Using Authoring in Education: Customizing Computer-Based Lessons for Students Book

It’s the weirdest thing, a quartet. I don’t know what to compare it to. A marriage? a firm? a platoon under fire? a self-regarding, self-destructive priesthood? It has so many different tensions mixed in with its pleasures.

I was absolutely enthralled with Seth’s two novels “The Golden Gate” and “A Suitable Boy” and so I couldn’t wait to start reading this book. But it turned out to have an odd effect on me as I alternatively loved and hated it. I couldn’t understand this at all. I put the book down for a day and started again; but still this dichotomy of loving/hating the book remained. But why? This was beyond my comprehension as I really admire this author.

“An Equal Music” came highly recommended to me. Everyone seemed to love it and the subject matter was brilliant in that it was based around the famous Maggiore Quartet comprising Michael (one of the two main individuals in the book), Piers and Helen, brother and sister, and Billy.

Apart from my passion for reading, photography and gardening, I’m enthralled with classical music and this book promised me so much in that regard.

The book on the whole is lyrical and there are indeed some mesmerizing passages but I feel that it really doesn’t have any soul. Michael and Julia, a pianist, had met ten years previously and he had never forgotten her. One day he’s on a London bus and sees Julia on a bus travelling in the opposite direction. This was magnificent to read and the travels to Vienna and Venice are quite magical but I found myself becoming more and more incensed with the relationship of our two protagonists, which appeared to be so contrived. And the great secret? Well words fail me here. Try to imagine a married woman with a young child, who is recommencing an affair with Michael who in turn then suddenly discovers something quite untoward.

In addition, Michael to me lacked passion, true passion. I think that really the only thing he ever loved apart from his music was his violin, the Tononi which in turn led him a merry dance. He had been loaned it many years before by an elderly neighbour, Mrs Formby and always lived in constant fear that she would insist upon its return for one reason or another. The prose throughout the book, nevertheless, is exquisite regarding this instrument.

The doorbell rings. It is the registered letter from Rochdale…Shall I play you and then give you up? Shall I give you up unplayed, so that the memory of our parting is not marred with sounds; so that Bach is not joined by other losses: Mozart, Schubert, all that gives me life. What would I play if not that, what would I play if not here? “Tea for Two” chez Tricia? The dog-food for my old, tired teacher? The untrembling scale with my estranged friends? “The Lark Ascending” in honour of a dispersed spirit?

The gift however that Julia finally gave him was musical; he had always been so moved by her playing:

Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music – not too much, or the soul could not sustain it – from time to time.

I feel so sad that I did not find this book all embracing. There’s nothing worse that disappointment in an author who normally has me entranced. However, another book… Another time.