Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy

This easy to read fiction book is very well known in Australia. It has appeared regularly on school curriculums and is often described as a "coming of age" book. The basic plot is about a young boy (Paul) growing up in Darwin and his relationship with his mysterious piano teacher, known as The Maestro. Available study guides talk about Darwin's weather being hot and humid mirroring the young pianist's budding sexuality, the student's fruitless quest for musical artistry and achievment along with themes of escapism, guilt and regret.

When I originally read the book, I found the plot clever and creative, but what really interested me and has stayed with me long after reading the book were the little nuggets of piano pedagogy tucked into the story. It turns out that Peter Goldsworthy, a medical doctor as well as an author, is the father of Australian concert pianist Anna Goldsworthy (whom I saw play at a Western Australia Piano Teacher Conference). He seems to have picked up some wisdom from her or her illustrious piano teacher, Mrs. Sivan, and inserted it into the story.

THE HAND:

When the young boy starts taking piano lessons from the Maestro, he has quite a few lessons where he is not allowed to play the piano even though he already is a pretty competent musician. Instead, the Maestro only discusses the hand and has many individual lessons about each finger without allowing the boy to play any music. It is very striking because it seems quite cruel to have piano lessons without allowing a student to play. However, it made this part of the story get into my head and got me thinking about how does the hand relate to the piano.

In the story, the fingers are described as:

Thumb: "Thumb is...too strong. A rooster, a show-off. Sultan of the harem. He must be kept in place."

Forefinger: "This finger is selfish. Greedy. A....a delinquent. He will steal from his four friends, cheat, lie."

Middle finger: "Mr. goody-goody....Teacher's pet. Does what he is told. Our best student."

Ring finger: "Likes to follow his best friend.... Likes to....lean on him sometimes."

The fifth finger is not described because as part of the story, the Maestro has cut off his fifth finger and tells the boy that it is unnecessary because many great pianists from previous eras never really used their fifth finger. Although that is kinda true, it would have been fun to also have a colorful description of the fifth finger from the Maestro. Maestro then describes the fingers as the pupils, the elbow as the teacher, and finally the brain as the headmaster.

Later in the story when the boy is describing his lessons to his parents, he says that the only thing they talked about in his initial lessons were the lengths of the fingers and that not all fingers are the same length. It was also pointed out by the Maestro that all the keys on the piano are the same length and the student is asked what could be done to remedy the mismatching.

From my point of view, this one the most basic issues at the heart of all piano playing and it has caused me to think a lot about how pianists do deal with the issue of having fingers with different "personalities" and lengths. I've thought about how we move our hands at the keyboard to compensate for those differences. It seems a very useful way to describe the hand early on in piano lessons to my students because it makes you consider how to best use your mismatched hand from the very beginning.

POSTURE AND HAND POSITION: Early in the piano lessons, the boy wants to play Chopin for the Maestro and gets ready to play when the following exchange occurs: 

Paul: "I, too, would let my hands do the talking. I dropped them to the keyboard. But before a single note had been played he reached over and seized my wrists.

Maestro: "No," he said. "No more. I do not like your Chopin." 

Paul: "But I haven't started!" 

Maestro: "You have of course started. Your hands are in the wrong position. Also your fingertips. Your elbows. I do not have to listen. I know how your Chopin would sound."

I love this exchange and wish I could be so very knowledgeable as to definitely be able to tell how something will sound on the piano simply by looking at a student's hand position and posture. However, in real life sometimes people can sound amazingly good with poor hand position and/or posture. Nevertheless, I still always try to teach my students to have good posture and hand position because I believe it can help prevent injuries and also because most pianists do sound better if they have what is considered proper hand position and posture.

THE QUEST FOR MUSICAL ARTISTRY: One of the main plot points in the book is the student's quest to become a classical pianist and how he continually falls short of his goal. There are a number of great quotes in the book that describe that quest:

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

“Only the second-rate never make mistakes.”

"No advance in art is possible for the self-satisfied... A step back is often as useful as a step forward."

"What is the difference between good and great pianists?" ...."Not much"....."Just a little."

"Perhaps there can be no perfection. Only levels of imperfection. Only.....differences. Each time we move closer and closer - but can never be satisfied. A piece is never complete, only at some stage abandoned."

There is also a very telling exchange between the boy and the Maestro which illustrates Paul's fruitless quest for music artistry:
Paul: "I played Beethoven that night as well as I had ever played, and turned afterwards, smiling, ready for praise."
Maestro: "An excellent forgery .... Technically perfect".
Paul: "At such moments I always remember a forged painting I once saw. In a museum in Amsterdam: Van Gogh. A fascinating art work. Each violent brushstroke was reproduced with painstaking, non-violent care. The forgery must have taken many many times longer than the original to complete. It was technically better than the original."
Maestro: "And yet something was missing. Not much - but something.... And that small something may as well have been everything."

I love the allegory of the Van Gogh painting because it helps explain why some performances although technically perfect, don't move you as a listener. This book allows it's main character to not quite make it as a classical pianist, to fall just short of the quest. It speaks to all of us about the struggle for musical artistry and how appreciative we should be of the great classical pianists over the ages who have manage to achieve such elusive artistry even if only for a short time.

There are of course many more nuggets of musical wisdom in this story, like the importance of listening, how becoming a concert pianist is always a gamble, etc. For me, it is wonderful how all of these important musical concepts are woven throughout a compelling story rather than a more "dull" book on piano pedagogy. This is a book that music and especially piano students can read for the story, but through osmosis learn important aspects of piano study and start to appreciate the rigors of a pianist's search for musical artistry.

I actually only have one minor quibble with this book. How could the Maestro possibly have an authentic autograph of Czerny, all the photos of his past life, the two pianos, etc. in his Darwin apartment if the ending of the book really happened?