De Hartmann on Gurdjieff and Music

1 post / 0 new
John Hutcherson
De Hartmann on Gurdjieff and Music

De Hartmann said about this music:

“I can’t keep to tell something about Georgi Ivanovitch. Here we understand why Georgi Ivanovitch put always a great weight on music. He himself played and also composed. If we compare it with the music of all the religions we can see that music plays a great role, a great part in the so-called religious service. But after the work of Georgi Ivanovitch we can understand better that music helps to concentrate, to bring oneself to an inner state where we can assume the greatest possible emanations. That is why music is just the thing which helps you to see higher.”

The music of Gurdjieff’s father, an ashok (troubadour) of an ancient tradition, Greek Orthodox liturgical music and Caucasian and Greek folk music -all these were woven into Gurdjieff’s early youth. More important than the emotional value to him was the fact that music consisted of vibrations through which laws could be studied that apply to the whole of creation. When Gurdjieff describes the processes of creation, of evolution and involution, he re-establishes an alliance in musical terminology between science and music that goes back to the oldest and most venerable traditions of Western thought. 

There is more information on this here.