Offertorium is part of a cycle of three instrumental concertos conceived as masses entitled Proprium. They are usually performed separately. The idea for the Violin Concerto came from Gidon Kremer, to whom the work is dedicated, and dates from 1978, when Gubaidulina began work on Introitus, a concerto for piano and small orchestra ( “introit” is the first element of the traditional mass). Offertorium is the second work, composed for the most part immediately after Introitus in 1979 and 1980, and then revised in 1982 and 1986. The latter, Detto II, was written before the other two in 1972 and also has spiritual content.
As Gidon Kremer was also not well received by the official authorities, he illegally exported the score out of the country and premiered it in Vienna in 1981 with the ORF Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam, the concerto impressing with its striking beauty. The following year the concerto was performed in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory by Oleg Kagan and the Symphony Orchestra of the Ministry of Culture under the baton of Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Gubaidulina was then asked to make an abridged version, which was printed in 1986.
Like many of her works, the musical structures in Offertorium symbolize fundamental spiritual ideas, such as the theme of death and resurrection, brilliantly expressed instrumentally. The main theme is the famous one set by King Frederick the Great of Prussia for Bach to write a fugue, on which he composed the polyphonic cycle Musical Sacrifice. Gubaidulina treats Bach’s theme in the way Anton Webern composed his orchestral version (1934-1935), by changing the instruments that play the melody every few notes (Klangfarbenmelodie). Thus she combined Bach’s theme with Webern’s approach, the two composers who, according to her, made the strongest impression on her. The transformation of Bach’s theme embodies deep Christian symbolism. After its almost complete voicing (minus the last tone) in the first movement, a series of variations in the violin follow, in each of which the theme appears shortened by one tone from the beginning and one from the end, until only one tone of it remains. The second movement, according to Gubaidulina, focuses on the Doomsday and Christ’s suffering on the cross and contains almost no trace of Bach’s melody. The theme is restored in the third chorale movement (the Resurrection) tone by tone and almost completely resounds in the violin towards the end, but now with a changed image, its tones arranged in reverse order. The work’s meditatively ecstatic finale is strikingly evocative.