Thomas de Hartmann
Thomas Alexandrovich de Hartmann was a Ukrainian-born composer, pianist and professor of composition.
Life
De Hartmann was born on his father’s estate in Khoruzhivka, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, to Alexander Fomich de Hartmann and Olga Alexandrovna de Hartmann, née de Kross, both of German descent. On his father’s death, when he was nine years old, he was sent by his mother to the First Cadet Corps, the same military school his father had attended, and later the Page Corps. Upon graduation from the Page Corps, de Hartmann entered into the Russian Imperial Guard.In the fall of 1896, at the age of 11, de Hartmann began individual lessons with Anton Arensky, and continued them until Arensky’s death in 1906. At that time, de Hartmann chose Sergei Taneyev as his new musical mentor. He took lessons on counterpoint from Taneyev, and they remained friends till Taneyev’s death. De Hartmann graduated from the Imperial Conservatory of Music, where he studied musical composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His piano teacher was Anna Yesipova.
In 1906, de Hartmann met Olga Arkadievna de Shumacher, daughter of Arkady Alexandrovich von Schumacher, Head of the Debt Repayment Commission in St. Petersburg, and Olga Konstantinovna von Wulffert, who both died in Paris. They married on 25 November 1906. In the same year, de Hartmann began composing what would prove to be the most ambitious production of his career – La Fleurette rouge, a ballet in 5 acts and 8 scenes, of 3 hours duration. It was first performed in December, 1907, at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, produced by Nikolay Legat with Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in the cast, and later, in 1911, at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. De Hartmann dedicated La Fleurette rouge to his wife.
It was while his ballet was being performed in repertory that de Hartmann wanted to take lessons on conducting from Felix Mottl in Munich, Germany, but as he was in military service, he was barred from travelling abroad. At that time, Grand Duchess Olga, the youngest sister of Tsar Nicolas II, liked to play the violin, and de Hartmann would sometimes accompany her on the piano. When the Grand Duchess learned that de Hartmann wanted to study with Mottl, she arranged for the Tsar to meet de Hartmann, and as a result, de Hartmann was put into the military reserves, allowing him to travel abroad.
In 1908, de Hartmann went to Munich to work with Mottl, and there he met Wassily Kandinsky. At this time, de Hartmann was becoming disenchanted with traditional harmonization, and Kandinsky’s avant-garde approach to art was very attractive to him. The two collaborated on various stage works, but none was performed in their lifetimes.
While in Munich, Thomas de Hartmann met the artist, former Sufi student and later stage impresario, Alexander de Salzmann; they were both friends of Rainer Maria Rilke and Wassily Kandinsky. Later, in Russia, after the beginning of World War I, de Hartmann would introduce de Salzmann to George Gurdjieff.
From 1912 to 1914, de Hartmann divided his time between Munich and his estate in Khoruzhivka, working on various compositions and stage productions. When war was declared in 1914, de Hartmann was recalled to military service and moved to Tsarskoye Selo, where his regiment was located.
In Dec. 1916 de Hartmann met G.I. Gurdjieff, who became his spiritual teacher. De Hartmann and his wife met with Gurdjieff in St. Petersburg a few times before being assigned, in late February, 1917, to the reserve forces near the Austrian front in Ukraine. He travelled to Kiev, and his wife followed him, staying with de Hartmann’s sister who was living there. In April, 1917, de Hartmann was assigned to Masslennikov and Shmyakov, members of the State Duma, and later that month he was reassigned to travel with Rodzyanko. They all travelled to Minsk to attend the first congress of representatives of the Western Front.
In August, 1917, the Main Artillery Directorate sent de Hartmann to Rostov-on-the-Don to “speed up the production of a model of system of anti-airplane machines.”
In November, 1917, while he was travelling, he fell ill with typhoid in Sochi, and was granted leave for three months, whereupon he rejoined Gurdjieff, who had moved to Yessentuki. He was released from military service in February, 1918, and continued to stay and work with Gurdjieff, later travelling with him to Tiflis. In 1919, de Hartmann was appointed Professor of Music at the Tiflis Conservatory, and during this time, he wrote music for a pair of stage productions. In 1920, the de Hartmanns travelled with Gurdjieff to Constantinople, and, from there, to Berlin in 1921, Paris in 1922, then in October, 1922, moved into the Prieuré d’Avon in Fontainebleau, south of Paris. The de Hartmanns remained there with Gurdjieff until 1929.
In June, 1929, de Hartmann broke with Gurdjieff and moved to Courbevoie with his wife’s parents. His wife continued to work with Gurdjieff, splitting her time between the Prieuré and Courbevoie, finally leaving Gurdjieff for good at the beginning of 1930. At this time, to make a living, de Hartmann arranged the orchestra music of other composers for chamber music, which could be played more cheaply on the radio, and he wrote music for films.
Having established an income from the royalties of his arrangements and film music, the de Hartmanns lived first in Courbevoie, then in Garches, south of Paris until 1950. De Hartmann had his orchestral music conducted by such conductors as Bigot, Stokowski, and others, and his Concertos and Sonatas were played by such soloists as Casals, Tortelier, Rampal, and Alèz.
In 1950, at the request of Jeanne de Salzmann after Gurdjieff’s death, the de Hartmanns moved to the United States to support the Gurdjieff work there, first joining Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, then moving to New York. De Hartmann, who had become well-known in Europe, had to start again from the beginning in the new world to build up his reputation. As he said in a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright, “…to be played on the radio – it is necessary to be famous. In order to be famous, it is necessary to be played on the radio.” He was hampered by ill health, and spent much of his time working on publications of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music.
De Hartmann suffered a heart attack in 1954, and was ill for some time. He gradually recovered, and his last year was very productive – he was working on his Fourth Symphony and preparing to play for a recital of his works in New York, when he suffered a fatal heart attack on 28 March 1956. After his death, his wife continued to promote his music until her death at her home near Nambé, Santa Fe County, New Mexico. Both she and her husband are buried in the Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, New Jersey.
Association with Anton Arensky
De Hartmann first met Anton Stepanovich Arensky in the fall of 1896. One Sunday, when he was visiting his aunt, who was a friend of Arensky’s mother and sister, she took him to Arensky’s house so that he could hear de Hartmann play piano. Arensky gave him a theme on which to improvise, and having heard the result, accepted de Hartmann as his only pupil. De Hartmann finished the Conservatory course under Arensky’s tutelage, learning harmony, strict style, fugue and free composition.He remained Arensky’s pupil until Arensky’s death in 1906. Arensky’s influence on de Hartmann might best be summarized by a statement of Taneyev’s. One day, when de Hartmann visited Taneyev with part of his ballet La Fleurette rouge, Taneyev asked de Hartmann to play it on the piano, while he and other guests who were there listened. At the end, Taneyev said: “Your harmony can be compared only with Arensky’s harmony. This is the highest compliment that I can give you.”
Association with Sergei Taneyev
De Hartmann first met Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev at Arensky’s house when he was still at the conservatory. He had with him some exercises in harmony from the conservatory, and Taneyev sat at the piano and analyzed them, along with Modest Tchaikovsky and Felix Blumenfeld who were also there visiting Arensky. After this, de Hartmann did not see Taneyev for several years.De Hartmann renewed his acquaintance with Taneyev when Arensky was unwell and living in Finland. In the fall of 1905, de Hartmann had finished the orchestration of one act of the ballet and wanted feedback about it. He decided to drop in on Taneyev to show him the ballet. Taneyev very cordially received his friend’s pupil.
After Arensky’s death in 1906, de Hartmann dropped in on Taneyev on the way to his estate, and de Hartmann invited him to come to stay at his estate in Ukraine during the summer. Taneyev visited that year and the next, Taneyev instructing de Hartmann in counterpoint and fugue during this time.
Taneyev was de Hartmann’s mentor during his years of doubt, when he felt that traditional music was at a dead end, and he wanted to find a new path. As de Hartmann wrote in his memoir about Taneyev: “I had passed Strict Style and Forms with Arensky, but I also wished to study Fugue with Taneyev. At that time, it had already started to slowly become clear to me that the time has come to look for new ways in music. Neither then or now did I stop liking the composers, particularly the Russian ones, which I had already liked as a boy. Of course, I particularly liked my teacher Arensky, The Five , Glazunov, Rachmaninov and others, and I still do. But it is one thing to like them. The other was my own composition. Here it was necessary to search for something new. And so, before this search I wished to know all the previous techniques. That was the time when questions were still alive. So I began to work with Taneyev on the fugue.”
Taneyev encouraged de Hartmann to continue his composing, to work on large compositions: “First of all I wish to chastise you for not composing anything. It seems to me that you attach more significance to exercises in counterpoint than you should. More than anyone else I am inclined to recognize their usefulness. But I find that they should be written in the intervals between composing, and in any case composing must be in the forefront. It is not sufficient to develop technique in one direction – its all-rounded development is possible only in practice. Even if some compositions in the beginning turn out to be unsatisfactory. It is possible to avoid these or those deficiencies in the compositions which follow. But one should not limit oneself to “daydreams about opera or ballet.” You need to compose in large formats – sonatas and so on. Start a symphony, an overture – something of that kind. It is difficult to find better conditions for this than those you have in Khoruzhevka. When large things will have been written by you, then it can be easy to answer your question about the level of your technical skills. If there are some deficiencies in this connection, they will not be difficult to correct and in this case some technical exercises can definitely be of great use. They can be compared to technical piano exercises, which promote the development of technique and are necessary also for the finished virtuosos. But the one, who, besides these exercises, would play nothing further on the piano and for several years would not learn even one piece, would perhaps completely forget how to play. In the end, you also could lose the habit of composing. It seems to me that composition must be your chief occupation, which everything else obeys. And then both exercises in counterpoint and work with Mottl take on a definite purpose and contribute to one main goal. Otherwise all this is, if not completely aimless, then barely attaining those goals which are hardly worth pursuing – in rehearsing operas with singers, the very best that can be attained is to become a good concertmaster. And so, Thomas Alexandrovich, before everything it is necessary to compose, tirelessly and continually, and to evaluate everything else only from this point of view – in so far as it assists or hinders this goal.”
In Munich in 1908, Taneyev met with Kandinsky and his fellow painters, and later he wrote to de Hartmann in a letter: “It was very nice to learn that my quartet pleased Mr. Kandinsky, and on my next trip to Munich I will try to become acquainted with those decadent pictures which will be painted under the influence of my music.” Taneyev and de Hartmann remained in close touch up to the time of Taneyev’s death in 1915.