To compile a biography, even a short one, of Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya (the German transliteration of her name “Ustwolskaja” is widely used, as her editor, Hans Sikorski, is from Hamburg) remains problematic due to a scarcity of reliable information, the absence of translations of relevant texts from Russian, and the laconic nature of the composer herself.

Ustvolskaya was born 17 June 1919, in Petrograd (Petrograd, as it was known from 1914 to 1924, later became Leningrad (1924 to 1991), and finally, Saint-Petersburg). Her father was a lawyer and her mother a primary school teacher. Galina started playing piano at an early age, and went on to take up the cello, as well as studying German. From 1934 to 1937, she studied at the School of Music, and from 1937 to 1948 at the Conservatory in her native town. After being evacuated to Tashkent in August 1941, she was reunited with her mother and sister in the Komi Republic, before returning to Leningrad in 1944 and resuming her composition studies at the conservatory with Maximilien Steinberg and Dimitri Shostakovich. Ustvolskaya felt that the latter was the only person who was able to teach her anything of value; the respect was reciprocal, with Shostakovich stating in a letter to Boris Tichtchenko, dated 17 April, 1970, “I believe that Galina Ustvolskaya’s work will be recognised by those who appreciate true musical art.” Shostakovich went as far as to cite a theme from Ustvolskaya’s Trio in his String Quartet No. 5 and in Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (No. 9). However, the relationship between the two soured shortly after Ustvolskaya became engaged, with Ustvolskaya declaring that she found Shostakovich’s music “depressing,” and later rejecting his influence outright and accusing him of having “crushed her spirit.” A response from Shostakovich may be found in a letter to Isaac Glikmann, dated 26 February 1960: “You can take a philosophical stance on misery, but it still becomes unbearable in the end. I think that neither self deprecation nor glorification is worthy of an artist.”

Upon her induction to the Composers’ Union in 1947, Ustvolskaya became a Professor of Composition at the Rimski-Korsakov Conservatory Music School in Leningrad, a position she retained until 1975, despite her limited aptitude for pedagogy. Notably, Boris Tichtchenko was one of her students.

Throughout the 1950s, Ustvolskaya composed in the Socialist Realist style, which was the norm in the milieu in which she lived. Numerous publications sanctioned by the regime praised her creativity, the quality of her melodies, her mastery of form, and her knowledge of orchestration and classical Russian traditions. However, manuscripts of her film scores contain the comment “for money,” and Ustvolskaya would later destroy or withdraw from her catalogue a number of works from this period.

In 1958, a delegation of American musicians visited the USSR as part of a recently inaugurated cultural exchange, where they heard Ustvolskaya’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1952). Composer Roy Harris, who was among the American delegates, stated publicly that he found the piece to be “kind of ugly.” As noted by Robert Craft in his book Dialogues and a Diary (1963), during a visit to the USSR in 1962, Stravinsky compared the music of Ustvolskaya to that of Béla Bartók, on account of the “awfully sad” quality of its use of descending minor thirds, before, somewhat sardonically, noting that “this was the work of another of Shostakovich’s students.”

After 1961, feeling more and more isolated, distancing herself from institutional and political life in Leningrad (“It is difficult for me to have contact with anyone. I am extremely asocial”) and, most notably, rejecting Socialist Realism, the works of Galina Ustvolskaya were seldom performed. Only one score was conserved by the composerfrom the decade beginning in 1960, the Duo pour violon et piano (1964 - the year in which her friend, composer Youri Balkachine died). Although the views of critics remained favourable, the VAAP (the organisation in charge of musical exchanges with other countries) failed to acknowledge her body of work until 1976. Leading a reclusive life, refusing interviews, and opposing the use of her music in theatrical and dance productions, she came to focus, in what little music she shared publicly (“I do not believe in these composers who write hundreds of works […]. One finds nothing new in such an ocean.”), on “spiritual music,” thereby further marginalising herself from the officially-sanctioned musical aesthetic.

Recognition for Ustvolskaya came late, largely through the efforts of Jürgen Köchel, Director of the Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski, and Dutch musicologist Elmer Schönberger, who discovered Ustvolskaya’s music in Leningrad and undertook to have it published and performed at the major new-music festivals of the West, notably in the Netherlands, where conductor and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw performed several pieces with Ustvolskaya’s resounding approval. Subsequently, her music came to be widely performed in the West (in Amsterdam, Vienna, Bern, Warsaw, Bastad, Paris, etc.), with the composer often in attendance. Galina Ustvolskaya died in Saint Petersburg on 22 December 2006.