Reader’s Guide
A Discussion Guide for Crescendo
CHAPTERS 1 & 2—Vortex and Calculated Risks
Anthea describes becoming a member of a group to the extent that she becomes one with the group.
What kinds of experiences have you had where you became so closely identified with others that you took on a new identity?
Where in your life do you experience the requirement for perfection Anthea describes as an aspect of being a member of the Artemis quartet?
Anthea writes about leavings and joinings.
Can you identify times in your life when you had a leaving or a joining? When you consider times, people, or things you have left, what have been the most helpful and some of the most hurtful things people have said—or that you have said to others?
Anthea introduces us to E.B., her “adored and eccentric” grandfather.
Do you have a relative or friend who gave you life lessons you still remember and use? In what way are you an “E.B.” to another person?
CHAPTER 3—Burned Out
Attending the Curtis Institute had been a life-long goal for Anthea. The completion of the Curtis program is described in one phrase—“I am twenty and done.”
Have you ever experienced achieving a major goal and finding that it does not feel the way you expected? Have you accomplished a goal and realized you do not know what you want to do next?
The story of Anthea’s three-year relationship may be one you recognize from your own life, or from friends’ lives.
If you had seen the obsessive change in Stephen’s behavior developing, what would you have said to Anthea along the way?
CHAPTER 4—Cake
NOTE: If you are discussing this book in a group session, be advised that some content in this chapter and subsequent ones can be disturbing to many people. Proceed with sensitivity. Group members should be able to pass.
“Pregnancy”—the word prompts a tsunami of reactions, both from one’s own experience or the shared experience of others: successful or not, unwanted or wanted, easy or difficult, beginning or end of relationships or plans. Anthea takes us through her own tumultuous journey, complete with one final hurdle before giving birth to her firstborn.
Why do you think Anthea got in the car to pick up “THE CAKE”? What would you have done?
At one point, Anthea declares: “I need to make a substantial change in my life.” At a later point, she says about herself, “I am an obsessive planner.”
How do these two statements fit your own life—making substantial changes or making comprehensive plans? What motivates you to be a changer or a planner?
CHAPTER 5—Home Alone
This chapter opens with a small child in her safe hiding place—a trunk.
What was your reaction when you read this section? Did you have, or need, a “hidey place” when you were six?
Despite failings in other areas, both of Anthea’s parents are supportive of her musical pursuits. Music seems to be a source of safety and common ground in her early life.
How do we see this theme carried into Anthea’s adult life and career?
When preparing to adopt, Anthea is forced to lie about her family’s past, thus perpetuating a common occurrence where children in a family cover for parental behavior.
Would you have done the same?
CHAPTER 6—Silk Road
Anthea paints complete pictures with her words, but this chapter can be enhanced by accessing a world atlas, looking up names of people and instruments, playing related musical passages.
Being recommended or selected for special groups can do a lot for one’s sense of personal achievement or accomplishment. Finding yourself as part of such a group can also be intimidating. Anthea’s humor and sense of playfulness seem to help her settle in and become comfortable in this elite ensemble.
Have you experienced a situation where something like Anthea’s game “Fanny’s Gonna Get Ya” helped calm nerves or bring everyone together? What about a time when humor may have backfired?
Anthea ends this chapter with a powerful lesson: “not to waste any of my life doing something that doesn’t fulfill me.”
Can you say the same?
CHAPTER 7—Lost
Concert-goers experiences a world of glamor, glitz, beauty, exhilaration, applause, and praise.
What image are you forming of the world backstage, based on Anthea’s reflections? How do her descriptions of the culture and the daily routines shape the way you think about the life of top level performers in music or other highly skilled elite activities?
What are your thoughts as you follow Anthea from a luxurious setting for a house concert to her terrifying vomit-filled struggle to get home?
Anthea’s relationship with the rest of the Artemis quartet seems solid where musical matters are concerned. At the same time, her personal style and her Oregonish-approach to life set her apart from them.
Have you had a similar experience of meshing well with a group on one level, but finding yourself an outsider in some other aspect? How have you handled this?
There’s never a good time to receive bad news; perhaps some times are worse than others.
When you read about Anthea’s health issues, multiple jobs, and stolen violin, how would you describe the impact of Jason’s “return-home” text message? How would you have dealt with that situation?
CHAPTER 8—Found
Many people, having filed a theft report with a highly efficient police department, would follow police procedures and wait to be contacted. Not Anthea. She takes matters into her own hands, even plying the constabulary with delicious donuts and waiting for hours on an uncomfortable bench. And she gets a response.
Does her behavior surprise you? Is this the way you would have responded?
Anthea begins making lists while she waits for the police to act: What I want, what I need, how to make that happen, what I need right now, what I need later.
Is this an approach that works for you?
CHAPTER 9—Off the Page
Chapter 9 begins with Anthea’s description of a three-year break “from my stressful, fulfilling, and self-critical life in classical music.” She says the break “gives me the freedom to realize I’m not trapped in the life I had trained for.”
Can you identify with the need for a break that she describes? Has there been a time in your life when you wanted to take a break and did? Or didn’t? What determined your decision?
Anthea ends the chapter with the conclusion that chance meetings over time have led her to the music life she wants, to Jason, and to Corvallis. “These chance meetings change the course of my life forever.”
What are your “chance meetings”?
CHAPTER 10—Meetings
The process of application, preparation, audition, in-person meeting, trials, and finally becoming a member of Artemis sounds incredibly daunting—something that could go off-rails at any moment. Anthea knows she is not the typical, nor even the preferred applicant. Throughout this process she experiences the “unwavering belief” that Jason has in her.
Does someone have that kind of belief in you, and do you demonstrate that kind of belief in another person?
Previous chapters have illustrated the deep-seated sexism present in the world of professional music (and elsewhere). While in the Artemis, Anthea discovers that the male members of her quartet show up at the airport with snack bags someone else made, to put in a suitcase that someone else packed, and someone drove them to the airport, while Anthea is doing all of these things for herself and still being criticized for not doing enough as a mother.
How are these experiences as a woman in an elite professional role made harder to handle by being in a foreign country? Have you experienced this sort of sexism, or benefitted from it as a man?
CHAPTER 11—Raven Mother
Chapter 11 begins with phrases no mother ever wants to hear but which may sneak into their own thinking: bad mother, selfish wife, and more. Anthea often hears these words from powerful patrons, and her increasing understanding of the German language puts her in the painful position of having to balance accolades for being a fine violinist with the sharp criticisms of who she is as a person.
If you were in Anthea’s shoes, how would you respond to these issues?
The chapter ends with Anthea declaring, “I guess this is just part of the experience, something that will roll off my back,” and she begins to feel sorry for her critics, concluding, “It must be annoying to be an obnoxious person.”
When you are criticized, how does that sharpen your understanding of the critic?
CHAPTER 12—Walk Away
Chapter 12 brings old pain into the foreground as Anthea is confronted with her father’s medical crisis. She acknowledges that much of her past is unknown to Jason and that she is putting more of that past on paper than she has shared with him.
Are there parts of your past that you share with others but not with those closest to you? How do you decide?
While experiencing a night-terror event, Anthea wakes her mother and they talk about what is happening. Anthea’s mother asks, “Why, why does it happen?”
In the midst of family or group turmoil have you ever realized you don’t know what is happening or why things are happening the way they are? Do you think Anthea’s mother knew but couldn’t say, or do you think that she didn’t know?
CHAPTER 13—An Epic Love Story
Chapter 13 skips around through several locations, times, and situations, with music and performance and relationships scattered throughout. The reader learns that among Anthea’s accomplishments is the ability to manage two simultaneous relationships when the lovers have the same first name. It’s more complex than the Brahms Double Concerto played by a single person. But Anthea does it. She labels herself a “natural multi-tasker.”
What kind of multi-tasker are you?
This chapter pulls together humor, family, open conversation about behaviors, and acceptance of self: body changes, wrinkles, hair morphing into silver, life in a small town. Anthea has a life that her older daughter calls “refreshingly uneventful.”
What has it been like for you to experience Anthea opening herself so totally to share her life and the person she is?