Bio
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866(?) – 1949), born in Alexandropol (Gyumri), Armenia, is known to many in the West as one of the major spiritual figures of the 20th century. Experiences in Gurdjieff’s childhood awoke in him an irrepressible need to understand the mystery of human existence. After preparing for careers in both science and religion with studies in the fields of medicine, music, psychology and theology, Gurdjieff and a group of fellow “Seekers of Truth” set out on a search to understand the aim and significance of life on earth and in particular man’s place in the cosmos.
Gurdjieff’s search began in Armenia and took him throughout the Middle East and many parts of Central Asia, India and North Africa. Witness to a myriad of folk music and dance traditions, Gurdjieff also had significant contact with Christian brotherhoods, Buddhist monks, Sufi masters and Dervishes. After some twenty years, Gurdjieff returned to the West with a Teaching whose aim is what he called “the harmonious development of man.”
Gurdjieff attempted to transmit his ideas through a number of distinct but complementary modalities that include: 1. Founding several institutes, such as the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Chateau du Prieuré at Fontainebleau; 2. Preparing and working directly with small groups of pupils; 3. Creating highly elaborate sacred gymnastics (now known as movements) and 4. Writing “Ten Books in three Series,” namely, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson – An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man; Meetings with Remarkable Men; and Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am.’
Gurdjieff and Music
Gurdjieff’s musical background was not trivial. His father was a well-known troubadour or ashough in the regions around Armenia’s cultural capital, Gyumri, and beyond. Gurdjieff himself acknowledges the deep impression made upon him from long evenings spent listening to legends and epics performed by his father.
As a youth, Gurdjieff was a gifted vocalist who sang in the church choir at Kars Military Academy. In addition, Gurdjieff sometimes accompanied his sacred movements on guitar and in his later years he improvised for his pupils on the harmonium.
Gurdjieff’s interest and understanding of traditional music was profound. He believed that the music of different cultures both preserved and revealed essential characteristics of those cultures and conveyed deeper meanings rooted in their traditions. With an extraordinary capacity for remembering the intricate Eastern melodies he heard during his travels, in the 1920’s he composed some 300 pieces and fragments for the piano in the manner of dictation to his pupil, Thomas de Hartmann, the Russian composer and pianist. Gurdjieff’s musical pieces have the vitality and spontaneity of pure improvisation and yet are deeply rooted in ancient oral traditions.
Gurdjieff’s musical output may be divided into three distinct periods. The first period includes music composed for the unfinished ballet “Struggle of the Magicians” as well as orchestral music for his public performances in theaters in Paris and the U.S. in the early 1920’s.
The second period comprises of mainly piano music and was almost entirely dictated by Gurdjieff to his pupil, Thomas de Hartmann, in a three-year span beginning in 1924, after a near-fatal car crash, and ending in 1927. Following this period, Gurdjieff never again returned to this method of composition. Although virtually unknown to the public for several decades after his death, this music has been increasingly disseminated through numerous recordings in recent years thanks to four volumes of sheet music published by Schott.
The third period consists of harmonium improvisations Gurdjieff made in the company of his pupils in the late 1940’s until Gurdjieff’s death in 1949. These pieces survive today thanks to primitive recordings made at the time.
