Gurdjieff’s music
“Our inner world is the soil where the seeds of art germinate. In these seeds lies the magic of life and from them grow works of art… Without them there is no art and no music.”
Thomas de Hartmann
Thomas de Hartmann composer and pianist
The young Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann, in search of a spiritual teaching, came to Gurdjieff in 1916. He began by harmonizing, developing, and fully realizing Gurdjieff’s music for the sacred dances, or Movements, which were an integral part of Gurdjieff’s teaching. Some years later, de Hartmann collaborated on Gurdjieff’s musical works that were independent of the Movements. Amazingly, these pieces, very considerable in number, were almost all composed between 1925 and 1927 at the Prieuré in Fontainebleau, France.
Thomas de Hartmann wrote:
“Georgi Ivanovich put always a great weight on music. He himself played and he also composed. After working with Georgi Ivanovich, we can better understand the role that music plays in religious ceremony. Music helps to concentrate oneself, to bring oneself to an inner state where we can receive the greatest possible emanations. That is why music helps you to see higher.
Mr. Gurdjieff’s music had great variety. The most deeply moving was that which he remembered hearing in remote temples during his Asian travels. Listening to this music, one was touched to the depth of his being.”
Laurence Rosenthal composer and pianist
“What can we consider to be the purpose of Gurdjieff’s music? Perhaps it is related to man’s work on himself, what Gurdjieff called “harmonious development.” He offered food for the growth of a man’s being through the different sides of his nature: ideas for the mind, special exercises and dances for the body and mind together, and music as a way to awaken a sensitivity in the feelings, to arouse in the deeper level of the listener’s interior world questions and intimations beyond words. And perhaps, in dissolving the barriers created by associations and conditioning, these sounds could bring the listener into closer contact with his own essential nature.”
