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Soundscapes: A Musician's Journey through Life and Death
In 2008, the renowned violinist Paul Robertson suffered a ruptured aorta. After dying momentarily on the operating table, he remained in a coma for many weeks. During this time, he experienced visions which afforded him a profound insight into the relationship between music and the mind. When he awoke, he found his understanding of the world - and beyond - fundamentally altered.
This surprising and rewarding memoir offers a singular perspective on creative endeavour: the rigours of learning, the challenges of performance and the spiritual nourishment that drives us on. It is a poignant and wise book that draws on a lifetime's experiences, in both life and death.
This surprising and rewarding memoir offers a singular perspective on creative endeavour: the rigours of learning, the challenges of performance and the spiritual nourishment that drives us on. It is a poignant and wise book that draws on a lifetime's experiences, in both life and death.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 18, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 24, 2017
Soundscapes is a quirky and insightful memoir by Paul Robertson, co-founder and longtime leader of the Medici String Quartet. In 2008, Robertson was faced with a very critical medical emergency, which left him clinically death for about half an hour and in a long coma afterwards. In his book, Robertson interrogates and studies his life through the prism of a Near Death Experience that steeped him in a sequence of phantasmagoric visions. Clearly, he chose to understand this episode as some sort of ritual passage, a ‘metanoia’, that resulted in a spiritually more developed vantage point from which to make up the balance of his life. Every sentence in this book reveals the choleric and domineering personality of the author. Robertson, in his younger days, must have been a veritable ‘bastard’ (his own word). A deep sense of insecurity and feeling of disenfranchisement led him to carve out his path as a professional musician in rather unsubtle ways. In his old, post-NDE days he has become milder and genuinely apologetic about all the "crude, gauche and selfish” acts of his life - “and there were a great many of them.”
Soundscapes is not a blow-by-blow biographical narrative. It starts with Robertson’s account of his near death experience, and then returns to his lower middle class youth and his discovery of the violin. The story continues with the establishment of the quartet, its later dissolution and the author’s final post-NDE years. He breathes life into the story of his early development through a perspicacious discussion of the virtues of his musical hero Jascha Heifetz, his teacher Manoug Parikian and his mentor, the great pianist Clifford Curzon. The quartet decades revolve around their relationship with the music of John Tavener and particularly Beethoven. Studying, performing and recording the sixteen quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven was the apex of the quartet’s career.
Robertson is uncharacteristically candid and level-headed about the experience of playing and living in a quartet. For him there is a fracture at the core of the quartet experience that can be very precisely articulated. It is called ’the Pythagorean gap’ or ‘comma’ "that describes the difference of tuning between the notes of the scale, which arises from the natural harmonic series compared with the 12 chromatic semitones that result from tuning a succession of perfect fifths.” Modern, ’tempered’ tuning systems distribute the gap evenly across all the notes of the chromatic scale. However, according to Robertson “such approximation is simply inadequate for anything but the crudest string quartet playing … The only honorable route for any serious quartet is to take pains over mediating each tonal gap as it occurs.” The issue of ‘temperament’ has implications for every technical aspect of performance - tempo, sonority, rhythm, dynamics and phrasing - and its resolution becomes pervasive and engrossing.
Hence, this is the crucible of leadership and group achievement: “Each member has to recognize that for the ensemble to take wing it is necessary to compromise personal sensibilities by carefully playing ‘out of tune’ for the greater good. Moral authority and leadership lies with the person willing to be in error for the benefit of others.”
The book presents an unusual mixture of the clear-headed and the esoteric. Pointed reflections on music, musicianship and ensemble playing mingle with unabashed references to ‘pure consciousness' and the Divine. Robertson had been drawn to spiritual matters from an early age and was deeply involved in the Study Society, a private ‘esoteric school’ inspired by the teachings of Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. The delirium experienced during his coma only seemed to have reinforced this penchant for the noumenal. Robertson reads these visions as allegories that reveal a deeper spiritual significance behind his life’s events. Also his emergence of the coma in imbued with deeper meaning. For Robertson this reveals the fundamental nature of the universe as a moral force. Why? Because he was dead and in no position to make a decision to return to life. “Even though I was not at all aware of myself while in coma, once I returned to life I never doubted that it was ‘my’ decision to have chose to live. (…) This is possible because the universe itself is imbued with consciousness and that ‘pure consciousness’ is its ultimate nature. Even though we might not always appreciate it, such a numinous consciousness always recognizes and upholds what is right and true.”
These kinds of speculations may not appeal to all readers. Yet, I would advise them not to be dissuaded and read the book if they are interested in the practice of classical music. There is much that is valuable here. It also helps that the narrative is littered with traces of a robust, if sometimes malicious sense of humor. I really enjoyed this book.
Soundscapes is not a blow-by-blow biographical narrative. It starts with Robertson’s account of his near death experience, and then returns to his lower middle class youth and his discovery of the violin. The story continues with the establishment of the quartet, its later dissolution and the author’s final post-NDE years. He breathes life into the story of his early development through a perspicacious discussion of the virtues of his musical hero Jascha Heifetz, his teacher Manoug Parikian and his mentor, the great pianist Clifford Curzon. The quartet decades revolve around their relationship with the music of John Tavener and particularly Beethoven. Studying, performing and recording the sixteen quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven was the apex of the quartet’s career.
Robertson is uncharacteristically candid and level-headed about the experience of playing and living in a quartet. For him there is a fracture at the core of the quartet experience that can be very precisely articulated. It is called ’the Pythagorean gap’ or ‘comma’ "that describes the difference of tuning between the notes of the scale, which arises from the natural harmonic series compared with the 12 chromatic semitones that result from tuning a succession of perfect fifths.” Modern, ’tempered’ tuning systems distribute the gap evenly across all the notes of the chromatic scale. However, according to Robertson “such approximation is simply inadequate for anything but the crudest string quartet playing … The only honorable route for any serious quartet is to take pains over mediating each tonal gap as it occurs.” The issue of ‘temperament’ has implications for every technical aspect of performance - tempo, sonority, rhythm, dynamics and phrasing - and its resolution becomes pervasive and engrossing.
Hence, this is the crucible of leadership and group achievement: “Each member has to recognize that for the ensemble to take wing it is necessary to compromise personal sensibilities by carefully playing ‘out of tune’ for the greater good. Moral authority and leadership lies with the person willing to be in error for the benefit of others.”
The book presents an unusual mixture of the clear-headed and the esoteric. Pointed reflections on music, musicianship and ensemble playing mingle with unabashed references to ‘pure consciousness' and the Divine. Robertson had been drawn to spiritual matters from an early age and was deeply involved in the Study Society, a private ‘esoteric school’ inspired by the teachings of Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. The delirium experienced during his coma only seemed to have reinforced this penchant for the noumenal. Robertson reads these visions as allegories that reveal a deeper spiritual significance behind his life’s events. Also his emergence of the coma in imbued with deeper meaning. For Robertson this reveals the fundamental nature of the universe as a moral force. Why? Because he was dead and in no position to make a decision to return to life. “Even though I was not at all aware of myself while in coma, once I returned to life I never doubted that it was ‘my’ decision to have chose to live. (…) This is possible because the universe itself is imbued with consciousness and that ‘pure consciousness’ is its ultimate nature. Even though we might not always appreciate it, such a numinous consciousness always recognizes and upholds what is right and true.”
These kinds of speculations may not appeal to all readers. Yet, I would advise them not to be dissuaded and read the book if they are interested in the practice of classical music. There is much that is valuable here. It also helps that the narrative is littered with traces of a robust, if sometimes malicious sense of humor. I really enjoyed this book.
November 21, 2016
One of the first books I reviewed on joining Goodreads, was 'An Equal Music' by Vikram Seth; I was looking back probably ten years. I really enjoyed it and have been intending to read it again with the advantage of looking up on the internet the pieces played in the story. Though I love music I still know very little about chamber music, but Paul Robertson gives us a fascinating, very deep insight into the intense world of a string quartet. Music is a language that needs no words and musicians and listeners can connect to a composer long dead who did not speak the same language. Robertson was a deep thinker long before his amazing near death experiences brought music and his spiritual senses together. It was only in august this year that he died, having made good use of his second chance in this world to explore the meaning of life, explain it in this book and prepare positively for what lies beyond!
July 27, 2018
Could have been an interesting exploration of consciousness, death and recovery in conjunction with music performance. but Robertson makes so many generalisations and inflated appeals to God and the"great men" of western composition in his 'journey through life' that I found this did not contribute much to the study of creativity or subjectivity.
January 30, 2022
This one of the oddest books that I have read. It certainly isn’t the book I thought I was going to read.
I should say that I am a not particularly brilliant amateur violinist, so I was aware of Paul Robertson and the Medici Quartet. Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the sections of the book on specific pieces, particularly Beethoven and Bach and on the compromises and discussions that result as four players try to play as one.
The book begins with Robertson nearly dying of a ruptured aorta. To save his life, his heart is stopped and his brain chilled to keep it alive. Whilst he is in this near death state, he has a series of intense visions and experiences, some related to his past life, others may be trying to make sense of his current situation. The book then jumps between episodes of his life, the visions and the music. Robertson knows he will never be able to play the violin again and he sells his fiddle to bring money in. He also knows that his life expectancy is poor and, in fact, he died just before the book was published.
Robertson doesn’t hide the fact that he was very singleminded as a person and as leader of the quartet, assuming that what was good for him was good for everybody. He gives the impression that the Near Death Experience has made him a kinder and more empathetic person. He doesn’t try and make himself loveable.
Where I struggled with the book are the sections on his spirituality. Having been brought up by atheistic parents, albeit his mother was a non-religious Jew, he is caught up in some very esoteric group. He refers to the writings of different people I have never heard of, without explaining what those writings are about. It feels there there is a gap between what Robertson writes and what I understand. I know it is about some spiritual dimension to life and music but I am never told what it is.
I should say that I am a not particularly brilliant amateur violinist, so I was aware of Paul Robertson and the Medici Quartet. Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the sections of the book on specific pieces, particularly Beethoven and Bach and on the compromises and discussions that result as four players try to play as one.
The book begins with Robertson nearly dying of a ruptured aorta. To save his life, his heart is stopped and his brain chilled to keep it alive. Whilst he is in this near death state, he has a series of intense visions and experiences, some related to his past life, others may be trying to make sense of his current situation. The book then jumps between episodes of his life, the visions and the music. Robertson knows he will never be able to play the violin again and he sells his fiddle to bring money in. He also knows that his life expectancy is poor and, in fact, he died just before the book was published.
Robertson doesn’t hide the fact that he was very singleminded as a person and as leader of the quartet, assuming that what was good for him was good for everybody. He gives the impression that the Near Death Experience has made him a kinder and more empathetic person. He doesn’t try and make himself loveable.
Where I struggled with the book are the sections on his spirituality. Having been brought up by atheistic parents, albeit his mother was a non-religious Jew, he is caught up in some very esoteric group. He refers to the writings of different people I have never heard of, without explaining what those writings are about. It feels there there is a gap between what Robertson writes and what I understand. I know it is about some spiritual dimension to life and music but I am never told what it is.
April 16, 2023
Some really interesting stuff about music as an ethereal/ineffable/mathematical thing, and its connection to whatever meditation/dreams/the universe is made of. Which I kind of partly understand and partly think makes no sense at all. It all becomes incredibly abstract. Also quite lot about how “erotic” music is.
It seems to me that the quartet were aspiring to a stratospheric level of musical perfection, at the expense of everything else in their lives, and I don’t know why. Who is this level of perfection for other than themselves (and perhaps specifically for Paul)? At what point along the line to unobtainable mathematical “perfection” does it become imperceptible to even the highly trained human ear? What does it mean that a quartet is not “ready” to play Beethoven until they’ve played together for 10 years - surely that’s a ridiculous degree of gate keeping.
Maybe I just haven’t ascended to this higher plane that he seems to live on. I’m not sure he even “enjoys” music more than other “inferior” people (as surely most of it must be completely intolerable to him)? Maybe he just see it as more important/Significant than other people do (and himself).
He becomes pretty self indulgent to my mind - he’s given a three year fellowship to research musical brain function, but no, instead: ”I immediately recognised that three years spent in communion with bachs sonatas and partitas for solo violin would take me deep inside myself and might reveal that inner spark that was the root of any original talent I might have, and therefore my true Self” 🙄 And all this BEFORE he’s even had the near death experience.
On an interpersonal level he also seems like a bit of a nightmare - eg Sniffing at his fellow quartet members for doing “money orientated” things like recording sessions, with a sense of superiority that he would never stoop so low (??). When after many years of musical slave driving from him, some of the members have to sell their houses and move out of London because they’re earning so little, he mainly just seems annoyed at them.
Quite early on he says
“I continued to distrust any musician who attempted to “master” his erstwhile colleagues. I was fundamentally suspicious of anybody who took it on themselves to be the arbiters of other people’s feelings and emotions…. I had convinced myself that conducting was a form of emotional abuse.”
Fine fine but this is EXACTLY what he then seems to do in his quartet, bullying and dominate his fellow quartet players for the next 20 years.
Also he’s definitely in some sort of cult (“the study society”…)
Reading with a medical lens - the near death experience was as a result of a “Tear in his aorta” - I highly doubt there are “only two surgeons in the country who could perform the operation”
Also lol - “violinists typically hibernate in the daylight, presumably like their violins, in velvet-lined coffins, emerging only at night to gorge on the blood of their helplessly impressionable victims. That the playing position of the early viols gradually migrated up the nerve ganglions of the neck suggests a journey towards this quasi-erotic form of sustenance.”
“Music, which is one of nature’s best endowed playgrounds of non-verbal communication”
It seems to me that the quartet were aspiring to a stratospheric level of musical perfection, at the expense of everything else in their lives, and I don’t know why. Who is this level of perfection for other than themselves (and perhaps specifically for Paul)? At what point along the line to unobtainable mathematical “perfection” does it become imperceptible to even the highly trained human ear? What does it mean that a quartet is not “ready” to play Beethoven until they’ve played together for 10 years - surely that’s a ridiculous degree of gate keeping.
Maybe I just haven’t ascended to this higher plane that he seems to live on. I’m not sure he even “enjoys” music more than other “inferior” people (as surely most of it must be completely intolerable to him)? Maybe he just see it as more important/Significant than other people do (and himself).
He becomes pretty self indulgent to my mind - he’s given a three year fellowship to research musical brain function, but no, instead: ”I immediately recognised that three years spent in communion with bachs sonatas and partitas for solo violin would take me deep inside myself and might reveal that inner spark that was the root of any original talent I might have, and therefore my true Self” 🙄 And all this BEFORE he’s even had the near death experience.
On an interpersonal level he also seems like a bit of a nightmare - eg Sniffing at his fellow quartet members for doing “money orientated” things like recording sessions, with a sense of superiority that he would never stoop so low (??). When after many years of musical slave driving from him, some of the members have to sell their houses and move out of London because they’re earning so little, he mainly just seems annoyed at them.
Quite early on he says
“I continued to distrust any musician who attempted to “master” his erstwhile colleagues. I was fundamentally suspicious of anybody who took it on themselves to be the arbiters of other people’s feelings and emotions…. I had convinced myself that conducting was a form of emotional abuse.”
Fine fine but this is EXACTLY what he then seems to do in his quartet, bullying and dominate his fellow quartet players for the next 20 years.
Also he’s definitely in some sort of cult (“the study society”…)
Reading with a medical lens - the near death experience was as a result of a “Tear in his aorta” - I highly doubt there are “only two surgeons in the country who could perform the operation”
Also lol - “violinists typically hibernate in the daylight, presumably like their violins, in velvet-lined coffins, emerging only at night to gorge on the blood of their helplessly impressionable victims. That the playing position of the early viols gradually migrated up the nerve ganglions of the neck suggests a journey towards this quasi-erotic form of sustenance.”
“Music, which is one of nature’s best endowed playgrounds of non-verbal communication”
March 9, 2018
Well, this book was disappointing, to say the least. After I heard it billed as "When Breath Becomes Air" for musicians, I was incredibly excited to read it. I'd read Paul Kalanithi's luminous memoir and loved it. Just the thought of reading something like that but geared toward musicians (and I am a musician) had me so excited I couldn't sit still.
Alas, this book wasn't anything like "When Breath Becomes Air" (and few books are). Whereas Kalanithi's book was a gorgeously written book about life and death, "Soundscapes" was a disjointed conglomeration of descriptions of medical issues, the challenges of relearning how to live after a traumatic medical situation, and smatterings of arcane ruminations on classical pieces of music. All of it was strangely devoid of emotion.
As a violinist, I know who Paul Robertson is. I am familiar with the renowned Medici String Quartet. When I read his book, I was baffled as to how he could describe music and his relationships with other musicians in such an unemotional way. Music is inherently emotional and very personal. You'd never know it by reading this book.
I made it through 35 pages and finally had to give up. I was tired of hearing about Robertson's time in the hospital, moving to another hospital, how putting his violin to his chin was enough to exhaust him for an entire day. I get it. But I want to be emotionally moved by all of this. I think maybe Robertson is simply not a writer, that he doesn't know how to engage the reader. Whatever the reason that the book was so staid and, basically, boring, there's no excuse for it. This should have been a fascinating book. How utterly disappointing.
Alas, this book wasn't anything like "When Breath Becomes Air" (and few books are). Whereas Kalanithi's book was a gorgeously written book about life and death, "Soundscapes" was a disjointed conglomeration of descriptions of medical issues, the challenges of relearning how to live after a traumatic medical situation, and smatterings of arcane ruminations on classical pieces of music. All of it was strangely devoid of emotion.
As a violinist, I know who Paul Robertson is. I am familiar with the renowned Medici String Quartet. When I read his book, I was baffled as to how he could describe music and his relationships with other musicians in such an unemotional way. Music is inherently emotional and very personal. You'd never know it by reading this book.
I made it through 35 pages and finally had to give up. I was tired of hearing about Robertson's time in the hospital, moving to another hospital, how putting his violin to his chin was enough to exhaust him for an entire day. I get it. But I want to be emotionally moved by all of this. I think maybe Robertson is simply not a writer, that he doesn't know how to engage the reader. Whatever the reason that the book was so staid and, basically, boring, there's no excuse for it. This should have been a fascinating book. How utterly disappointing.
September 5, 2022
Not all books are easily readable, not all writings have an inner flow, not all pages provide blissful moments. This one, written by a brilliant chamber musician, is sometimes excruciatingly hard to be read (mainly the pages about the author's mystical disease-related visions), sometimes intriguing (the stories about the famous musicians), sometimes revelatory (the descriptions about Bach's and Beethoven's music) and in the end deeply emotional and beautiful. So it's a very uneven book which requires from the reader's attention some hard-work.
Is it worth it? In our fast-paced modern world, probably not. But if you want to take a break from the speedy-mania we tend to live in, this book is like a sunrise in the depth of the mountains: you are cold while waiting, you may shiver for hours and want to abandon at least several times... but when the times come and the sun is rising over the peaks, yes, in that moment you know it was worth it. Such is this book like.
Is it worth it? In our fast-paced modern world, probably not. But if you want to take a break from the speedy-mania we tend to live in, this book is like a sunrise in the depth of the mountains: you are cold while waiting, you may shiver for hours and want to abandon at least several times... but when the times come and the sun is rising over the peaks, yes, in that moment you know it was worth it. Such is this book like.
February 17, 2018
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book but it sounded so intriguing that I had to request it from the Early Reviewers.
Soundscapes: A Musician's Journey Through Life and Death was a fascinating story of Paul Robertson, a musician who has a near-death experience but it's so much more than life after death. It's the story of one man's journey, its about his growth and experiences in music and the development of his faith.
The book reads like a piece of music - you can hear the flow of the music throughout the story giving us an idea of how vital it was not just to his life but ways that we can consider music. This made me want to read more about the work he did in his later life with his research on music and the brain.
Soundscapes: A Musician's Journey Through Life and Death was a fascinating story of Paul Robertson, a musician who has a near-death experience but it's so much more than life after death. It's the story of one man's journey, its about his growth and experiences in music and the development of his faith.
The book reads like a piece of music - you can hear the flow of the music throughout the story giving us an idea of how vital it was not just to his life but ways that we can consider music. This made me want to read more about the work he did in his later life with his research on music and the brain.
October 23, 2024
I found the book pretty horrifying actually. I thought that John Taverner was a remarkable and very pious man who writes quite beautiful music and I love Towards Silence in which he collaborated with Paul Robertson, but really what Paul Robinson describe seems like a trip to hell .The book jumps all over the place and does not seem warm or empathetic at all, although when I've seen him talking about how children react to music, for example he seemed very warm. Somebody told him to record these hallucinations.I would have just left it. It really is about the effect of those drugs and possibly as he was not much of a believer then, and admits it, it's about how empty death will seem to those who have no faith.
April 22, 2020
I enjoyed the explorations of the connections between music, self, and spirituality. However, the lack of detail or vignettes from Robertson's personal life made absorbing the scope of those lessons challenging for the reader. The book also feels disjointed at times, and I found those passages which focussed in detail on musicology challenging - Robertson attempts to explain some of these to the layperson (often overwhelming in his detail), but neglects to do so frequently. However, I did enjoy his insights into some of my favourite composers.
May 6, 2023
Quite extraordinary. I shall have to revisit. The author's insight into his musical world was more valuable than his insight into his dreams whilst he was in a coma. I think.
The book was lent more poignancy when I found out he died not long after the book was published.
The book was lent more poignancy when I found out he died not long after the book was published.
April 3, 2021
Excellent book
January 4, 2022
Not the book I was expecting. Too much mysticism and not enough on music. I also found the author a difficult person to warm to.
October 23, 2016
Interesting exploration and connections between music, spirituality and near-death-experiences.
November 12, 2016
A gem... thoughtful and thought provoking. I especially enjoyed the discussions of ensemble playing.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews