Maestro Quotes : Year 11

 

MAESTRO QUOTES

 

PAUL

·         “you are my best student…one in a thousand. But a concert pianist is one in a million”. p.113

 

·         “To play with feeling…” (Paul’s response to Keller when he said “What else can they teach you?”) p.113

 

·         “I was not yet involved in my future imaginatively or emotionally…” p.114

 

·         “Keller had spoiled me…” p.123

 

·         “I felt ‘affection’ for him certainly – I loved him in many ways – but I loved Rosie more” p.117

 

·         “The aroused, sexual present overwhelmed the past.” p.118 (when Keller for Rosie)

 

·         “You’ve been like a father to me. Taught me everything I know.” p.115

 

·         “…pretending to enjoy my first beer.” p.86

 

·         “Terrified that I might lose her.” p.81

 

·         “And slowly I began to find more and more reasons to avoid Bennie…” p.26

 

·         “ I suppose I disliked her for the usual reason: she was too much like me.” p.63

 

·          “ I knew too that I wanted the spotlight.” p.42

 

·         “…self satisfied go no further.” p.43

 

·         “a music teacher perhaps”

 

·         “At school I was falling in love.” (displays Paul’s naivety about love, had never spoken to Megan) p.32

 

·         “I’ve been re-enrolled in Kindergarten.” p.27

 

·         “everything he had taught me-every opinion, every phrasing, every note-had hardened into dogma.” p.123

 

 

 

MEGAN QUOTES

 

 

Paul is rejected by his first crush

Before: 

·         Megan spoke beyond her years in a way that was "completely foreign to the schoolyard"

 

·         "Megan belongs to Scotty"

 

·         "keep away from Megan"

 

·         "Not worth a punch" - Jimmy on Paul's views on Megan

 

·         "to persuade herself, to excite herself in some way"

 

·         "My dreams... were only of Megan" Paul desires her 

After:

·         "It was a disappointment, she was too selfish, as soon as I touched her she became floppy, inert"

 

·         "passively as if on a pedestal"

 

·         "It was too wonderful" he lied

 

·         "I wasn't so much guilty, I was terrified" on telling Rosie

 

·         to Rosie "there will never be anyone else" 

 

·         "I improvised" 

 

 

·         "congested with love, or lust" 

 

 

Keller Quotes

 

·         “Is water at fifty degrees half-boiling?”

 

·         “Always the most difficult part of a race is the last step.”

 

·         “You’ll understand perhaps not now, but soon.” - Keller's unorthodox teaching methods take time to learn

 

·         “We must know when to move on, to search too long for perfection can also paralyse.”

 

·         “Only those who are dirty need to wash.”

 

·         “I hope this doesn’t make you homesick” says Nancy as she prepares a meal. Keller replies saying “nothing dear lady, could make me homesick.”

 

·         “Every fish has its depth.”

 

·         “We always hope for the best.” - this relates to optimism in Maestro

 

·         “Only the second-rate never make mistakes.”

 

·         “What I the difference between a good and a great pianist, not much. Just a little.”

 

·         “He had two choices, to become invisible, or become so visible that nothing could touch him.”

 

·         “We must be on our guard against beauty always. Never trust the beautiful.”

 

·         “Beauty simplifies. The best music is neither beautiful nor ugly. Like the world, it is infinitely complex.”

 

·         “Only those capable of ugliness can be beautiful.”

                                                                                           

 

 

Nancy and John

 

Nancy says
to
Paul, “Your
father
never
had
your
opportunities he
always
regretted
it we
lost
so much
in
the
war.”


 John says to Paul “My
father’s
father
had
died
when
he
was
young.
He
had
no
role
model.”


“the
confines
of
a
life
that
I
hated,”
this Is how his dad felt to in a way

“some
part
of
him
that
had
long
been
repressed:
some
frivolous,
joyous
core
that
hardship,
childhood
tragedy
and
the
War
had
buried
inside
him
too
long.”

Paul says watching his dad Paul
only
sees
“polarities.
Hard,
and
soft.
Fair,
and
dark.
Thin,
and
thick.”


John Crabbe
Medicine was his job, music his life
Medicine was his wife, music his mistress

It’s a town of drunks 
A city of booze, blow, and blasphemy

 

Nancy Crabbe
The first law of gossip: always talk about those not present.
German placenames changed, German composers banned, German speakers interned

He didn’t teach me a thing. – Church organist

“you know what they say it isn’t how much you got”

 

 

ROSIE QUOTES:

 

"Object of desire"

 

"She was so much like me"

 

"She was the other smart kid in the class"

 

"Her voice seemed insistent, high pitched like an insect"

 

"Alienated"

 

"Her thigh pressed suddenly against mine"

 

"i slipped an arm around her, she leaned into me"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adelaide

about

·         “A temperate zone city of grandparents and churches”

 

·         “I felt a Territorian’s contempt for Adelaide”

 

·         “Of rotary clothes hoists and rose bed and apricot trees and cream-brick Dream Homes”

 

·         “All the old wonder seemed to have vanished”

 

·         “Capital City of the land of Childhood”

 

·         “Taste had moved on to cooler, more casual styles: loose eastern shirts, sandals, rimless glasses” – Rough Stuff’s performance in Adelaide

 

·         “The temperature of the music we could hear from the stage had cooled too…”

 

·         “Soon I would be flying back to the South: to the woman and child that I loved, within the confines of a life that I hated” – older Paul

 

·         “temperate wheat country” – page 53

 

·         In which I had once lived – centuries ago, in an earlier life, it seemed.” – page 53, Paul reminiscing on his childhood

 

·         “There was only one City…a far off magical place always spoken of in hushed tones, always spelled with a capital.”

 

·         “The City meant Television”

 

·         “The Zoo, and the Beach. The Glenelg Tram. The Show…The Museum”, “Those childhood pleasures had lost some of their joy for me by the age of sixteen” – page 53

 

what happens in Adelaide

·         “frozen in that indeterminate common age of alcoholics” – Paul’s observations on Keller

 

·         “Honorable mention became the story of my life, no matter how much I practiced. I had found my level…” – Page 128

 

·         “Everything he had taught me – every opinion, every phrasing, every note – had hardened into dogma” – Page 123

 

·         “Perhaps that was the only way he could give it…at a distance. Carelessly. As if it meant nothing.” – Nancy, on Keller sending Paul an original Czerny.

 

·         “Mother. Was this the first time I had used the word in that way – keeping her at a distance, as if with a verbal barge pole.” – page 96, when Paul tells his mum about Adelaide with Rough Stuff

 

Darwin

 

• “Darwin is the asshole of the earth.”

 

• “A city of booze, blow and blasphemy.”

 

• “The dry season ran its seemingly endless course.”

 

• Paul referring to Keller that he is more talkative when its dry “as if the dry had somehow made him more socialable.”

 

• “The suit, white linen, freshly pressed and absurdly in that climate.”

 

• “ the sticky air” pg  4 bottom of page

 

• “She found the climate unbearable.” Referring to Nancy’ s discomfort while playing piano.

 

• “the cartoon world.”

 

• The hot steam house.”

 

• “Moist compost air…..sweet and sour air.”

 

 

 

 

 

Vienna Quotes and textual examples:

 

“Never trust the beautiful”

 

Henisch and Paul go back and forth describing two very different Kellers. Ultimately Paul says, "If we were discussing the same man, how different our two versions. Or perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps they were not the same man, in a sense." This seemingly paradoxical statement reflects Paul's realization of how far Keller has tried to distance himself from his past. Paul realizes that perhaps Henisch's version of Keller did die in 1944.

 

Paul says that his teacher loves Bach and Mozart and hates the Romantics, but Henisch says the opposite. Paul plays Beethoven's Arietta from Opus 111 to show that he knows Keller's style, but Henisch says “Keller's student played with more rubato”.

 

“Megan was a façade but no real identity or personality”

 

“Old Vienna vanished long ago”. He often told me (Keller)

 

“It was demolished into a great city”

 

Nebeau on Mariahilfer (“I write these place name casually, as if I have lived their all my life, and in many senses I have”)

 

“He played for Hitler… so who would harm his wife and child?”

 

(Keller’s wife Mathilde is she) She was a singer wasn’t she?”

“A Wagner specialist, and now the heirs of Wagner came and dragged her away.”

 

 

Music

 

     - An excellent forgery

     - technical perfection, not musical perfection

     - there is no such thing as perfection, only levels of imperfection

     - he made the instrument sing

     - beauty is what music is for

     - music is a form of arithmetic

     - needs more rubato

     - no one can be too proud for this. You will learn each note by next week. Then I will teach you the music. (Keller to Paul during a piano lesson)

     - a concert pianist is one in a million

     - there can be no perfection, only levels of imperfection

     - a music teacher perhaps, but not a concert pianist

     - honourable mention became the story of my life

     - only the second rate never make mistakes

     - revealing perfection to me, and at the same time snatching it away