Even for the most promising young composer, steering one's career in the direction of success may be likened to walking through a minefield: one false step can bring the promise of obscurity. Cast this quandary against a backdrop of social and political upheaval and the chances of oblivion are greatly multiplied. Indignities of time and place can go a long way toward quelling a composer's voice, no matter how unique. Despite such affronts, the music of Thomas Alexandrovich de Hartmann (1885-1956) has endured. The de Hartmann papers in the Yale University Music Library reflect a life of early successes followed by constant struggle in the wake of two World Wars and the Russian Revolution. Born in the Ukraine to a family of Russian aristocrats, de Hartmann showed an inspired ability for music by improvising melodies at the piano before the age of five. At age nine, following the death of his father and in keeping with family tradition, de Hartmann was sent to the military academy in St. Petersburg. There he found a sympathetic supporter in the director of the academy, who recognized the unusual musical talent of the young de Hartmann and allowed him to pursue informal musical studies alongside his military training. In 1897, at the age of eleven, de Hartmann began his formal training in music as a composition student of Anton Arensky, renowned former professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory and then current director of the Imperial Chapel in St. Petersburg. After Arensky's death, de Hartmann studied counterpoint with Sergei Taneev, whose previous students had included Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Reinhold Gliere. De Hartmann later entered the St. Petersburg Imperial Conservatory, then under the directorship of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff, where he studied piano with Anna Esipova-Leschetizky. He received his artist's diploma in 1904.