De Hartmann N39 from Vol. I: Asian Songs and Rhythms for 2 violins and piano

, music, violin, gurdjieff George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was a Russian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia). Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic waking sleep, but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline The Work (connoting work on oneself ) or the System. According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff s method for awakening one s consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the Fourth Way. Thomas De Hartmann was already an acclaimed composer in Russia when he first met Gurdjieff in 1916 in St. Petersburg. From 1917 to 1929 he was a pupil and confidant of Gurdji