What are your favorite words of inspiration about the violin?
What are your favorite words of inspiration about the violin? Here's my favorite. It's the very end of Franz Farga's book, "Violins and Violinists." This book's accuracy may leave something to be desired, but not its passion:
"Four slender wooden boards contain all there is of that instrument; yet what unlimited and sublime possibilities rest in this fragile frame.
Four poor strings; yet what an endless row of artists, blessed with Nature's highest gift, have wrested from them all a human heart can feel of joy and pain, lust and consolation, enthusiasm and melancholy, horror and bliss!"
Replies (100)
"You have great fingers. You're naturally musical... [All you need to do is] to learn to teach yourself."
J. Epstein
"You're lying." - me
V
Blonde seductress--leave me! no dont!. Leave me! no don't!.
New quote destined to be forever on people`s lips:
`Albert , come down off the ceiling.`
"Is violin really hard to play?"
ergh, uhgh, argh(other gutteral representations of effort)--can't Buri, the bow's stuck to the light fixture!. Help!.
Not related to violin so much, but Assistant Concertmaster's signature from VMC:
"Bach gave us God's word. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us music, that we might pray without words".
"Live and Die Classical Music baby!!! Live and Die Hardcore!"
Eek...
Jeeez, guys - I said "inspiring."
Well, OK, if you're going to be THAT way about it:
James Brown: "I don't feel so good."
Joachim (to Paganini): "See what you started?"
Stradivari: "...and it's got 1GB."
Vivaldi: "I did not have sex with that woman..."
Sandy Marcus: "I love the violin. The problem is, it doesn't love me."
:) Sandy
"...a siren voice - the voice of the magic piece of wood that dominates his destiny." - Kreisler
"But Papa, you don't need lessons to play 2nd violin!" - 5 year old W.A. Mozart to Papa Leopold
"Let things happen." Cajun fiddler, Mitchell Reed
"Play it lazy."
--Bob Wills to a bandmate who, apparently, was "fighting" the fiddle to get the results he wanted.
"Well, it always works on second try." Nicolas Chumachenco (hinting at the unability of a student to play correctly on first).
Sandor, LOL!!! Keep 'em coming! :)
Yixi, my teacher Constantine Kiradjieff told me:
"Violin is not hard, but it is complicated!"
P.S. How do you pronounce your name?
Edit: never mind...I'll come up with some later
From my teacher during a lesson while another student was present:
Teacher: Play, play like you'll never play again!
Other student: And then...don't!
Those are all good... Sander!. ;).
David Mannes: "Ysaye taught the technique of expression, as against the expression of technique."
I like Suzuki's words:
"Tone has a living soul."
Anne,
The inspiration that question gives me is that it should always remain as a question. Any given answer will stop inspiring me!
My name sounds “ishi”, like “is she or isn’t she?”
This isn't really a violin quote, but anyway...from Indivisible by Four by Arnold Steinhardt:
"...two musicians in a group slated to play in a Benjamin Britten string quartet at the Marlboro Music Festival came to [Rudolf] Serkin with a problem: one loved the Britten, the other hated it, and they hoped that Serkin would give them guidance. 'Always trust the opinion of someone who loves a work,' he advised. 'The person who dislikes it has simply not yet been open to its beauty. That will come.'"
Here are a couple amusing (but not inspired)quotes I found...
"Since everyone knows about the violin family, it is unnecessary to indicate or write anything further about it."
Michael Praetorius, 1619
"Fiddling puts a gentleman in a very frivolous and contemptible light, and brings him into a good deal of bad company, and takes a good deal of time which might be much better employed."
from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, Philip Stanhope, 1774
'the moment you think you're good is the moment you stop learning and improving' - my violin teacher.
with this comment, it has forever stricken me to abhor mediocrity and loathe laziness.
Hi,
Words of wisdom for me...
On learning repertoire quickly from a famous performer/teacher of mine: "Just shut up and do it!" (I remind myself of that one often)
But the most inspirational one is from an anonymous quote on a framed photo that I got from my godfather and his family when I graduated from my last degree - it reads: "Success is a journey, not a destination."
Cheers!
Inspiring quotations you will never read anywhere else:
- We have more to look forward to in the future than we do in the past.
- All art is relative, but not all relatives are Art.
- A journey of a thousand miles begins with one credit card.
- Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?
This reminds me of a game we used to play when I was in college years ago. Three of us guys would get in a dorm room and get roaring drunk. One of the guys would leave. The other two would have to guess which one left.
Cheers, Sandy
Sandy,
oddly enough, I believe I saw that one about the future somewhere else just in the last few days!
Here in Texas we say,
"If we don't see you in the future we'll see you in the pasture."
Mike: Close enough. Good memory.
Sandy
From Jennifer Dunn
Posted on January 24, 2007 at 1:47 PM (MST)
...
"Fiddling puts a gentleman in a very frivolous and contemptible light, and brings him into a good deal of bad company, and takes a good deal of time which might be much better employed."
from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, Philip Stanhope, 1774
Oh I do so hope that is true! :)
Neil
Neil, I'm sure it's true--only a little less true than banjo players.
Advice from a friend that plays cello in our city's orchestra:
Don't forget to enjoy the playing level you are at now...you are the master of your current ability. Enjoy the success a bit before you move on to your next victory.
Sander,
A journey of a thousand debts also begins with one credit card... VISA - everywhere you want to be, especially in debt!
Cheers!
"What happened to from the string and your straight bow?"
Ah nothing like some friendly reminders from my teacher during a lesson. :)
The one that's inside my case says:
"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
(great inspiration for adult beginners)
Viktor Frankl's autobiographical book, Man's Search for Meaning, has a passage that when I first read I went back and read it a few more times, then I'm sure I must have put the book down and picked up my violin.
"I shall never forget how I awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion on my second night in Auschwitz... Suddenly there was silence and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango... The violin wept, and a part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone had a 24th birthday. That someone lay in another part of Auschwitz, possibly only a few hundred or thousand yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife."
Frankl never saw his wife again after they were separated two days prior to this.
"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
But you will never be your been again. So be it.
In "THe Art Of VIolin" Someone says (Perlman, I think)
"I don't really own this violin, I'm just passing through its life."
I love that.
Hi, Allan: That was Ivry Gitlis talking about his Strad. He said, "It is not my violin. I am its violinist. I am passing through its life" (or something like that).
Sandy
"If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe"
- John Corigliano
I love that quote, partly because one of my sister's friends is an oboe player.
The first time I read this quote from Night, I had a hard time keeping my composure.
"I succeeded in digging a hole through this wall of dying people, a little hole through which I could drink in a small quantity of air. 'Father, how are you?' I asked as soon as I could utter a word. I knew he could not be far from me. 'Well!' answered a distant voice, which seemed to come from another world. I tried to sleep....I heard the sound of a violin. The sound of a violin, in this dark shed, where the dead were heaped on the living. What madman could be playing the violin here, at the brink of his own grave? Or was it really an hallucination? It must have been Juliek. He played a fragment from Beethoven's concerto. I had never heard a sound so pure. In such silence. How had he managed to free himself? To draw his body from under mine without my being aware of it? It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings -- his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again....I do not know for how long he played, I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse."
OK, so maybe this is inspirational in a way different from the rest of these quotes, but...oh well. It's touching, leastways.
Preserve, do not only practice your art, but endeavor also to fathom its inner meaning; it deserves this effort. For only art adn science can raise men to the level of gods. The true artist has no pride. He sees unfortunately that art has no limits. He has a vague awareness of how far he is from reaching his goal; and while others may perhaps admire him, he laments that he has not yet reached the point to which his better genius only lights the way for him like a distant sun."
Beethoven in a letter to his pupil
This applies to anything, but especially to the art of violin playing....
Ambrose Bierce: "Education (definition) - That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."
My two favorite Heifetz quotes -
- When he was once asked what qualities are most important in an artist, he said, "Self-respect, integrity (musically speaking), and enthusiasm."
- Heifetz was also once quoted as saying that to be a violinist requires "the nerves of a bullfighter, the vitality of a night-club hostess, and the concentration of a Buddhist monk."
Oscar Levant: "It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts."
And, for sheer elegance, sweetness, and charm from a person you might not expect it from...
Marilyn Monroe: "We are all of us stars, and we all deserve to twinkle."
Oscar Levant: "What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left."
AND, what has to be the greatest violin quote of all time -
Joseph Wechsberg: "A violin should be played with love, or not at all."
Sandy
"That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
From a conductor at a small school orchestra many years ago (real story):
"No matter what happens, you lose your spot, play when noone else does, even if a car crashes through this building KEEP PLAYING!"
Minutes later a car crashes outside the building on the street.
Craig: The "What doesn't kill you..." quote was by Nietzsche.
Sandy
"Hey hey, the devil rides on a fiddle stick!"
-Gil Shaham
I don't know exactly why, but this motivates me :)
"I'm always doing things I can't do. That's how I get to do them." - Pablo Picasso
"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
"All the water in the world can't sink a ship unless it gets inside." - Tyra Banks (quoting her mother)
William Congreve: "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."
I have tried the above and this quote, while lovely, is patently untrue. However, for me, finding a savage breast was a hell of an adventure and resulted in a handful of fascinating relationships.
As a guy who has been married (happily, I am pleased to say) for 38 years, I long ago concluded that NOTHING hath charms to soothe the savage breast except for those two magic words, "Yes, Dear."
:) Sandy
Edgar Allan Poe: "Art is the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul."
A woman comes up to Heifetz after a concert and says, "Your violin sounds wonderful."
Heifetz picks up his violin, puts it up to his ear, and says, "I don't hear anything."
After a concert of Heifetz, a fan comes to him and says: "Maestro, how can I say how beautiful it was!" Heifetz answers: " In English."
My personal favorite was from Perlman, after he had broken a string at the beginning of a concerto, and performed the whole thing on three strings:
"Sometimes it's the artist's job to see how much he can do with what he has left".
As an oldish guy who's had lots of losses, I find that particularly inspiring.
Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." This is probably why I play violin.
I like it when beethoven said that "music is a higher revaltuion than all wisdom and philosophy" thats what i quote to everyone who tells me that being a musician is either a) not a real job or b) doesnt help save lives or anything noble like that. without music WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE!!! Anyway....
Greetings,
Erin, music saved my life. I have been clinically dead. I have recovered from an illnes sthat usually kills because I went with my need to just play and play however bad I felt.
Indirectly, the people who are making music, making the world a brighter , warmer place whatever kind it is are not involved in making guns and bombs.
More directly, musicians, especially the vocal kind , have a nasty habit of reminding us of our humanity and that killing each other and the world is not such a great idea.
Just a few examples, but if we put our minds to it, the cocnrete value of music is a very long list indeed
Cheer,s
Buri
"The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never
does what he can do." -John Stuart Mill
New strings $60
Bow re-hair $75
Violin lessons $90
Playing the violin… PRICELESS!!!
Henry David Thoreau: "In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high."
*tuning*
Roommate: Dude, that song sucks.
Reminds me of the famous story about Sir Thomas Beecham. At a rehearsal, the oboe player gave an "A" for everyone to tune up. This particular oboe player had an exceptionally wide vibrato. Beecham uttered the famous words, "Gentlemen, take your pick."
Sandy
"The violinist is that particularly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet."
-Yehudi Menuhin
Heifetz to pianist Milton Kaye," If you want to be an artist, you do things fully, no approximation!"
Oistrakh - "Total command of the violin is when the player can be able to practice in public."
I think that this is a simple, yet dense statement by one of best.
I was listening to a kid playing something awful on youtube yesterday and mom goes "Is that you playing?"
grrrr.... that's inspiration from my family right there.
Not exactly about the violin, but.....
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." - Igor Stravinsky
"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to
denigrate those who do. And for the people who
like country music, denigrate means 'put down'."
- Bob Newhart
"Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us." - Anonymous
"In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain." - George Szell
"art, not scholarship"
szigeti wrote it on top of arnold steindhart's (1st violin guarneri quartet) music when he was studying with szigeti. i forget what piece steindhart was working on at the time though, probably something really out there...bartok maybe?
In my teenage years, when I sometimes erred toward idealism, I began to think that vocal music had the edge on instrumental music in terms of art: because vocal music is based on words, and words are powerful things indeed.
Then I found this:
"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"
--Marcel Marceau.
PS I love Szigeti's words that he wrote on the top of the score. That would make a good t-shirt slogan, to be sold on university campuses and other places where scholarly types can be found milling about.
"The Tchiakovsky Violin Concerto is the most exciting, the most thrilling, the most beautiful experience you can have in a concert hall, with the possible exception of making out in the balcony."
(Modesty prevents me from telling who said this.)
And this one isn't about the violin, but what the heck....
"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock
OK, OK, and I can't resist this one, even though it's by Woody Allen:
"Love between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful - provided you get between the right man and the right woman."
:) Sandy
What!!!! Nobody has any more words of inspiration? I'm hurt to the quick (sniff, sniff).
Perhaps I can say, then, that the no great violin concerto or sonata or encore piece or piece of chamber music has ever started a war or caused anyone's death. The only purpose has been to bring happiness, depth of emotions, and pleasure into peoples' lives. Isn't that something that's great to be part of?
Sandy
"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"
~Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Not specifically about music (though it could be)
"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
And, not particularly inspirational in the traditional sense...
"Why don't you play something you can *actually *play*???" - My Mom
When I got lost and started improvising a technical study my teacher said, "When the muse strikes you...strike back!"
Hi,
"Just.......................... PLAY!" (David Oistrakh)
Cheers!
From one of my teachers:
How has your violin been this week...lonely?
OK, just found one. This is by (of all people) Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach. But it sure applies here.
"We will chase perfection. While perfection cannot be attained, we will catch excellence."
Lombardi kinew what he was talking about.
My violin-maker refering to a stradivari in his shop:
"Nice box."
Today's words of wisdom:
- Violinists do it with great fingering.
- First rule of handling flubs in concert: Whatever happens, look as if it was intended.
- Never buy a violin you can't clean.
- Great intonation covers up a lot of other problems.
- When we do not practice enough, Mr. Violin is not our friend.
- You can tune a violin, but you can't tuna fish.
:) Sandy
Greetings,
>You can tune a violin, but you can't tuna fish.
Yes. The difference is in the scales.
Cheers,
Buri
A violin has but four strings, but when you play upon them your neighbors become angry.
Greetings,
...become even more angry than the time when your cat pissed on their asparagus.
Cheers,
Buri
"Be as nervous as you want - play well anyway"
From Mr. Oliver Steiner during one of my lessons preparing for recital.
Overheard once: "I just now got the music for the Bartok second concerto and I've got two weeks to learn it (for a major international competition)." Is that inspiring, or not?
Ouch! Makes my brain and bow arm hurt just to think about it...
Buri, your typing is improving.... How nice.
You can't catch a disease from a violin.
If somebody'd just sneezed on it, you might.
I once heard someone say this regarding the difficulty in getting up the motivation to practice: "Inspiration comes when the fiddle is OUT of the case!"
I just happened upon this today (sheer accident).....
"How good you are depends on how much you love every single note." (A student-teacher I worked with when I was little. Truly inspiring--I wrote it on my practice room wall for all those times I want to skip a section because 'nobody will notice' or something like that)
"Practice makes permanent." (My teacher. It's a scary thought.)
There's just two problems with your playing: your right hand and your left hand (a famous violinist. Who?)
True for almost every one...
If I stop just one moment, I'll start to think and if I think, I'll die (David Oistrakh answer to Stern's "why do you work so hard" question)
When will you sleep? (someone from the record studio asked) "I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'll be dead" (David Oistrakh)
If he said that, what about normal us??? I tell you we'll still be practicing in heaven ; )
Violin is a job not a hobby, only amateurs are crazy ennough to take it on their extra hours! (me)
Oups Sander, you told inspiring?
Perhaps a side effect from my pre neurology exam sleepless night I'm doing now... (No, I'm not last minute. I've been studying since a few weeks. That's university yeah! Even scales and studies are so much more appealing... :)
Education is what remains when one has forgotten everything one learned at school (Albert Einstein)
So True!!!
A good performance is what remains when one has forgotten everything but his heart and violin on stage... (me)
With nerves, it's about what's left too... (the other things should be blend in a sort of instinctive knowledge by the time of the performance. If not, you'll know it fast ennough!)
Good heavens !!! I'd almost forgotten about this thread. As far as my own contributions to it....What was I thinking??? As far as everyone else's contributions, wonderful!!!
Sandy
I heard these from Tom Shadyac who was talking to some students. (that guy was ultra rich in Beverly Hills and left everything to now "really live" in a live of simplicity. He made a documentary named "I am" on that and asked advice to wise people over the world) If you want to see that interview with students with many more inspiring quotes and stuff, here it is:
I though they could be inspiring for most of us little violinists (or simply in our lives)...
"everyone tells you that you are nothing, that you did nothing and that you will become something, that's wrong!!! You are already someone. You will just awake what's already inside you even more... " As he said, according to that nasty view we have, many people who acheived much would have done "nothing" just because they didn't have school papers or were not famous etc. Nonsense.
also
He learned from talking with the famous wise/spiritual masters that you must not look up to these people. Telling that you are nothing and that they are everything is incorrect. If something inspired you, you are "it" . If you have been moved by them, if you are cconscious of their message and that it inspired you, it's because you possess something to, in a way, understand it. (imho which is already a "start")
If I transfer this to the violin world, I could say that even if just a few people can become violin masters, you possess something (at least in your brain) of that mastery if you feel it speaks or means something to YOU. Otherwise, you wouldn't even care... But to not look up at them? Not sure I would be able... I am now at the stage where I call them "Gods" : )
Anne-Marie
A woman rushed up to famed Violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and cried:
" I'd give my life to play as beatifully as you do."
Kreisler replied, " I did."
Jeff so true but still, you're lucky when you can "give your life for the violin".
Many have to give their life for something that is not as much their passion ; )
That's not to diminish their efforts though! I know how hard pro musicians work!!!
When I practice, the cat used to leave the room
Now, the cat stays in the rooom
When I play an interesting clip of a violin solo, the cat comes up and investigates the speakers, trying to get closer to the sound.
I want the cat to try and investigate the violin when I am playing!
I am listening to Linkin Park again for the first time since quite a long time (I remember that a year a I used to listen to them non-stop), after I noticed how surprised I was by the beauty of "Still Alive", the ending song of the computer game Portal. The quote is from Linkin Park's song Waiting for the end
"The hardest part of ending is starting again"
Although it's not even violin or music related xD
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January 24, 2007 at 03:06 AM · Marcus,
If you don't mind a quote that isn't specifically about the violin, I've always liked this quote from Efram Zimbalist, the famous violinist:
"You know, we musicians are extremely fortunate in our calling. Not only have we the satisfaction of the work itself, but through it we constantly come into contact with the minds of supreme beings like Beethoven or Mozart; these extraordinary humans reveal to us their deepest thoughts and inspi- rations if we are willing and able to receive them. How lucky we are!'
Regards,
Larry Samuels