Soundscapes

A Musician's Journey through Life and Death

Paul Robertson

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571331895
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

For nearly forty years Paul Robertson performed throughout the world as First Violinist of the internationally renowned Medici String Quartet, of which he was a founder member.

In 2008 the main artery to Paul's heart ruptured, leading to him dying on the operating-table, and then being resuscitated. Paul subsequently hovered in a deep coma for six weeks, close to death and experiencing visions, affording him profound insights into the relationship between music and the subconscious

When he came to he felt he had been reborn - fundamentally, a different person - and not just because the left side of his body was partially paralysed. Instead, he woke with a completely new acceptance of the meaning of death, and a belief in life beyond.

Now 64 years-old, Paul has decided not to undergo any more surgery, facing a very uncertain future and living on borrowed time. In this book Paul reflects on his musical training, his insights into the difficult realities of ensemble playing, and about the possible meaning of his experiences in both life and near-death.

This extraordinary and poignant memoir will be for all musicians, spiritual thinkers and musical laymen who have engaged with the rigours of learning music.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Dr Peter Fenwick
• Soundscapes
• How I was taken ill and died
• Dying
• Coma
• Miracle or medicine?
• On the cusp
• Moving hospitals
• I receive a visitor and begin recovery
• I walk for my doctor
• I prepare to go home
• I eat an apple
• I see myself in the mirror
• I go home
• I watch the builders putting on the wrong roof
• Early recovery
• Sliding doors?
• Sir John Tavener
• My first meeting with John
• The Hidden Treasure
• Towards Silence is commissioned
• Coma vision: in a New York hospital
• The score of Towards Silence arrives
• My mum meets John’s wife
• Scatter Roses
• I am taken ill again
• I sell my violin
• First self-consciousness
• My first musical experience: ‘The Cuckoo’
• My parents’ relationship
• Darkness and dread
• Making ends meet
• My first violin lesson
• Instrumental empathy
• Interpreting musical personalities
• Mozart wins the pools
• An ideal musical childhood
• A family wedding
• Selling my violin
• I fail to gain entry to the Menuhin School
• I am sent to boarding school
• I déjà vu a concerto
• Manoug Parikian becomes my teacher
• Practising
• ‘Tartini tones’
• I leave my ghastly boarding school
• Becoming English
• A portrait of Manoug
• Manoug’s winning side
• I become a student at the Royal Academy of Music
• Heifetz and the pursuit of perfection
• Attention in performance
• Heifetz and imperfection
• ‘Letting go’
• Caution versus spontaneity
• Manoug and I part company
• Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy
• Heifetz plays a wrong note
• Szymon Goldberg and the perfect up-bow
• Alfred Brendel
• Neville Marriner
• Tradition
• A survivor of Nagasaki
• Remorse
• Forming the quartet
• Konrad Lorenz’s fish
• The Pythagorean gap
• The search for the perfect ensemble
• ‘Tempering’
• Personal perfection
• The husky
• Launching the quartet
• Janáček 2
• Ravel
• We prepare for our Wigmore Hall debut
• Our debut concert
• Two mentors
• Sir Clifford Curzon
• Guarding your talent: ‘Know thyself’
• ‘Tea’ as an art form
• The second simplicity
• A medieval vision
• Curzon’s approach to music-making
• Clifford’s definitions of artistry
• Touch
• Learning Elgar with Clifford
• In Shropshire
• The Cuckoo remembered
• Curzon’s journey into Elgar’s musical world
• Postscript
• Why do we cling to life?
• Altered perception
• I am propelled to Gurdjieff
• In the hands of fate
• I test Dr Roles
• In an Indian shrine
• I hear an internal voice
• I compathise Oistrakh’s vibrato
• A Japanese vision in coma
• Beethoven
• We commit our personalities to Beethoven
• We auction ourselves at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
• Insights from Beethoven: String Quartet in B flat, Op. 130
• Cavatina
• What is an ensemble?
• The individual and the group
• The battle for the imagination
• Interpretation: String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131 First movement: Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo
• Negotiation and rehearsal
• Establishing tempo
• Tempo relationships
• Second movement: Allegro molto vivace
• Tempo relationships in Op. 131
• Where is home?
• The role of interpretation
• Group breakdown
• A personal crisis
• I dream of Manoug
• The beginning of the end
• NESTA
• Introducing Bach’s solo violin works
• The sonatas and partitas
• What does playing Bach feel like?
• Manoug Parikian and Bach
• Paragrams and the Qabalah
• Gematria
• A fascination with death
• The Chaconne
• The religious calendar in the sonatas and partitas
• The Sun King
• Coda
• The Little Lion
• The story of the arrow maker
• Lakshman’s Dive
• Shiva holds the poison
• The Elephant in the village of the blind
• The two artists
• The two birds
• Photographs
• The Medici Quartet
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright