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GURDJIEFF Gurdjieff gurdjieff
GURDJIEF Gurdjief gurdief
GURDJIEV Gurdjiev gurdjiev
GURDJEF Gurdjef gurdjef
GURDJEV Gurdjev gurdjev
GURDIEFF Gurdieff gurdieff
GURDIEF Gurdief gurdief
GURDIEV Gurdiev gurdiev
DORJIEFF Dorjieff dorjieff
GEORGIADES Georgiades georgiades
gurdjief, grudjief, grudief, gurdjew,gurdijef, grudjiev,
gurdjiefff, gurdijef, grudiev,gurdev
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MUSIC:
The Gurdjieff / De Hartmann Music 1/3
When the German music publisher Schott published the first two volumes
of piano scores in 1996, an important step was made towards a worldwide
discovery of this oeuvre.
De Hartmann said about this music: "I can't keep to tell something
about Georgi Ivanovitch. Here we understand why Georgi Ivanovitch put
always a great weight on music. He himself played and also composed. If
we compare it with the music of all the religions we can see that music
plays a great role, a great part in the so-called religious service. But
after the work of Georgi Ivanovitch we can understand better that music
helps to concentrate, to bring oneself to an inner state where we can
assume the greatest possible emanations. That is why music is just the
thing which helps you to see higher."
The music of Gurdjieff's father, an ashok (troubadour) of an ancient tradition,
Greek Orthodox liturgical music and Caucasian and Greek folk music -all
these were woven into Gurdjieff's early youth. More important than the
emotional value to him was the fact that music consisted of vibrations
through which laws could be studied that apply to the whole of creation.
When Gurdjieff describes the processes of creation, of evolution and involution,
he re-establishes an alliance in musical terminology between science and
music that goes back to the oldest and most venerable traditions of Western
thought. The Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music can be divided into the music
for the Movements demonstrations in 1923/1924 as they were performed by
a 36-piece orchestra and the compositions written between July, 1925 and
May, 1927.
The value of the Movements music 2/3
Apart from the fact that the music for the Movements represents a substantial
part of all of Gurdjieff's musical works, nobody has ever sufficiently
emphasised that virtually all the music composed by him before 1924, was
made for the Movements. All the dates supplied by de Hartmann in his autobiography
as well as the dates on his manuscripts confirm this. (The compositions
before 1924 include fragments from The Struggle of the Magicians, The
Initiation of a Priestess -maybe his most ambitious and surely his longest
composition- and The Great Prayer, a piece without equal in this oeuvre.
It is true that this music is best appreciated by experiencing the Movement
for which it was composed or, even better, by participating in their performance.
Nonetheless, it seemed appropriate to present this music independently
and let it speak with its own voice.
The Actual Composers 3/3
The Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music for the Movements has been privately published
on two occasions. First, around 1954, when de Hartmann published his three
selections, all copies of his own hand-written manuscripts. In 1990, Triangle
Editions, New York, published all of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music for
the Movements for which the notes for performance still existed. They
presented the entire collection in two volumes; the first containing the
works by Gurdjieff and de Hartmann, the second those composed by de Hartmann
alone. This was a valuable effort that could have ended a lot of confusion,
if only the circulation of these books had not been so extremely limited.
Many CD's dedicated to the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music continue to ascribe
one or more of their pieces to Gurdjieff that were not actually composed
by him. One of these CD's even presents 37 pieces as such, the vast majority
of which Gurdjieff had not even heard, let alone composed. It seems necessary
to draw a line between Gurdjieff's collaborations with Thomas de Hartmann
and works by other composers, including those made by de Hartmann after
Gurdjieff's death.
The History of the Music 1/3
There are two completely separate bodies of Movements created in two specific
periods of Gurdjieff's life: the old Movements between 1918 and 1924 and
the new exercises created between 1940 and 1949.
In between these periods Gurdjieff taught no Movements.
Mrs. Jessmin Howarth said about the older Movements: "Everything
worked on from 1922 to 1924 in my studios (the studios in the Dalcroze
Institute in Paris) and at the Prieuré (The Institute at Fontainebleau)
for five or six hours a day, and done in the public demonstrations, had
already been completely learnt during months of intensive work in Tiflis,
Constantinople, Berlin etc., by the original group before they even arrived
in France. No other Movements were ever given such attention."
Mrs. Howarth's daughter, the singer/guitarist known as "Dushka,"
added that these have a unique and extra dimension, since they are the
only ones for which Gurdjieff himself specified the music. He worked long
hours dictating distinctive oriental melodies with subtle harmonies and
rhythms, exactly suited to every gesture and motion. She emphasised that
the piano versions of these pieces would benefit from being compared to
and corrected from de Hartmann's original orchestral scores that were
used in the public demonstrations in 1923-1924.
Around 1940, Gurdjieff started again to teach Movements, scores of them.
For a right understanding of Gurdjieff's last ten years, one should realise
that each day he was occupied for at least two to three hours with Movements.
There cannot be any doubt that in this period of his teaching, they were
among his most primary activities and concerns. The music for all these
Movements was always improvised by different pianists and neither choreographies
nor the notation of music were allowed. His main work went into a series
of Movements, now called the 39 Series, that he considered set and ready
and met all his requirements. But, again, no music existed for the Movements
from the 39 Series, nor for the others from his newer Movements, which
had received less of his attention and approval. When Gurdjieff was in
hospital, he gave Madame de Salzmann a message for the de Hartmanns, just
before he died in 1949.
In this message, he asked de Hartmann to write the music for his new exercises.
This is what de Hartmann started to do from 1950 onwards. His first new
compositions were used in the demonstration of Movements in London in
1950. This was the first public demonstration without Mr. Gurdjieff being
present.
De Hartmann continued composing after moving to America. So everything
for the new exercises, with just a few exceptions, is composed by de Hartmann
alone.
The History of the Music 2/3
In his autobiography, de Hartmann attributes The Essentuki Prayer to 1918,
the first conception of the music for The Struggle of the Magicians to
1919, work on the Ho-Ya and The Great Prayer to 1920, and the remaining
Movements music to the period between 1920-1924 when the last pieces were
dictated. In de Hartmann's privately published Movements book, he not
only included Gurdjieff's earliest music, but also some of his own compositions
made after Gurdjieff's death. This has created some confusion. One inconsistency
needs explanation.
Although the Six Obligatories actually belong to Gurdjieff's oldest works,
they are not included in the selection for this album (Gurdjieff's Music
for the Movements, Channel Crossings CCS 15298) simply because de Hartmann
places them after the 39 Series in his second Movements book. Some of
the music for the newer exercises was composed after Gurdjieff's death
by Helen Adie in collaboration with Mme. Jeanne de Salzmann, by Edward
Michael and several others. De Hartmann's position remains unique, for
his contribution provided a compositional framework that was subsequently
consulted by all other composers in this field. They stuck to the same
concept, sometimes to the extent that they sound predictable, a danger
de Hartmann always knew how to avoid.
During the decade that Gurdjieff gave his new exercises and gradually
established the 39 Series, not only was the making of choreographic notes
explicitly forbidden by him, but another of his strict orders was that
the music should be improvised by the pianist. He would give a rhythm
to the pianist and his instructions were generally limited to, "Now,
just do it!" In fact, it is reported that the choice of a particular
rhythm often provided Gurdjieff with the fundamentals out of which he
created the whole structure of the new Movement.
The History of the Music 3/3
A couple of decades earlier a specialist in composing music for gymnastics,
Rudolf Bode, had already stressed the importance of improvisation: "...for
the teaching of gymnastics as far as it is accompanied by music, the ability
to employ some improvisation, even though it be produced by the most simple
means, is absolutely essential... Every kind of merely outer simulation
must necessarily lead to monotony..." Obviously, Gurdjieff worked
along the same lines and was on his guard for any premature fixations.
Movements and music had to be alive. The truth of his work should present
itself in an ongoing creative process, in an ever new and immaculate form
in every moment.
For those who regard such processes as self-evident it will be useful
to point out that an equal balance between music and dance is rare. Historically,
one of the two would be dominant: either the music written to sustain
the ballet, or the ballet fitted onto the existing music.
While performing Movements, one can experience sound in a totally new
way, as if it illuminates one's inner life. A unique balance comes about
in us; the music, the gestures and our inner aspirations become one and
it is as if we enter a new place, one without walls, without time. At
such a moment, we experience life in a way that will be difficult to forget.
Thomas de Hartmann's Compositions for the '39 Series'
Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga were at Gurdjieff's side for twelve
years. In 1929, after a period of intense musical co-operation that produced
over two hundred compositions for piano solo, the relationship between
Gurdjieff and de Hartmann ended. They would never see one another again.
Despite this separation, de Hartmann remained loyal to Gurdjieff. Shortly
before his death, Gurdjieff sent a message to the de Hartmanns requesting
Thomas to write the music for his new exercises.
After Gurdjieff's death on October 29, 1949, Thomas de Hartmann started
the work. The first necessity was to see and study the Movements for which
he had to compose the music, because the new ones were completely unknown
to him.
As Mme. Solange Claustres recalled: "De Hartmann wanted to do Gurdjieff
a favour by writing the music for a lot of the newer movements, in particular
for the 39 Series. To assist him I demonstrated all the Movements he did
not know, with the occasional help of Josée de Salzmann and Marthe
de Gaigneron. So, actually, he saw only one dancer and not a whole class,
which made things more difficult for him. He worked out a lot of new music.
With some of his new compositions, I have difficulties and I do not feel
that they are optimal. The reason for that might be, again, that he did
not see a class, but only one person's performance."
Knowing the circumstances in which de Hartmann had to study the new Movements,
it is all the more miraculous that his music sustains the 39 Series so
well. Already in May 1950, he performed much of his new music during a
Movements performance at the Fortune Theatre, London and so it cannot
have taken him much longer than six months to write the music for the
whole of the Series.
In his music for the 39 Series, de Hartmann and Gurdjieff's signature
style reappears once more, full of life and inspiration, drawn no doubt
by de Hartmann from his dedication to Gurdjieff. But, perhaps, more than
just inspiration and dedication shaped the form of these pieces.
Chronology of Thomas de Hartmann's life and major musical works 1/4
Thomas Alexandrovich de Hartmann was born on 21 September 1885, in the
Ukraine, into a family that belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy.
He started to play the piano at the age of four. After the death of his
father, when he was nine years old, he was sent to a military school in
St. Petersburg. Because of his obvious talents, he was given the opportunity
to study music in addition to his military education.
He studied harmony with Arenskii and Taneiev -who also taught Rachmaninov
and Scriabin- and piano technique with Esipova-Leschetizky, Prokoviev's
teacher. He received his diploma from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
in 1903, at the age of eighteen. That same year, his music for the tragedy
Caligula by Dumas the Elder was performed at the Imperial Theatre. In
1906, his ballet The Scarlet Flower was performed in the presence of the
Tsar with Fokine, Nijinsky and Pavlova in the cast. Two years later, after
an intervention by the Tsar himself, de Hartmann was allowed to study
conducting in Munich with Felix Mottl, a pupil of Wagner.
He married Olga Arkadievna de Shumacher, who would later function as Gurdjieff's
secretary, translator and household manager. The de Hartmanns stayed in
Munich from 1908 to 1912 and later returned for a short period in 1914.
There, they established contact with the avant-garde, and especially with
Vassily Kandinsky, who remained a life-long friend.
Chronology of Thomas de Hartmann's life and major musical works 2/4
De Hartmann composed music for several theatre projects of Kandinsky.
His work for The Yellow Sound was published in 1912 in what was to become
one of the most famous and prestigious art books of the twentieth century:
Der Blaue Reiter Almanach edited by Kandinsky and Franz Marc. In the same
edition is an article by de Hartmann, 'Über die Anarchie in die Musik'
from which we quote:
"External laws do not exist. In music, every means that arises from
inner necessity is correct. Anarchy in art should be welcomed. Only this
principle can lead us to a shining future, a new rebirth."
Kandinsky, in his famous treatise 'Über das Geistige in der Kunst'
published in the same year, emphasised that only inner necessity can lead
to art. De Hartmann's reference to the "new rebirth" foreshadows
his interest in the expositions of his future teacher Gurdjieff.
At the end of 1916, the de Hartmanns met Gurdjieff and decided to follow
him. The incredibly adventurous years from 1917 to 1923 have been described
in their book Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff. They were part of a small expedition
led by Gurdjieff out of war-torn Russia, during which Thomas de Hartmann
was almost killed by typhus. They travelled from one country to another
while he worked as a musician in whatever town they passed through. Finally,
the de Hartmanns settled in France, in Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man in Fontainebleau.
Chronology of Thomas de Hartmann's life and major musical works 3/4
From May 1923 to June 1927, Gurdjieff and de Hartmann composed, in a
collaboration unique in the history of music, the orchestral pieces for
the Movement Demonstrations in 1923 and 1924 as well as many compositions
for piano solo. In 1922, de Hartmann accepted a job as director of the
music-publishing company Belaieff and, as a further effort to raise money
both for himself and for the Gurdjieff household, started to write music
for films under the pseudonym Thomas Kross. By 1936, when he stopped this
activity, he had written the music for 52 films.
The de Hartmanns travelled with Gurdjieff on his journeys to America in
1924 and 1929. In that last year, de Hartmann left Gurdjieff, never to
see him again, but his faith in his teacher remained unaltered. From then
on, he worked on his own music, in which Gurdjieff's influence is not
discernible.
In 1935, he finished his first symphony, opus 50, which was performed
later in Paris and Brussels, as well as his Cello Concerto, opus 57, which
was performed by Pablo Casals and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His Violin
Sonata, opus 51 was published in 1937.
Chronology of Thomas de Hartmann's life and major musical works 4/4
He survived the Second World War in France, composing quietly, almost
in seclusion, five Concertos and his Second Symphony. After Gurdjieff's
death in 1949, he prepared several volumes, privately distributed by Editions
Janus in Paris, of the music he composed in collaboration with him. In
1951, he emigrated to America. There he finished his Opera Esther, opus
76, begun in 1946, and his second Piano Sonata, opus 82 (dedicated to
PD Ouspensky's ideas of the Fourth Dimension). In 1955, Leopold Stokowski
directed his 'Four Dances' from the opera Esther.
Thomas de Hartmann died of heart failure on the 26th of March, 1956 in
Princeton, New Jersey. He had just started working on the chapter 'Music'
in his autobiography and a concert of his work, with himself as a soloist,
was scheduled in Town Hall, New York the next month.
His 90 opus numbers include several ballets, three operas, four symphonies,
seven concertos, works for piano, chamber music, and many songs on texts
by Balmont, Pushkin, Verlaine, Joyce, Proust, Shelley and Shakespeare.
His work gradually evolved from a late Romantic towards a modern and personal
style. However, he was a forgotten composer soon after his death and even
Belaieff removed his compositions from their catalogue after 1960.
Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff 1/4
Gurdjieff was probably born in 1866 from Greek-Armenian parentage in
what is now the frontier region between Russia and Turkey. While still
a young man, a thirst for a special form of knowledge, which he believed
still existed somewhere on earth, drove him into the most inaccessible
areas of the Orient, on a search that was to last for more than twenty
years.
From 1912 on, he became a spiritual teacher in Russia, fled during the
Revolution and, after a journey through several countries with his caravanserai
of family and pupils, finally settled down in France. In a mansion in
Fontainebleau, he founded his Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man that, despite a controversial reputation in the press, drew many
pupils from America and England. Among the disciplines practised in the
Institute were dances, generally referred to as Movements. These Movements
were created by Gurdjieff, influenced by the dances and rituals he studied
during his travels.
These were presented to the public between December 16 and 25, 1923 at
the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and in the
spring of 1924 in several American cities, including a performance on
March 3, 1924 at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The music for them was
created by Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann. De Hartmann made orchestral
arrangements especially for these public presentations.
Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff 2/4
A serious car accident in 1924 forced Gurdjieff to reassess his situation
and in the following decade, he immersed himself solely in the writing
of his books, a trilogy known as All and Everything. The first book, Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson aimed to destroy "mercilessly" all previous
beliefs about humankind, the universe and God. The second, Meetings with
Remarkable Men, describes the characters of members of the group "Seekers
of the Truth," whom he portrays as collaborators in his own search.
The third, Life is Real Then, Only When "I Am" can be called
autobiographical.
Gurdjieff and de Hartmann continued to compose and, between 1925 and 1927,
produced some 170 new compositions in close collaboration. When he had
completed his third book in 1935, Gurdjieff saw his Institute closed and
sold in the aftermath of the Depression, and interest in his work gradually
diminished. After the war, pupils from England and America reconnected
with him at his Paris apartment, where he presided over dinners -in which
he was the patriarch- and summarised his teachings for the last time.
He died in Neuilly, near Paris, the 29th of October 1949.
Fragments of an Unknown Teaching 3/4
We know almost verbatim what Gurdjieff taught in the early years between
1914 and 1918, because one of his pupils possessed such skills of understanding
and memory that he was able to write down with meticulous precision everything
he remembered, either from private conversations or from lectures given
in St. Petersburg or Moscow. This pupil was P. D. Ouspensky and his book
Fragments of an Unknown Teaching was authorised by Gurdjieff and published
after Ouspensky's death in 1947. It is considered the most comprehensive
overview of Gurdjieff's early teachings. The title was later changed into
In Search of the Miraculous.
Gurdjieff's own books remained without acclaim from literary or scientific
circles. One of the rare exceptions was the French surrealist André
Breton, who considered Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson "the greatest
book of this century" -an amazing statement for anybody who knows
Breton's critical mind. Gurdjieff attracted several prominent pupils like
Ouspensky, whose own book Tertium Organum had established him as a powerful
thinker before he even met Gurdjieff, and the English scientist and philosopher
J. G. Bennett, as well as the Jungian Maurice Nicoll and the literary
critic A.R. Orage. Mainly as a result of the study groups initiated by
many of his followers, the relatively small inner circle of pupils surrounding
Gurdjieff during his lifetime gradually spread to much larger proportions.
The Work 4/4
The practice of Gurdjieff's ideas is generally referred to as "The
Work." This codeword is now used by a large variety of methods and
organisations, only some of which have historical ties that can be traced
back to Gurdjieff. Such an explosive growth has its risks. Gurdjieff's
teachings are being popularised, if not distorted, often without mentioning
their source. Diametrically opposed, is an inclination towards dogmatism
among his more ardent followers and students. "The light in one man
blinds another," as André Breton formulated so aptly, although
in another context.
Gurdjieff left behind an unfinished ballet, his three books, over 200
musical compositions and at least 250 Movements. A unique diversity, and
yet, the expression of one organic and coherent body of thought. Fifty
years after his death, an entire library of books has been written about
his ideas. His music, however, has not reached a large audience yet and,
until this day, the Movements have remained virtually unknown outside
a small circle of initiates. These discrepancies are regrettable because
the books, music and Movements were not only expressions of the same vision,
they are complementary to each other -representing intellect, heart and
body- and were certainly intended that way by Gurdjieff.
The most remarkable aspect of this music is that it was the result of
a unique collaboration. De Hartmann notated and harmonised the themes
that Gurdjieff dictated to him, an unprecedented phenomenon in the history
of music. Only slightly less remarkable is the fact that the musical sources
Gurdjieff drew upon -ethnic music as well as the various rituals of remote
monastic brotherhoods- were transmuted with one bold sweep into the well-tempered
keyboard of a piano. This process made available a repertoire of music
from various Eastern sources that would have remained unknown to Western
ears otherwise. In this synthesis of Eastern and Western music resounds
the echo of the task that Gurdjieff had set himself: to combine the wisdom
of the East with the knowledge of the West.
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