Thomas de Hartmann
Thomas de Hartmann was a Russian composer and conductor, also active as a pianist and film composer. He was born on 3 October 1884 in Khoruzhivka, in the Romny district of Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in Sumy Oblast, Ukraine. He began his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev, and studied piano with Anna Yesipova at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory from 1900 to 1904.
He gained notice in 1907 with his ballet The Scarlet Flower, staged at the Mariinsky Theatre by Nikolai Legat. He subsequently lived in Munich for several years, furthering his professional training under Felix Mottl. A close associate of Wassily Kandinsky, he composed music for Kandinsky's projected opera The Yellow Sound in 1912 and published the article “On Anarchy in Music” in the journal The Blue Rider.
De Hartmann later moved to Tiflis, where he taught composition at the Tiflis Music School; his pupils included Tamara Vakhvakhishvili and Daniel Kazaryan. He wrote music for a Moscow Art Theatre production of Rabindranath Tagore's The King of the Dark Chamber, translated by Jurgis Baltrušaitis.
In 1921 he emigrated via Constantinople to Berlin and then Paris. In Paris he taught at the Russian Conservatory directed by Nikolai Tcherepnin. His works included the 1935 ballet Babette, four symphonies, a piano concerto—premiered by the composer with the Lamoureux Orchestra under Eugène Bigot—songs, including the first songs based on poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, and the unfinished opera Esther, after Racine. According to Roman Gul, Fyodor Chaliapin and Sergei Rachmaninoff valued his music.
His compositions also drew on Ukrainian material, notably the one-act ballet Feast in Ukraine, Op. 62 (1940), and Koliadky, Ukrainian Christmas Songs for orchestra, Op. 60 (1944). Ukrainian motifs also appear in his Cello Concerto No. 57, Violin Concerto No. 66, and trio for flute, violin, and piano. He composed music for the films Kriss (1932) and L'or des mers (1932), and his music was later used in Peter Brook's 1979 film Meetings with Remarkable Men.
De Hartmann collaborated with George Gurdjieff from 1917 to 1929, jointly composing music to accompany Gurdjieff's sacred dances. With his wife Olga de Hartmann, he wrote the memoir Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff. He moved to the United States in 1950 and died in New York City on 28 March 1956.