V.com weekend vote: How many times have you quit the violin (or your main instrument)?
I had to chuckle when I read the latest headline this week in The Onion: Yo-Yo Ma Finally Works Up Courage To Tell Parents He's Quitting Cello.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Photo by Michael O’Neill.
The story continues:
"Mom, Dad, this is it — I quit," said Ma, who exhaled and then winced as his parents immediately reacted to the consequential words by simultaneously exclaiming "But you love cello!" and "Is this a joke?"
Of course, it is a joke - it was in The Onion, a well-known source of satirical news in America. At age 69, the affable Yo-Yo Ma, with his long and storied career as one of the most accomplished and recognized cellists in history, has probably worked through any issues he might have had with his parents. (His well-respected father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, who founded the Children's Orchestra in New York, died in 1991. His mother, Ya-Wen "Marina" Ma, wrote a book My Son, Yo-Yo. She is still living.)
It would be a little late for Yo-Yo to quit!
So exactly why is this absurdly farcical story by the Onion going viral in our little classical world? What universal truth has the Onion revealed? Certainly it speaks to the clash that can happen between parents' expectations and a child (even a grown child)'s desires. (And while this may be seen as a statement on Asian parenting, we know that "stage parents" come in all varieties.) And also - it hints at the idea that a child might keep trying to please his parents, even into his own senior years. Is there a grain of human truth in that?
At any rate, I thought this would be a fun topic for discussion, and so I've fabricated a related vote to get the ball rolling. Also, I'm inspired by one of my own students, whose parents had told her that "You'll play the violin until you are 12, then you may decide to keep playing, or to quit." She had made the decision to quit violin at the end of the summer, with her parents fully supporting the decision. Then after two months into this "goodbye" phase, she changed her mind. She will keep playing. Yay!
And so here is the vote: How many times have you quit violin (or whatever your primary instrument is)? Personally, I've "quit" several times. I quit to become a journalist. But I kept playing violin on the side - it just sneaked right back into my life. Then I quit to become a mom. But not really. I kept playing, started teaching. I quit after a horrible, horrible audition in which I nearly fell over from a panic attack. Then a few months later, I was back to playing. By now I'm too tired to fight it - I think I've quit quitting!
Please participate in the vote and then share your thoughts in the comments - about Yo-Yo Ma, about quitting, about parents' expectations, and/or about your own kids or students quitting!
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Replies
Never. I’ve taken a few breaks over the years but never quit. Violin lessons were my idea, so I was self motivated, as opposed to parent motivated. My parents, fortunately, weren’t the stage-parent type. Their only involvement in my learning was paying for lessons and requiring me to practice. No worries there - I was a practice geek.
The only thing I quit - or, more accurately, abandoned - was my childhood ambition to play professionally. I scrapped this ambition when nearing the end of the degree program.
Never heard Yo-Yo Ma in person but have picked up some of his performances online. From these, I’d say he draws from his instrument a sound worth emulating and communicates well. No wonder he’s such a big draw for audiences. Check out this rendition of Camille Saint Saëns’ “The Swan”:
I quit the 1st time at 13 when the chorus director discovered my singing voice. I sang semi professionally for about 60 years.
I began again at 73 and had to quit at 75 when muscular problems in my let hand prevented me from holding the instrument. I had bought 3 violins before I found one i liked. My granddaughter a sophomore in college, began playing it at age 13 and now plays it beautifully.
At age 92, after several hand operations, i once again bought a violin. For my 96th birthday, I traded up for an 1892 German made instrument, which I continue to play. I'm very happy about being able to play even though my stiff fingers and wrists prevent my playing as well as the granddaughter.
Jim
I stopped at 18 when I went to college. Big mistake. I took it up again at 43 -- a 25-year gap. Now I play violin and viola regularly. Quartets this morning, for instance; I had the viola parts of Mozart K421 and Dvorak Op. 61.
I have quit only the once and it was for about a year or so. This was during the 2020 pandemic/lockdown. I started practising a lot, as I had time, but by the time I got to about August or I packed it away and didn't touch it until September of '21. I didn't regret it, it's something I felt I needed at the time.
I Never quit in the sense that I always played for myself, however I stopped lessons at 18 when I went to college. Now at 60, I’m back at both violin and cello lessons along with a community chamber orchestra. I let my vocation get a little ahead of my avocation. Sometimes that happens. Retirement, and knowing my wife and kids are ok gave me the room to make some changes. I am very lucky
Quit twice; first in college, when a medical condition put a stop to the lessons and most playing, so I switched the emphasis in my BA music major from violin performance to --something else. Then later, age 28, I left the music business and started my training for a med. lab. job. Returned to full-time music at age 61. The third time might be soon; I do not enjoy observing the inevitable decline, so one option is to just stop, redefine myself once again.
I more or less quit the violin the summer in grad school when I was on an out of town assignment with my young family. I was trying to play when the baby started crying, our cat was crawling up my leg, and then, a neighbor's misguided arrow came flying through the window--I saw all of it as a sign. (The neighbors were very apologetic when they came to retrieve the arrow--insisting it was a random accident.)
Oh my goodness, Richard, what a story!
The violin? I quit after an injury to my left hand with a chainsaw. I started up again, only to quit again after an accident which separated my right shoulder. I saw that as a “sign” and took a 40 year hiatus. I took it up again about 1.5 years ago. So far, so good.
I started playing the ukulele for my hospice patients about 16 or so years ago, formed a band, and haven’t looked back once.
I saw Yo Yo Ma in concert maybe 22 years ago, I’ll never forget it. He played that thing like an alien!
I had a hiatus for about twenty years after a traumatic brain injury, picked it back up, along with the ukulele, which I hadn't ever played before, when one of my nephews began playing guitar and showed some promise - I took it as a hint to take up music again, so I could keep up with him and support him. That led to taking up the trombone, which I'd never considered before, and the recorder - being one of the few who passed through the Australian and New Zealand educational systems without ever having played it - and other instruments. I have occasional hiatuses every now and then, when I get busy with one instrument, and neglect the others ...
Unsure about What to Post here ~ Elisabeth Matesky, Concert Artist & Master Teacher; Carrier of the Heifetz-Milstein Violin & Bowing Art Legacy {#2} from Yesterday, now *{#12} Today 8.7.25 ~
About Quitting~ This Idea never entered my mind as a young child and I can truthfully say Never before and reading many musical publications, have I stumbled across this Idea made the Centre of a string musician discussion, but there is Always a First Time for Everything! My own beginning on the Violin started on my Third Birthday having asked constantly for a Violin!! Gifted my first violin on my Third Birthday, and so happy to hold the little violin in the pretty green coloured violin case with dots on the outside dark case, the thought of 'quitting' playing the violin not once in my life occurred to me nor did it ever once come up in any family discussion due my starting lessons on my third birthday taught by my Poppa Ralph to firstly learn How to hold the violin and secondly to learn How to Hold the Bow!! From Day One I was fascinated by the violin and its sound plus being able to copy my father, a superb 'star' violinist, having graduated Top of his Juilliard Class and gone on to play professionally in his own String Quartet whilst at Juilliard and on Weekends for major donors to Juilliard, and for the very kind Patron of the School who would go on to donate enough funds for the 92nd Street Y to be built and formally be introduced to All New York City Concert Goer's as a New Recital Hall and in direct competition with Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center to come into existence and other fabled Concert Halls in NYC, including Carnegie Hall & famed Town Hall venue so widely known and used by very acclaimed Concert Soloists in Strings and on the Piano and very much so by Singers which in the 40s & 50s included an Aunt of mine who was a protege of Lotte Lehmann! The name, Lotte Lehmann may not ring the memories of concert goer's of Today, but back in the 40s/50s and Up, Lotte Lehmann was the Heifetz of the Vocalist's World and of the World of Opera!! My Aunt was close to Ms. Lehmann and her brother, Fritz Lehmann, pianist for his sister and my brilliant Soprano Aunt, originally from Germany and Ms Lehmann a Star Singer in Europe starting out her Internationally acclaimed Singing Career and attracting untold millions of admirer's then coming to NYC at some point I do not validly know, but making an immense impression on and of most serious Classical Music Concert Goer's and also to the likes of the New York Philharmonic for decades and The New York Metropolitan Opera plus the New York City Opera and many more classical music outlets!
Now-a-days, many of the Opera Stars of 'Old' are not even recognised in today's sort of almost fading away Awareness of The Greats of a Time in America when Quality depended on Merit and Not on politically correct 'norm's' of The Day which have forever changed like the breeze of Winds which consistently blow all differing ways depending on the Weather which, truthfully, None can yet Control!!!
I feel the Idea of Quitting is a negative way to think about a truly wondrous Idea of learning to play a violin or viola or violoncello & the Double Bass, for String Seeking Players plus the Piano which still holds a global fascination for all youths wishing to make some sort of music with their own hands!! And let us be grateful for so many young children and/or parents with young children wishing to gift their child or brood of children a Looking Glass into the World of Music telling the child or children "You can do this Too!" I would think most children if very early exposed to Music would love learning to actually make Sounds on a violin or other String Cousins! Therefore, to myself, the Idea of Quitting playing the Violin or other string instruments, is totally abhorent and I find the Idea of Quitting anything too soon or the discussion of Quitting 'Whenever' surprisingly negative for millions of us when hearing wonderful to us sounds at an early age in our leaving baby-hood lives yearning to make the same sounds and on a musical instrument either on the Piano or Violin or Violoncello if a Family Member is playing one of the Instruments we've first heard and Loved if parents selected Grand Concert Artists on LP's or Disc's or CD's + DVD's and/or on YouTube now and unknown to my parents way back when, but nevertheless wishing both of us (my sibling later on Cello) to be able to learn and Love Music as they did and continued doing so throughout their Earthly Lives to Make Music so beloved and always studying to Improve evermore!! And it is This Subject of Improving on a String Instrument or as a Singer that this Subject posed by Editor, Laurie Niles, seems so contrary to in Idea ~ By Dictionary definition, quitting is for the cowards of this world and in our National and International Histories of Countries who alone persevered in War and In Peace!!! I must mention this to make a very important point: Quitting at something one initially Loved is not a very often respected way by most people when looking at 'Things' in this Life which is so fleeting no one knows when or where one will be 'Called Home' which is a gruesome thought and is a Final End to All known to All Peoples of The World and Not looked forward to ...
So, in essence, I would think most string players coming here at this time might Vote "Never" having quit an Instrument due to an ongoing Love Affair with the initial Musical Instrument one first started to Learn to Play less become proficient on or become a known classical or other genre artist in and Of!!! I find this Subject a truly intriguing Idea to Ponder but for myself after a number of Decades on the Planet and loving Music from the core of my being, feel It dangerous at this specific time both for Human goodness and for Survival of the Human Race in general and to quote Sir Winston Churchill, Hero of World War II, now quoting his "Ne, Nev, Neve, Never, then Never Never Never Ever Give Up!" Speech to the outside London graduating class at England's finest Boys School (full Grammar School at Eaton in England) when Guest Speaker for the Commencement of School Graduates going on to University, aka, Oxford and or Cambridge, so sought out, and referring to his Mantra throughout WWII, to "Never Give Up" which did, btw, Win World War II and with our Nation's Military coming in to help Great Britain Win the War against pure Evil of Adolph Hitler to preserve the Goodness of Peace and in an Open Society so the Idea of Quitting would've been beyond Abhorent to Sir Winston Churchill, and to all other Leaders of Nation's at that pivitol time which when abided by and with Stick-to-it-tive-ness, Won the War and Gave Goodness The Golden Keys to Freedoms and with it Responsibility to Protect All that was and remains Good versus Evil which claims the Souls of every person on Earth and oppressed dreams/wishes/ loves/desires/Hopes and Futures Imagined of Every Human Person on this Planet! This in and of itself defies the Idea of Quitting!!! I hereby Vote for Staying With that which is difficult to learn and in learning we Grow into very responsible Adults to Take Care of Our World and of Others during Our Time here on Earth leaving it better than whence we arrived and were nurtured by our Mother's from our first breath's!!!
Having enjoyed writing this Impromptu, and without any thoughts given the subject prior to just 'off the cuff' setting down one's opinions & mention of some ideas here, I think it Best to Not Quit that which we Love or are deeply attracted by and certainly When the Going gets Rough or our bodies become injured to the point where playing or the exercise of practising to get better on the instrument becomes most painful physically, we learn to Stick to it if pain via Physical Therapies developed which in the Final Tallies bring Great Inner Rewards no matter if none of us are Jascha Heifetz or an Arthur Rubinstein or a Piatigorsky!!! It matters not due a Love of Music and Great Musicians bringing all of us Joy and Hope which are as necessary to Living as The Air we All Need to Breathe for Long Good Lives leaving God's Earth better than what we found it to be in our individual sphere's On God's Earth and for Posterity in our own ways . . .
~ Thanking Laurie Niles for This Rare Subject ~
.......... Elisabeth Matesky / Chicago ..........
Fwd ~ dmg {#2} Yesterday/Now *{#12} Today 8.7.25
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July 6, 2025 at 09:47 PM · Had to quit at 13. Parents divorced and we moved. I then attended a school with no music program. Took it back up again at 62 when my wonderful hunny bought me a violin for Christmas because he knew what it meant to me as a kid. Best gift ever!!!