This is the first portrayal of the life and work of the master, who celebrates her 70th birthday this year. The book is based on countless conversations with the composer, her relatives, friends, and interpreters, and features significant contemporaries from the music world, from Mstislav Rostropovich to Kurt Masur. Sofia Gubaidulina, unanimously recognized in the music community as the first composer of international stature, grew up as the daughter of a Tatar and a Russian in the Soviet provincial capital of Kazan. After her piano training with L. Kogan, she studied composition in Moscow with N. Pejko and W. Schebalin, and since 1963, she has followed her own thorny path as a freelance composer in an atheistically shaped environment, constantly grappling with the repressions and obstacles imposed by the system. Her work is characterized by a deep religiosity.