Program Notes
GEORGE
IVANOVICH GURDJIEFF (1866?-1949)
was a teacher whose ideas have influenced generations of men and women
worldwide
since he first began teaching in Moscow
in 1913. Today his work is
known through many sources, notably P.D. Ouspensky's In
Search of the Miraculous and his own writings, which include Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson and
Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Born to
Armenian-Greek
parents, he grew up in the Caucasus,
where cultures and religions, ancient and
modern, lived side by side. Trained in religion and medicine, he
embarked as a
young man on a search for lost knowledge that could answer the question
haunting
him: What is the sense and aim of human
existence? His journeys to almost
inaccessible centers of learning, temples, and monasteries brought him
into
contact with the rituals, dance, and music of many regions of Central
Asia. His collaboration in the
1920s with the Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann produced a large
body of
piano pieces, created at Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious
Development
of Man, near Fontainebleau,
France.
THOMAS
ALEXANDROVICH DE HARTMANN (1885-1956) was a composer of the Russian
school who,
in addition to his work with Gurdjieff, wrote piano sonatas, concertos,
ballet
music, symphonies, operas, and scores for films. From the age of eleven
he
studied harmony and composition with Arensky, piano with
Esipova-Leschetizky
and, later, counterpoint with Taneiev. In 1903, he received his diploma
from
the St. Petersburg Conservatory, at the time under the direction of
Rimsky-Korsakov. With Arnold Schönberg, Franz Marc, and Wassily
Kandinsky, he
was part of the pre-World War I avant-garde cultural movement in Munich,
whose publication, Der Blaue
Reiter, exemplified the modernist search for the
spiritual in art. After
meeting Gurdjieff in 1916, de Hartmann and his wife devoted the next
twelve
years to studying with him. This radical change in de Hartmann's life
led to
the musical collaboration between these two men of extraordinarily
different
backgrounds. Gurdjieff and de Hartmann
created, in the space of about three years, more than 200 piano pieces,
which
constitute an integral aspect of Gurdjieff's teaching.
The
nature and manner of their collaboration is best described by de
Hartmann in
his book, Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff:
I had a very difficult and trying time with this
music. Gurdjieff sometimes whistled or played on the piano with one
finger a
very complicated sort of melody—as are all Eastern melodies, although
they seem
at first to be monotonous. To grasp this melody, to write it in
European
notation, required a "tour de force."
How it was written down is
very interesting in itself. It usually happened in the evening in the
big salon
of the château. From my room I usually heard when Gurdjieff began
to play and,
taking my music paper, I had to rush downstairs. Soon all the people
came, and
the music dictation was always in front of everybody.
It was not easy to notate. While listening to him
play, I had to scribble down at feverish speed the shifts and turns of
the
melody, sometimes with repetitions of just two notes. But in what
rhythm? How
to make the accentuation? Often there was no hint of conventional
Western
meters; at times the flow of melody could not be interrupted or divided
by
bar-lines. And the harmony that could support the Eastern tonality of
the
melody could only gradually be guessed. After
the melody had been written down, Gurdjieff would tap on the lid of the
piano a
rhythm on which to build the bass accompaniment. And then I had to
perform at
once what had been given, improvising the harmony as I went.
LAURENCE ROSENTHAL was born
in Detroit, Michigan
and studied composition and
piano at the Eastman School of Music and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
As pianist he has appeared
frequently as soloist and with various chamber music ensembles. His
symphonic
compositions have been premiered by Leonard Bernstein with the New York
Philharmonic and Erich Leinsdorf with the Rochester Philharmonic, among
others.
He has composed extensively for films and television. Among his best
known film
scores are The Miracle Worker, Becket,
The Island of Dr.
Moreau, and
The Return of a Man Called
Horse. He has
won Emmys for such miniseries as Peter
the Great, Anastasia, and Michelangelo:
the Last Giant. He also arranged
and orchestrated the score for Peter Brook's film, Meetings
with Remarkable Men, which included many compositions of
Gurdjieff / de Hartmann, some of which will be heard in this
afternoon's concert. In recent years, he
has co-edited the first
publication of the Gurdjieff / de Hartmann music (three volumes, a
fourth
expected) and has recorded with his co-editors the entire sequence of
pieces. |
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