Lineamientos básicos para la ejecución del Proyecto .1 Aclaración de los desafíos de ENACAL

Gurdjieff and de Hartmann, two men of utterly different characters, back- grounds, and musical abilities, together composed hundreds of piano pieces at the Prieuré, mostly between 1925 and 1927. The view that Gurdjieff was chiefly responsible for their music while de Hartmann was merely a conduit for Gurdjieff’s musical ideas is commonplace among writings on the music. For example, Laurence Rosenthal states:

However elegantly and appropriately he [de Hartmann] harmonized and developed the melodies dictated to him by Gurdjieff, it is obvious that the essential musical impulse and the unique quality of feeling which the music evokes came from one man only. De Hartmann’s draft of each com- position was played to Gurdjieff and often extensively revised until Gurdjieff was satisfied that his intentions had been realized.1

This idea was promulgated by the loyal de Hartmann himself. He modestly attributed all the piano music to Gurdjieff2 and the title that de Hartmann, as editor, chose for the first publication of their music credits Gurdjieff alone: “The Works of G. Gurdjieff.” However, Gurdjieff could only minimally read and notate music, and he composed nothing before or after his time with de Hartmann, which indicates that the composition of the piano music depended considerably on de Hartmann. Interestingly, Olga de Hartmann contended later in life that the music should be considered entirely de Hartmann’s own,3 and journalist Carl Bechhofer Roberts, upon visiting the Tiflis Institute in 1919 to watch rehearsals of Gurdjieff’s ballet Struggle, stated that “[Gurdjieff] himself could not play a note, and knew nothing of composition,” though he continued, “but the academician [de Hartmann] who interpreted his ideas assured me that he had learned more of the theory of music from Gurdjieff than in any of the schools.”4

5 Rosenthal, “Gurdjieff and Music,” 301.

6 Laurence Rosenthal, pers. comm. (22 July 2010). 7 Charles Ketcham, pers. comm. (19 July 2010).

8 Wim van Dullemen, [Liner notes] Gurdjieff’s Music for the Movements (Holland: Channel Classics Records, 1999), 9; Wim van Dullemen, [Liner notes] Music for Gurdjieff’s 39 Series (Holland: Channel Classics Records, 2001), 8.

9 Gert-Jan Blom, Harmonic Development: The Complete Harmonium Recordings 1948–1949 (Netherlands: Basta Audio Visuals, 2004), 20.

10 Gert-Jan Blom, Oriental Suite: The Complete Orchestral Music 1923–1924 (Netherlands: Basta Audio Visuals, 2006), 41.

This chapter examines basic details of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music with focus on exactly how and when it was composed, how many pieces were composed altogether, and why composition was carried out in the pres- ence of pupils. Other instances of collaborations in Western art music history will then be considered, particularly the collaboration between English com- posers Frederick Delius (1862–1934) and Eric Fenby (1906–1997). Delius and Fenby composed their music at almost exactly the same time as did Gurdjieff and de Hartmann, and in the same region of France. Interestingly, Fenby’s accounts of the compositional process are remarkably similar to those of de Hartmann.

The Prolificacy of Composition

Estimates regarding the total number of pieces of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music vary considerably between writers; Laurence Rosenthal, an editor of the Schott volumes, referred in an article to “two hundred or so musical compositions,”5 though later in conversation said that over 300 compositions were started, and about 161 or so were brought to completion.6 Another Schott editor, Charles Ketcham, estimated that the total number of pieces, including fragments of pieces, is about 225 or 250.7 Pianist/researcher Wim van Dullemen cited in the liner notes to one of his recordings 170 compositions and in other liner notes, 200,8 and researcher Gert-Jan Blom referred to “an astonishing 184 compositions for piano”9 but in a later publication cited 250 compositions.10

This uncertainty may stem from confusion over whether or not to include in the count drafts of pieces. (Original manuscripts are divided into draft and final manuscripts. The draft manuscripts represent the first sketches of the music, where de Hartmann roughly notated in pencil Gurdjieff’s melodic and rhythmic dictations while adding harmonies almost simultaneously. The final manuscripts are pieces in their final form, neatly notated by de Hartmann in

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11 Linda Daniel-Spitz, Charles Ketcham, and Laurence Rosenthal, “Chronological Order of Compositions,” in Gurdjieff/de Hartmann: Music for the Piano, Vol. 4 (Mainz, Germany: Schott, 2005), 109–115.

12 See Daniel-Spitz et al., “Chronological Order of Compositions,” 112. 13 Thomas A.G. Daly, pers. comm. (17 April 2011).

14 Daniel-Spitz et al., “Chronological Order of Compositions,” 109–115. 15 Daniel-Spitz et al., “Chronological Order of Compositions,” 113.

black or blue ink. For more see Chapter 6). What is known is that Schott published 156 pieces of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music.11 This is not counting six pieces from Gurdjieff’s ballet Struggle and four pieces for Movements, which were strangely included in the Schott volumes (see Chapter 6 and Appendix B). In addition, at least sixty-seven completed pieces were omitted from the Schott edition. Thus the number of completed pieces com- posed was about 223, with sketches of more pieces existing in draft form.

In the original manuscripts almost all pieces bear dates of composition, and these dates indicate periods of daily musical output, often for weeks at a time. The most prolific period for composition was between January and May 1926. Schott published sixty-two pieces from this period (see Chapter 8 for an exami- nation of the circumstances of this period and the possible reasons for this prolificacy). There were small gaps in the compositional process, often due to Gurdjieff’s short trips away from the Prieuré. This is known from comments in original manuscripts and, in some cases, titles of pieces. On the original manuscript for “Hindu Melody” (Vol. 1, 88–89), composed on 22 February 1926, there is a comment, “the evening before the departure to Cannes,” which explains the approximately three-week gap between this piece and the next.12 Comments on original manuscripts of unpublished pieces, such as “the day of the arrival of G.I. from Dijon” (23 September 1926), “after the arrival from Marseilles” (5 March 1927), and “the arrival from Niece” (14 April 1927), all cor- respond with gaps in composition.13 This suggests that Gurdjieff was inclined to compose directly before or after trips away, indicating his dedication to the activity of composition.

The “Chronological Order of Compositions” placed at the end of the fourth Schott volume is a useful inventory.14 It can be viewed in Appendix D. As stated earlier, however, this does not represent all the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music as some pieces were omitted from the Schott volumes. If one were to rely solely on the “Chronological Order of Compositions,” one would assume that there was a three-month gap in composition between June and September 1926.15 Such a gap could actually be explained as a consequence of the death of

16 C.S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil’s Journal, An Account of Some Years With G.I.

Gurdjieff and A.R. Orage in New York and at Fontainebleau-Avon (London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul, 1978), 106–107. De Hartmann sometimes played the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music on the organ. See Appendix C.

17 Thomas de Hartmann and Olga de Hartmann, Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff, eds Thomas C. Daly and Thomas A.G. Daly (London: Arkana Penguin Books, 1992 [1964]), 249.

18 Thomas A.G. Daly, pers. comm. (16 April 2011). 19 Hear QR Code 1; http://jeuj.eu/essentukiprayer 20 de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 205. 21 Thomas A.G. Daly, pers. comm. (10 August 2012).

22 Schott published seventeen pieces dating from this early period, though at least four were for Movements and Struggle: “The Initiation of the Priestess” (Vol. 4, 72–79), “Fragment Gurdjieff’s wife Julia Ostrowska on 26 June 1926. However, two pupils’ accounts indicate that no break in composing occurred at this time. C.S. Nott wrote that in 1926, “Gurdjieff composed many new pieces this summer and autumn” and that almost every afternoon and evening de Hartmann played these in the salon on a “small pipe-organ.”16 Similarly, Olga de Hartmann stated that after Ostrowska’s death composition continued as before.17 Original manuscripts confirm that composition did continue in these months, but that these pieces were never developed to completion and thus were never published. There are approximately twenty-five drafts from this three-month period, with com- ments paying homage to Gurdjieff’s wife, for example, “ninth day of Julia Osipovna” and “the consequence of the letter of the mother of Julia Osipovna.”18 The “Chronological Order of Compositions,” then, can only be employed as a rough guide to understanding Gurdjieff and de Hartmann’s compositional activity and output.

Earliest and Latest Pieces

Gurdjieff and de Hartmann’s first known piece, “Essentuki Prayer” (Vol. 4, 69),19 was composed in 1918 (the exact date is unknown), and de Hartmann indicates that as he played it, pupils hummed along.20 The piece must origi- nally have been memorised, as only later in the 1950s did de Hartmann notate it for piano. For these reasons, Thomas A.G. Daly suggests that “Essentuki Prayer” was intended as a choral piece.21 It is unknown whether de Hartmann played it as a piano solo during his time with Gurdjieff, and whether it really can be considered a piece of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music. Pinpointing exactly when the first Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano piece was composed is complicated further by twelve other pieces dating from 1919 to July 1924, which may represent the earliest Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music, or may have been further pieces to accompany Movements.22 Schott published three pieces

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No. 6” from Struggle (Vol. 4, 60), No. 32 (Vol. 3, 84–85), and “Women’s Prayer” (Vol. 3, 109). This leaves twelve pieces that may represent the earliest pieces of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music. In addition, original manuscripts reveal a few more pieces composed in 1924, which remain unpublished, that might represent the piano music. As these early manuscripts are not ordered and dated as methodically as the later manuscripts, it is dif- ficult to know exactly how many of these early pieces there are. Adding to the ambiguity, these pieces are interspersed with pieces of music for Movements. Thus more unidenti- fied early pieces exist, though only the early pieces published by Schott will form the basis of this discussion.

23 Daniel-Spitz et al., “Chronological Order of Compositions,” 109. 24 de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 245.

25 Thomas A.G. Daly, pers. comm. (17 April 2011).

dating from 1919 to c.1923, and nine dating from June and July 1924.23 The for- mer, as well as “Essentuki Prayer” of 1918 for that matter, do resemble in their sounds, meters, and forms the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music. Their shift- ing pulses and metres, for instance, are not typical of the music for Movements, where constant metres are more often employed to support repeating series’ of physical gestures.

The other nine pieces could pass as either Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music or music for Movements. Evidence suggesting that they were music for Movements is that they were composed shortly after Gurdjieff had returned to the Prieuré after his time in America promoting his Movements, and up until this time Gurdjieff and de Hartmann were composing for Movements. Further, three of these pieces have ‘Dance’ or ‘Movement’ in titles: “Dervish Dance” (Vol. 2, 108–109), “Tibetan Dance” (Vol. 4, 62), and “Tibetan Movement” (Vol. 4, 63). De Hartmann also stated in Our Life, “[t]he exercises he [Gurdjieff] showed in August 1924 were the last new Movements he ever gave at the Prieuré. Beginning in July 1925 he began to create another kind of music.”24 This sug- gests that Gurdjieff was still working on Movements until August 1924, and original manuscripts confirm that Gurdjieff and de Hartmann were composing music for Movements that month. According to original manuscripts six pieces of music for Movements were composed between 13 August and 20 August, headed “New Series” as if Gurdjieff was looking ahead to a new period of Movements.25 De Hartmann clearly states that Gurdjieff did not begin “another kind of music” (the piano music) until July 1925. (However, as discussed above, the earliest pieces dating from 1919 to c.1923 do resemble their piano music). Evidence suggesting that these nine pieces were not for Movements is their strong lyrical quality, which is more reminiscent of the piano music, and also the fact that two pieces include parts for daff or drum – “Tibetan Dance” (Vol. 4, 62) and “Trinity” (Vol. 4, 64–65) – which is typical of their piano music

26 de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 245.

27 Moore, Gurdjieff The Anatomy of a Myth, 220. Gurdjieff’s focus at this time was on the

writing of Tales, and he was thus unable to support himself.

28 In 1924, when Gurdjieff was recovering from his car accident, and in early 1928, de Hartmann worked as a film composer to earn money for the Prieuré. See de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 238, 269.

29 Thomas A.G. Daly, pers. comm. (17 April 2011).

but atypical of their music for Movements. There is also the fact that no Movements are known to relate to these pieces.

If some or all of these pieces represent Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music, then this has some bearing on arguments made in Chapters 2 and 8 about the significance of Gurdjieff’s car accident on July 1924 to the composition of the piano music. The existence of early pieces of piano music, composed prior to the car accident, would mean that the accident was not a clear-cut juncture in Gurdjieff’s teaching that caused him to undertake the completely new activ- ity of composing piano music. Rather, the accident would have interrupted the composition of piano music that had already commenced. Regardless, what is certain, and what is argued in Chapter 8, is that the piano music began to be composed with great intensity and commitment from 29 July 1925, and that this occurred during a dramatic period of change spurred by Gurdjieff’s car accident. A small quantity of piano music may have been composed prior to 29 July, but de Hartmann himself still regarded the music of 29 July as repre- senting the beginnings of “another kind of music.”26

Although it is difficult to determine with certainty exactly when the compo- sition of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music began, thankfully details regarding their final pieces are less complicated. Their two final completed pieces, No. 24 (Vol. 2, 76–77) and “Sayyid Chant and Dance” (Vol. 2, 122–123), date to 1 May 1927. Twenty drafts dating from May, June, and July 1927 indicate that composition continued in these months, though these pieces were never completed and thus never published. 1 May was a fortnight after Gurdjieff was obliged to relinquish his Paris apartment due to financial difficulties,27 and this may have affected the process of composition if de Hartmann had decided at that time to return to his own music career to financially support Gurdjieff. De Hartmann’s own projects in 1927 are unknown but he had taken on Gurdjieff’s financial needs on other occasions.28 However, Thomas A.G. Daly suggests that they stopped composing when the process became too methodical. As evi- dence he points to draft and final original manuscripts, which begin to corre- spond exactly with each other from 1927, possibly indicating that the process of composition had been perfected by this time. He argued that this would have been a reason for Gurdjieff to stop the process.29

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30 de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 184–188, 193–195, 203–207, 245; Fritz Peters,

Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered (London: Wildwood House, 1976), 58.

See also J.G. Bennett, Witness: The Story of a Search (New Mexico: Bennett Books, 1997), 85; Nott, Teachings, 46.

31 de Hartmann and de Hartmann, Our Life, 245. 32 Elan Sicroff, pers. comm. (11 July 2010).

33 Charles Ketcham, pers. comm. (19 July 2010). For the significance of attention to Gurdjieff’s teaching see Chapter 1.

34 Yildiray Erdener, The Song Contests of Turkish Minstrels: Improvised Poetry Sung to

Traditional Music (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 34–35.

35 Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2004), 101.

The Act of Composing

The piano music was usually composed in the evening in either the Prieuré’s salon or Study House. The salon was spacious, fitted with a fireplace and Pleyel grand piano, and the Study House was a large room crafted from an old wooden air force hangar, used for Movements practice and small Movements demon- strations. It was elaborately decorated with oriental rugs, carpets, and divans, and a Bechstein piano stood to the left of the stage.30 De Hartmann recounts that when Gurdjieff “began to play” the piano, he would rush over with manu- script paper in preparation for Gurdjieff’s dictations. Dictations were carried out in front of all pupils.31 Pianist Elan Sicroff and Schott editor Charles Ketcham give two interpretations of this. Sicroff suggests that this audience of pupils played an essential role in the birth of the piano music as Gurdjieff and de Hartmann aimed to harness the ‘finer energies’ of the audience, produced from the ‘inner work’ undergone throughout the day.32 Ketcham speculates that the role of the audience was to place a greater demand on the composers, and to bring concentration and attention to the process.33

The practice of composing in front of pupils may indicate the influence of the ashokh tradition of Gurdjieff’s father. Ethnomusicologist Yildiray Erdener, who spent a year observing over six hundred song duelling contests in ashokh Cobanoglu coffee houses in Kars, Turkey, argues that the meaning of an

ashokh’s songs emerges from the social interaction between the performers

and audience. Ashokhs improvise poems sung to melodies or makam that are always chosen to suit each specific audience, and their skill lies in responding to, and interacting with, the audience.34 Similarly, Sufi music theorist Hazrat Inayat Khan states that the goal of the Hindu musician is to “answer to the demand of the souls that are sitting there.”35 This was also the view taken by Kandinsky and proponents of the Blau Reiter, including de Hartmann, who

36 Wassily Kandinsky, “On Stage Composition,” in The Blaue Reiter Almanac, New Documentary Edition, ed. Klaus Lankheit (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 190–191. See also A. Rüdlinger, “Wassily Kandinsky,” in History of Modern Painting, Vol. 3, ed. Maurice Raynal (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1950), 96.

37 G.I. Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981), 113–114; P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: The Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff (San Diego: Harcourt Inc., 1977 [1949]), 107.

38 Dorine Tolley, who is well acquainted with the music for Movements and possesses copies of the privately circulated sheet music, brought this to my attention; Dorine Tolley, pers. comm. (26 June 2012). I was able to confirm this by comparing de Hartmann’s accounts with the sheet music.

promoted an intuitive, spontaneous artistic approach. Kandinsky believed that the ‘vibrations’ of the artist and audience could synchronise.36 In line with these views, Gurdjieff may have aimed to respond to, and interact with, the atmosphere and audience of the day, allowing this to guide the direction of compositions. This is probable considering Gurdjieff’s emphasis on feeling and sensing in his teaching,37 and his spontaneous approach to situations. However, this would suggest that the piano music could not represent a pure transmission of esoteric music Gurdjieff heard on his travels, as he implied (see Chapter 5).

The Process

In Our Life de Hartmann gives two illuminating accounts of their process of composition. The first account describes the process of composing the piano music and the challenges de Hartmann faced upon transcribing the Eastern music Gurdjieff dictated into Western music notation. It not only gives insight into de Hartmann’s role in the process, but also into his interpreta- tion of the process in light of Gurdjieff’s teaching. The second account describes the composition of their music for Movements in a Movements class in Cons- tantinople in 1920. The two pieces alluded to in this account can be identified as music for the Movements “Ho-Ya” and “The Great Prayer.”38 This account reveals Gurdjieff’s role in the process, and the extent of his musical abilities. After ana-