Johnno
The Living Force
I ordered a copy of recordings of Gurdjieff's harmonium improvisations "Harmonic Development" played in new York and Paris during 1949. These were recorded on the first magnetic recorders, including a wire recorder (which I had never heard of) and paper magnetic tape. Back up copies were made of some of the originals which had been stored in garden sheds, Institute basements, cupboards etc in London, Paris, Holland and France. There were also copies from Mme. Anastasieff's estate in Spain which were mouldy, rusty and infested with insects.
G.J. Blom, a Dutch student of the work assembled as many originals, backups and backups of backups as he could and re-stored the tapes and wires and then had them re-mastered and re-processed removing a lot of the distortion, poor editing and noise. The result? It's almost like being in his small apartment in Paris and hotels in the USA in his last year of life.
Blom has managed to recover a total of 136 tracks coming in at 19 hours; theres a couple of tracks where you hear Gurdjieff coughing away, a couple he drums at the end and others he ends with an "Amen". The DVD with the MP3 files also includes a couple of interviews with Gurdjieff who has a very thick accent and is difficult to understand. Nevertheless, a tale of his Fiat which died in the mountains and Gurdjieff kissed goodbye and the 83 year old turkey found in a freezer and cooked up is delightful. There's also a MPEG video which has been shown here before and available on youtube.
The music is similar to the piano compositions he did with de Hartmann although they sound less "Europeanized" and less formal in a sense. The music seems to be as it was meant to be. It is described as "sad, slow and in a minor key" in the excellent 143 page book which accompanies the recordings.
http://www.bennettbooks.org/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BB&Product_Code=CDGHARMO-BA&Category_Code=
G.J. Blom, a Dutch student of the work assembled as many originals, backups and backups of backups as he could and re-stored the tapes and wires and then had them re-mastered and re-processed removing a lot of the distortion, poor editing and noise. The result? It's almost like being in his small apartment in Paris and hotels in the USA in his last year of life.
Blom has managed to recover a total of 136 tracks coming in at 19 hours; theres a couple of tracks where you hear Gurdjieff coughing away, a couple he drums at the end and others he ends with an "Amen". The DVD with the MP3 files also includes a couple of interviews with Gurdjieff who has a very thick accent and is difficult to understand. Nevertheless, a tale of his Fiat which died in the mountains and Gurdjieff kissed goodbye and the 83 year old turkey found in a freezer and cooked up is delightful. There's also a MPEG video which has been shown here before and available on youtube.
The music is similar to the piano compositions he did with de Hartmann although they sound less "Europeanized" and less formal in a sense. The music seems to be as it was meant to be. It is described as "sad, slow and in a minor key" in the excellent 143 page book which accompanies the recordings.
http://www.bennettbooks.org/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BB&Product_Code=CDGHARMO-BA&Category_Code=