Thomas de Hartmann was born into an aristocratic family in Ukraine in 1884. After showing musical talent as a child, he studied in Moscow with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev. His earliest music was in the style of Rimsky-Korsakov (who was director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory where Hartmann studied), but his aesthetic became more modernist through the influence of contemporary painters such as his personal friend Wassily Kandinsky.

The composer’s later career was sidetracked when he and his wife attached themselves to an itinerant spiritual guru, the Georgian mystic George Gurdjieff. They literally followed him around until 1929. During this time, Hartmann collaborated with Gurdjieff (who was musically illiterate), notating and arranging the mystic’s improvised melodies for use in spiritual exercises.

After leaving Gurdijieff, and suffering the upheavals of war and revolution, Hartmann’s early reputation had evaporated. He turned to writing film scores for a living under the pseudonym Thomas Kross, composing over 50. He settled in France until World War Two and ended his days in 1956 in America.

Hartmann was either posthumously forgotten or exclusively associated with the chants...