganov, Yakhin, Bakirov, Khusnullin, Monasypov, Yarullin, Belyalov, Akhmetov, and others. I consider them the golden core of Tatar professional compositional culture. They were Soviet-era intellectuals who carried the heavy burden of total oppression yet were free to express their artistic ideas through national sounds. They were our life teachers, elder brothers in spirit, and colleagues in creativity.
• Your approach to the issues of “Artist and Time” and “Artist and Society.” What is the composer’s mission in modern society? Is their work in demand?
Masguda: Composers of any genre will always be in demand. With the rise of modern communication technologies, the internet, and other media, there’s a growing need for composers who can quickly fulfill orders for video games, documentary films, and theater productions. New music is also needed for the younger generation, reflecting their sense of time. Don’t slow down—create no matter what.
• What is “modern music” to you? Are there common trends in its development, or does each living composer follow their own independent path (i.e., “to each their own”)?
Masguda: Music, as an art that captures a composer’s specific time and local culture, will be “modern,” even if some think it’s “whatever goes.” You can create ahead of your time, but such composers are often recognized as geniuses only after they’re gone.
• What is a modern artist or composer like? How would you define the “starving artist”? This term applies to almost all creative artists.
Masguda: Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Nadezhda Filaretovna (referring to Von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s patron).
• Does modern music reflect our reality and the world around us? How do you respond to contemporary events in your work?
Masguda: Globally, modern music reflects our reality as it globalizes. I don’t react to contemporary events. I’ve built a strong cocoon around myself.
• Can music transform a person’s worldview, character, or spiritual world?
Masguda: If a person wants to transform themselves, anything is possible. Music alone means nothing if it doesn’t resonate with the individual.
• What are your views on art and culture in general? What are your priorities in creativity and life? (“I realized life is much bigger than music,” K. Penderecki said.)
Masguda: A composer must have an insatiable desire to learn endlessly—from classics, modern composers, their people, Yakuts, shamans, and nature itself. A composer’s education must be vast to become a personality with immense spiritual potential. A composer must earn the right to invite listeners to their music, making them spend their time without regret, feeling they’ve gained something through it. Music, like faith, gives a sense of infinity.
• The media often discusses crises in modern musical culture. How would you assess the current level of academic music in Tatarstan?
Masguda: Tatarstan has a high culture of performance with many excellent musical ensembles. I feel they’re not fully satisfied with the attention from our union’s professional composers.
• Some musicians say the loss of interest in academic music stems from our society’s state and development level. Do you agree?
Masguda: I don’t think interest in academic music is lost. With high-quality home listening options, many enjoy it at home. I see this with my children, their friends, and their kids. They know more music by sound memory than I do. They don’t delve into theoretical discussions like we do; they satisfy their curiosity and emotional-aesthetic needs.
• At the end of the 20th century, the divide between academic and popular mass culture reached extremes. Entertainment music has flooded our sound space. Pop music’s dominance has reshaped the public’s, especially youth’s, musical tastes. Can this be countered?
Masguda: No, and it shouldn’t be. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Those who want to listen do so at home with high-quality sound. Good music requires solitude.
• Which of your works do you consider significant and evolutionary in your career?
Masguda: The oratorio Tragedy of the Sons of the Earth.
• Your aesthetic views and personal stance in art?
Masguda: If I hear music within me, that’s what the universe needs.
• What currently fuels your creative pursuits? What motivates your work (commissions, theater music, etc.)? Can literary or artistic impressions inspire new compositions? Do common trends in related arts (painting, poetry, theater, architecture) appear in your work?
Masguda: The phonemes of the Tatar language strongly resonate in me, inspiring me. Islamic calligraphy and folk music from around the world also inspire me.
• Do you have autobiographical works, and what life conflicts are they tied to?
Masguda: The symphonic poem Dervish.
• Have you realized grand or central ideas in your work? Do you feel a sense of creative demand in music?
Masguda: I’m in high demand by myself. I have so many ideas, a lifetime won’t suffice. My central theme now is the archetypes of the Tatar people, which I want to embody in sound.
• Do you see yourself as someone opening new horizons in musical art?
Masguda: Yes.
• Do you notice periodicity in the evolution of your style? What characterizes your musical voice and style?
Masguda: I’m currently digging through vast philosophical and artistic material to find sounds for archetypes. My voice and style are always evolving.
• Valentin Silvestrov described composing as a process of self-discovery that also outlines one’s potential. Interesting thought, isn’t it? Your opinion?
Masguda: I wish I’d said it first. I agree with the first part. I dislike the second—outlining your potential means putting a virtual cross on yourself. For an artist, there’s no dead end, only pauses. Potential can stretch to infinity; it’s just a pity an artist’s life isn’t infinite.
• Have you recently experienced an emotional-sound shock, and whose work caused it?
Masguda: I experience emotional-sound shocks with my own work. It fuels my next creations.
• Schoenberg and Webern created a “new morality” 100 years ago. What can you say about modern composers’ attitudes toward traditional musical elements? Can we speak of rules or a “newest morality” in the 21st century, or is there absolute freedom?
Masguda: The 21st century just began; we’ll talk about its morality at the end—or others will talk about us.
• What are your plans for realizing creative ideas, unexpected plots, or updating your style and voice?
Masguda: Not yet. I haven’t had time to realize what’s in my chest of ideas.
• Should a composer write for a broad audience, or is serious academic music an elite art for the chosen few?
Masguda: Nobody owes anyone anything. Everyone writes as they wish.
• During socialist realism, art was heavily ideologized, and state control suppressed artists’ will. Post-perestroika brought long-awaited democratic changes, still unfinished today. Artists gained freedom to choose their path and views. Which is more comfortable for a composer—the first or second path?
Masguda: The second.
• How can we assess a composer’s contribution to reviving national traditions (of various peoples) and national culture overall?
Masguda: Invaluable.
• Today, there’s renewed popularity in folklore, rituals, traditions, and forgotten national instruments. What’s your relationship with folklore? Is antiquity and archaism interesting to modern composers?
Masguda: It’s a true treasure trove for composers. No great composer can be imagined without drawing from archaism.
• Which methods of mastering folklore do you prefer? Is the “Folklore and Composer” issue still relevant in the early 21st century?
Masguda: Immersion.
• Your stance on traditional music genres? Does modern music need genre distinctions? Which genres best express your thoughts? What drives your genre choices? How do you view genre blending?
Masguda: It’s up to the individual. Some feel comfortable in academic genres; others need the freedom of open sound spaces.
• How do you view performers of your works?
Masguda: Sofia Gubaidullina says performers are the foundation, as “composers do only half the work, which, without performers, is just paper, lifeless, unrealized.” I agree with her.
• Have you faced creative crises, and what spurred you forward? What themes and plots are worthy of exploration today? What interests contemporaries?
Masguda: Everything interests contemporaries. We create in a time when whatever we make will be in demand.
• After the avant-garde craze, there’s been a shift toward simpler, clearer, and harmonious language. Does modern music need harmony? What is beauty in music for you, and is it needed today? Has your style evolved or undergone major transformations?
Masguda: I’m consistent in my style, only expanding in dimensions. All kinds of music are important and needed.
• Many modern artists and composers, like their predecessors, are deeply religious. Sofia Gubaidullina, who embraced Christianity later in life, believes, “Life tears a person apart. Religion (faith) and music help restore wholeness.” What’s your view on religion? How do you respond to the idea that “art and music are the only path to God”? (M. Yudina, S. Gubaidullina)
Masguda: Everyone has their own God. The key is not to fall apart during life’s process.
• Has your music been performed outside Tatarstan and Russia?
Masguda: Yes.
• Nowadays, everyone writes music—poets, singers, actors, instrumentalists, stylists, directors—seriously considering themselves composers without basic musical education. Why has creative work been devalued? How do you explain this, and is there a way out?
Masguda: Let everyone write; it means they want to express themselves. Who are they harming?
• In today’s unstable times of economic, political, and cultural crises, do you ever lose interest in composing or feel disappointed in your chosen path?
Masguda: On the contrary, I’ve become entirely made of sounds.
• How does a composer survive in modern society as a free artist, not tied to teaching or market-driven arranging?
Masguda: God provides food for every soul born. I agree with composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky, who says, “All compositional ideas should stem from music’s nature, its distinguishing trait as an art form. Some modern ‘art’ facts are a separate activity, a special practice. Music reaches a person’s inner world not through concepts but through ears and the subconscious.”
• What’s the future of academic music? Will it enrich itself with folk traditions, unite achievements from antiquity to the avant-garde, or blend with pop art, as we saw in the third-stream music of the late 20th century? What’s your view?
Masguda: We’re entering a world of total eclecticism in a good sense. All will be well as long as Music exists, helping people communicate on a higher level than language or body. Musicians are the mediators between music and people. We are people of extremes—vulnerable, self-absorbed, selfish, sick, ambitious, needing support and patronage, cruel to ourselves and others, helpless in the world, unable to stand up for ourselves. Without music, we’re like fish without water or humans without air. We are suffering but also infinite happiness. No obstacle should block our self-expression. We must believe the world would perish without our creativity. We give the world our naked essence, giving ourselves entirely.
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