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
Gurdjieff devoted his life to awaken us to the possibility of living a conscious life. One of the ways he did this is through his music. It is mysterious how this music works on us, how it touches something very deep and intimate, and at the same time, carries an echo from afar, of another world.
Gurdjieff’s music is a call to sincerity, sometimes to an examination of conscience, to the desire to be, to be true. Music works on emotion. This music invites us to listen to the inner silence at the heart of our being.
Ensemble Resonance
Ensemble Resonance is a group of musicians from Gurdjieff groups in different countries. Under the auspices of the Drahim Association, they performed concerts of Gurdjieff’s music in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.
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.”
Solange Claustres pupil of Gurdjieff
“The music of G.I. Gurdjieff is an expression of life itself; an almost forgotten way of life. His music has nothing to do with what we generally know and recognize as music. It is a world of sounds of a universe unknown to us, as it were beyond time.
Parts of his music bring back images of forgotten lives hidden here and there in the world. It is as if Gurdjieff wanted to pass on to us rapidly disappearing sounds.
Some parts resemble a call which comes from afar and which may resonate in us in a very subtle and profound way. This very special music carries not only a message but also a question and helps us to listen to a voice which speaks directly both to our being and heart and also to our body which registers its effects. A new way of listening is possible, once we have been freed from the limitations of the world we live in, to actually hear the sound of joy, or sadness, and of seriousness or dance, which seems to come to us straight from the ether. These sounds inspire us to a really unusual quality of inner listening.”
Cecil Lewis
(In the 1930’s and 40’s, many pupils gathered at the table of Mr. Gurdjieff. Whether in Paris or in New York, the evening always ended with music, which Mr. Gurdjieff played on the harmonium. Here is an account by Cecil Lewis*)
“AFTER the meal is over we go into the salon and settle ourselves on the chairs, the divan, the stools and the floor. G sits in his chair and Lise [Tracol] brings him his little portable organ which he rests on his knee playing with one hand while he works the bellows with the other.
He then makes the strangest music, the most wonderful music. He says it is “objective”—that is, the vibrations he produces have a definite effect on people, both organically and psychologically. It affects people in different ways, tough business men and scientists sit with the tears streaming down their faces, others are merely bored or puzzled, others again are moved but do not know why.
Dr. Bell asks him about this music, saying she found she did not listen to it with her ears. He said: “Ears are no good for this music, the whole presence must be open to it. It is a matter of vibrations.” Then he added: “But tears must come first.”
*Author, BBC exec and WWI fighter pilot
Paul Beekman Taylor – pupil of Gurdjieff and author of books on Gurdjieff
Summer of 1949
“I was on my way down the Rue d’Armaille toward the Avenue des Ternes early in the morning and noticed him sitting alone at a café by the corner. He saw me and beckoned me to sit down with him and have a coffee. He asked me softly if I had enjoyed my summer, and I replied with the usual banalities, but added that I was learning a lot about life. He smiled and asked what I was learning. I said I couldn’t really say, but I was seeing and hearing new things. Then I asked out loud what I had for some time been repeating to myself, “How do you put up with so many people about you who seem so shallow?”
Very slowly he lifted his head and looked at me with his deep eyes.
No smile.
“These ‘people’, you think they come only listen to me, hear what I know? No. What I know? I know how teach them listen to themselves. They listen radio, phonograph, love-song, typewriter, and forget listen to self. I only teach them remember what they forget. I teach them hear the music in them. You Americans, you like noise. You jabber. You wiseacre. Like donkeys, you make noise and say nothing, because you listen to things outside, like own noise eating.
You sit with me and eat, you sit and listen to readings, listen my music, do Movements. Maybe you hear something, maybe not. All these people come listen. Some hear, some not. What is hear? I tell you. When you do Movements, you listen to music. You move to music. You think about Movements and you think about music. You do this every day. One day you do Movements and hear music without listening. You hear it from inside when no music playing outside. This take a long time, hard work. You do same movement and listen to same music until you no longer hear or feel with body but with consciousness. Then, you on higher level. Outside is noise of world. Inside is music of self.”
On Listening
“One of the titles given to a collection of this music was “Journeys to Inaccessible Places,” and there seems no better description for the strange inner travelling I was called to, when available to it. At such moments there was a sense of total “consonance” between the vibrations of sound, a passing phenomenon in a temporal world, and the resonance from a world which has always been.
The music is very varied, from folk songs to sacred hymns, and the responses evoked are equally varied, sometimes speaking of the suffering and joy of a human life, sometimes eliciting a strange and quite unfamiliar coloration of the feelings, and sometimes, for me at least, as if conveying a definite knowledge hidden from my ordinary thoughts. But when I listen tomorrow? I have no idea. If only it simply depended on the music! But it also depends on me.”
Anon., “International Gurdjieff Review”, Summer 1999 Issue, Vol. II No. 4
