Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina died Thursday at the age of 93 in Germany, where she had lived since the collapse of the Soviet Union, her publisher announced.
She passed away at her home near Hamburg, music publisher Boosey & Hawkes said on its website, calling her "the grande dame of new music."
Acclaimed for her distinctive style — rooted in spirituality yet transcending tradition — Gubaidulina was a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
A nonconformist who endured Soviet censorship before emigrating to the West, she spent years in obscurity before gaining recognition as one of the most influential composers of her time.
Born in 1931 in the Tatarstan town of Chistopol to a mixed Russian-Tatar family, she was baptized into the Orthodox Church in 1970, though Muslim traditions also shaped some of her works.
"I am a religious Russian Orthodox person, and I understand 'religion' in the literal meaning of the word, as 're-ligio' — the restoration of connections, the restoration of the 'legato' of life," she once said.
"There is no more serious task for music than this."
Blacklisted in 1979 by the Union of Soviet Composers and banned from publishing scores, Gubaidulina was only able to secure her place as a leading figure in post-Shostakovich music after settling in Germany following the Soviet collapse.
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