Journey to Inaccessible Places
Concerts of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann Music
Presented by Elan Sicroff
Upcoming Concerts:
Brewster, MA on Cape Cod
Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009
Time: 2:30 to 5:30pm
Concert at 3:00pm
Talk at 4:00pm
Short Gurdjieff Movements Class at 4:30pm
Reception at 5:00pm
Location: First Parish Brewster Unitarian Church,
1969 Main St., Brewster, MA 02631
Directions to First Parish Brewster
Mapquest Map to First Parish Brewster
Phone:
For Information about the Event 978-249-4725
Cost:
$15 at the door
Free to members of First Parish Brewster
Italy
Date: Saturday, January 24th, 2010
Time: 17:00
Location: Italy, Pontedera (Tuscany)Teatro Era
England
Date: Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: England, St John's Smith Square, London, SW1 P 3HA
Telephone: Box office - 0207 222 1061, general enquiries - 0207 222 2168
This concert will include the early romantic and late modern styles of Thomas de Hartmann, as well as the amazing Violin Sonata, and the Gurdjieff music.
Click here for additional information on these concerts.
More information on the three men collaborating across time and space to produce these events is given below...
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) was born to Armenian-Greek parents, spending his
early life in Kars (now in Turkey). As a young man he embarked on a search for lost knowledge with a group of companions, the “Seekers of the Truth”. He sought the answer to the question: What is the sense and aim of human existence?
During these journeys, to remote parts of Egypt, Tibet, and countries of Central Asia, Gurdjieff came into contact with the music, ritual and dance of many ethnic traditions. In 1913 he moved to Russia where he started to pass on this knowledge, and was joined in 1916, in St. Petersberg, by a young composer, Thomas de Hartmann and his wife, Olga. They traveled via the Caucasus, Constantinople, and Berlin to France where in 1922, Gurdjieff finally settled at the Chateau de Prieuré, at Fontainebleau, near Paris, establishing the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Here they continued with their collaboration of original compositions influenced by the music Gurdjieff had heard in the temples and monasteries during his travels, which he conveyed to de Hartmann, who transcribed these rhythms into Western notation adding his own harmonies.
Thomas de Hartmann (1885-1956) was born in the Ukraine to Russian parents. He was drawn
to the piano at a very early age and was encouraged to follow a musical education, receiving, in
1903, a diploma from the St. Petersberg Conservatory, then under the direction of Rimsky-
Korsokov. de Hartmann was a fellow student of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Prokofiev. At the age of 21, he received great acclaim for his full-length ballet performed before Tzar Nicholas ll. He was part of the pre-war avant-garde cultural movement in Munich, searching for a common spiritual basis of artistic expression. Then, in 1916, he met Gurdjieff and his life changed.
de Hartmann spent twelve years studying with Gurdjieff, and during a short period in the 1920’s they together created the music you will hear this evening. It is a testament to his brilliance as a musician that he was able to develop the melody and rhythms whistled or tapped out to him by Gurdjieff into European notation for the piano, creating these unique works that can convey the deeper essential character or kernel of the music, which is intended to speak directly to the listener’s innermost self. de Hartmann left Gurdjieff in 1929 continuing to compose and also to write scores for films. In the late 1940’s and early 50’s he worked with Mme. Jeanne de Salzmann, one of Gurdjieff’s closest pupils, giving recitals of the music he had composed with Gurdjieff and composing new pieces for the Movements, or Sacred Dances. In 1950 he moved to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1956.
Note: Please follow this link for information about the Thomas de Hartmann Project.
Elan Sicroff received a classical musical training at the Juilliard School and at the Oberlin
Conservatory. In 1972 he was introduced to the music of Gurdjieff and de Hartmann while
attending a ten-month residential course in England, run by J. G. Bennett, one of the exponents
of Gurdjieff’s teaching. He remained at the International Academy for Continuous Education
for a further two years as Music Director. In 1975 he met Mme.Olga de Hartmann, widow of
the composer, who had invited him to participate in a concert of her husband’s music at McGill
University in Montreal, and subsequently worked with her on the “Gurdjieff music” as well as
on de Hartmann’s classical works, until her death in 1979.
From 1977-1983 Sicroff lived at Claymont Court in West Virginia, a Fourth Way community set up by J. G. Bennett shortly before his death, where he taught music and continued to perform – giving recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Longy School in Boston, as well as many University campuses. Sicroff currently lives in rural Massachusetts, where he is part of a group formed over the past twenty years to work practically with the teaching of J. G. Bennett and G. I. Gurdjieff, the Millers River Educational Cooperative, located at Camp Caravan in Royalston, Massachusetts. He has released two CD’s of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music. He recently returned from a concert tour including the Vatican City and Malta, and excerpts from performances may be viewed at Youtube. Sicroff will instruct a small group on this music at the Gurdjieff/Bennett 2010 Intensive beginning in June at Camp Caravan. (Please note that the dates for the Intensive have changed.)