Maestro

FORM IV MAESTRO Quotes Analysis 2. 'In a sense Keller was bad for me, the worst possible teacher.' Is this an accurate assessment' What has Keller taught Paul' This statement is inaccurate. Even though Paul does not realise at first that Keller is teaching him a lot, Keller sees a young him in Paul. Like Keller, Paul is very arrogant, thinking he is better than everyone. Keller tries to teach Paul, that this arrogance can lead to his downfall. Keller teaches him that without experience of an event, no-one can really know what it feels like, despite all the factual details, he may read. "No-one can be ... you the music", here Keller is referring Paul to play the Children's Bach, instead of going straight to the original Bach. Even though Paul has finished the Children's Bach, many years ago, Keller tries to get Paul to realise that there The significance of title “Maestro” is a term usually reserved for musicians of the highest accomplishment. It seems unlikely to apply to an unprepossessing, alcohol-sodden piano teacher living above a beer garden in a “town of drunks” (p.8). Paul’s early impressions of Keller are not favourable, and Keller is, likewise, unimpressed by Paul. “the boy is too given to self-satisfaction”, as he states, “the self satisfied go no further”(p.43). It is gradually revealed, however, that Keller has a most respectable musical pedigree and was, at one time, a pianist of distinction. Keller attempts to impart his knowledge to Paul but Paul strikes out on his own prematurely, preferring to his the European competition circuit rather than spend extra time refining his skills. At the end of the novel Paul is dismissive of his own ability, suggesting that his playing falls short of the very best: “a second-rate perfection is all I have any hope of attaining” (p.148). Paul never achieves the status of maestro. Keller’s pre-eminence remains uncontested. Maestro takes the form of a retrospective narrative which both begins and ends with a focus on the narrator’s relationship with his music teacher, Eduard Keller. As an adult, Paul Crabbe looks back on his formative, early experiences in Darwin. He is trying to come to terms with the choice he made as a younger man inhabiting “a foolish, innocent world, a world of delusion and feeling and ridiculous dreams”(p.149) Paul tries to give an accurate account of his past but he acknowledges that total accuracy is unattainable: “To describe the world is always to simplify its texture, to coarsen the weave”(p.14). One of his earliest admissions as narrator is that he will not attempt to reproduce the idiosyncrasies of Keller’s speech. It is important that Keller should be established as a figure of some dignity and authority. Goldsworthy clearly wants to avoid any stereotyping of Keller, hence the avoidance of “comic-book parody” (p.3) in the representation of his speech. Both Paul and keller participate in the major themes of the text which include the conflict between dreams and reality, the significance of self-image to adult life, and the power of the past within the present. They both make difficult, sometimes misinformed, choices and are forced to live with the consequences of their actions. It seems, at times, as if Paul is a younger Keller, set to repeat, in his own fashion, the emotional mistakes of the older man and unable to benefit from his guidance. Keller aims to teach Paul more than just music. He would, for instance, willingly give Paul access to his collection of grimly illuminating scrap-books if Paul’s father would permit it. Paul’s association with Keller teaches him to look beyong stereotypes and to question the surface reality of things. Nevertheless, Keller’s influence is not necessarily altogether benign. It is possible that Keller has made his student too much in his own image, “teaching a self-criticism” (p.148) without limits and without a constructive purpose. Paul does not seem to be, as David Copperfield puts it, the hero of his own life. The volume which purports to be his memoir is, after all, titled Maestro with reference to Keller. Inevitably, the reader must arrive at a personal evaluation of the impact of Keller, for good or ill, on Paul. Paul enters the text as a “skinny, unathletic, irredeemably smug”(p.25) fifteen year old. He resents Keller for forcing him to go back to musical exercises which he believes he has already mastered. As he continues to study under Keller, their relationship deepens. Keller signals this change by making a present to Paul of a priceless Czerny manuscript. Paul sees this gift as opening “a door, a narrow emotional chink”(p.64). It seems as if Keller may be ready to share some part of his past with Paul but, on the one occasion when he attempts to, Paul lets the potentially cathartic moment pass because his girlfriend is waiting for him downstairs and he is impatient to be with her. As Paul matures, his contact with Keller lessons but he retains his curiosity regarding Keller’s past. What he eventually learns about Keller leads him to think that Keller pre-war and Keller post-war “were not the same man, in a sense” (p.140) Paul’s quest to understand Keller shifts, in the later stages of the novel, to a quest to understand the man that he, partly as a result of Keller’s teaching, has become. Like the death of a parent, Keller’s death forces Paul to reassess himself: “Now I was faced with myself for the first time: Paul Crabbe, graying, dissatisfied, fast approaching mid-life, my backside stuck to a minor chair in a minor music school”(p.148). though he has not matched Keller’s musical accomplishments, Paul seems to be his natural successor in terms of disillusionment.