A Late Quartet

& Peter: “Time present and time past
                Are both perhaps present in time future,
                And time future contained in time past.
                If all time is eternally present
                All time is unredeemable.
                Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
                And the end and the beginning were always there
                Before the beginning and after the end.
                And all is always now.”
    That’s T.S. Eliot, his take on Beethoven’s late quartets.

& Pilar: What are you playing on this one?
    Robert: Second violin. Always, that’s my part.
    Pilar: Always?
    Robert: Yeah. Well, without me they’d be a lonely, frustrated trio.

& Robert: Seriously, the second and first violin aren’t hierarchical,
they’re just different roles.
    Pilar: Different how?
    Robert: Well, sometimes I get the melody, sometimes the bass line. Uh... I connect the first violin, which tends to be the soloist’s part, with the viola and cello, which just flow... right underneath the surface. Simply put, I pull it all together. That’s my job.

& Robert: Did Peter ever tell you about Schubert’s last musical request?
    Alexandra: Yeah, how... he only wanted to hear Beethoven’s Opus 131, and they played it for him, like, five days before he died.

AmericanStringQuartet — Beethoven op. 131

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& Daniel: Nice.
    Alexandra: My father gave me a tip.
    Daniel: Sounds like a good one.
    Alexandra: It was a good one. You should take a tip from him yourself.
    Daniel: Yeah? Like what?
    Alexandra: He could teach you to be a little less... anal.

& Alexandra: Why didn’t you pursue a solo career?
    Daniel: I would never trade with them. As a soloist, you rehearse with an orchestra three, maybe four times, and perform the piece once or twice. And that’s it. Next city, next conductor, next orchestra... We celebrated 3,000 concerts together last season. Which makes me feel kind of ancient, but... It’s the only way to find meaningful interpretations.

& Daniel: The greatest composers, when they wanted to express their most sincere thoughts, feelings... dig deep into their souls, always this form, always, always the quartet.

& A girl in a train:
    “People expect old men to die,
     They do not really mourn old men.
     Old men are different. People look
     At them with eyes that wonder when...
     People watch with unshocked eyes;
     But the old men know when an old man dies.”
   (Old Men by Ogden Nash)

& Alexandra: If you treat him like a doormat, he’s gonna start to wonder what’s outside the door.

& Peter: What is going on? Fill me in.
Ω You’d be surprised what’s going on.

& Daniel: The seventh movement. These movements are all connected. You can’t ride the wild horses of the seventh without mounting them during the sixth.

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Σ Beautiful and sad.