Sean Kenan's

"It is a kind of disparagement to be a cunning fiddler. It argues his neglect of better employment and that he has spent much time on a thing unnecessarie." Owen Feltham 1631

"In the evening as she (Mary Queen of Scots) wished to sleep, five or six hundred scoundrels of the town serenaded her with wretched violins and small rebecs, of which there is no lack in this country, and they began to sing psalms than which nothing more badly sung or out of tune could be imagined. Alas, what music and what repose for her night!" The Abbe de Brantome 1527-1614

"I must shut my ears. The man of sin rubbeth the hair of the horse to the bowels of the cat." John O'Keefe 1747-1833 Wild Oats

"For over a third of a century I have been waiting, watching, hoping and praying, that God might inspire some Irishman, or association of Irishmen, to collect and publish just such a work as "The Music of Ireland"- the grand old music-the weird, wild and mournful reel tunes that entranced me when a child, a youth, and a man, in the street or barn, at the bonfire or on the hilltop; the music, the never to be forgotten strains that often alternately flame or freeze-that made me when a child, sitting beneath the fiddler's chair, weep with delight or sadness, a condition of mind impossible to describe." Patrick O'Leary of Adelaide writing on the publication of O'Neill's "Music of Ireland" published in 1903

"Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill." Shinichi Suzuki 1898-1998

"In order to play well, many repetitions are needed. .. The secret, of course, is to make the repetitions interesting.. But don't kid yourself - there is no other way to learn other than repeating things." Alinta Thornton from 'A Parent's Guide to the Suzuki Method.' 1983 Omnibus Press

"While playing violin, finishing a phrase is the spiritual attitude in music; it is an important matter of time. Although the piece has ended, the music has not (for a certain instant). Bach, for example, used to write 'Fermate' in ink into his music textbooks of the eighteenth century. The tranquility during prayers, dropping silently to one's knees, is like this important moment." Shinichi Suzuki 1898-1998

"There is nothing, I think, in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle stick and he can do nothing." Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784

"If our ability was not developed for us, we have to develop it ourselves. Instead of being defeated by misfortune, we have to make something good of our lives. There is no need to give up in discouragement; it is possible for every person to improve himself." Shinichi Suzuki 1898 - 1998

"For someone to complain, "But I studied for five years" means nothing. It all depends how much he did each day. "I spent five years on it", someone says. But five minutes a day for five years is only 150 hours. What that person should have said is, "I did it for one hundred and fifty hours and still I am no better." That makes some sense. It is no wonder he got no better. To put your talent up on the shelf and then say you were born without any is utter nonsense. Shinichi Suzuki 1898 - 1998

"Early reliance on memory is very important for developing a sense of security in playing in public." Harlow Mills

"The violin is the Princess but the cello is the Queen." Russian saying

"High-priz'd Noise...rather fit to make a Man's Ears Glow, and fill his Brains full of Frisks, &c. than to Season and Sober his Mind, or Elevate his Affection to Goodness." Thomas Mace 1620-1710 writing on the violin.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do then by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain 1835 - 1910

"A group of beggars used to whine in a series of dissonances which Bach thought contained an interesting set of intervals. He first made as if to give them something but pretended he could not find any money. As their complaint rose to a high pitch, he gave them serveal times a very small donation which slightly lowered their cry. Finally he gave them an exceptionally large sum which, to his delight produced a full resolution of the chord and a satisfying cadence." J F Reichardt Musikalischer Almanach c.1796

"Better the pain and loss and labour should smite upon our hearts with ineffaceable strokes, than that we go down to the grave with a life half lived, a soul half starved, and eyes that have seen no harvest." J Henderson Williams - from "A scheme of study for country violin students" c.1914

"Dance on Sir; and after a while you will dance down the red hot pavements of perdition to the tune of damnation played upon the violin of destruction with the Devil for a fiddler." Dr Rozelle (From a chapter entitled 'Go Forth and Preach the Gospel' Lewisburg, West Virginia 1845)

"We consider the man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of emergency." Mark Twain

"The love of music does not require perfection. It waits to be surprised by it, but does not expect it in every case." Garrison Keilor

"If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation" Oscar Wilde

"The preacher wants his flock to see the light, I want mine to feel the groove." Donna Hebert

"I have held that there is no such thing as an innate aptitude for music. I believe the same for other cultural skills. I have insisted that it is a mistake to think that hereditary aptitudes exist for literature or mathematics." Shinichi Suzuki 1898 - 1998

"I must shut my ears. The man of sin rubbeth the hair of the horse to the bowels of the cat." John O'Keefe (1747-1833)

"The focus of the teacher's and student's attention is to be focused on the sound: beautiful tone and accurate intonation." Shinichi Suzuki 1898 - 1998

"Habit is stronger than reason." George Santayana (1863-1952)

"The tone of the violin is the most ravishing, for those who play it perfectly..sweeten it as they wish and render it inimitable by certain tremblings which delight the mind." Mersenne (1588-1648)

"Life is like learning a violin in public and learning as one goes along." Samuel Butler 1835-1902

"Prize intensity more than extensity. Perfection resides in quality, not quantity." B.Gracian 1601-1638

"Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Walter Bagehot 1826-1877

"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and violinist" G.K.Chesterton 1874-1936

"A painter paints pictures on canvas but musicians paint their pictures on silence" Leopold Stokowski 1882-1977

"The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic." Leibniz 1646-1716

"Pipes, fiddles, men of no valour, bone players and pipe players; a crowd hideous, noisy, profane, shriekers and shouters." from the Fair of Carmen in the book of Leinster c.1160

"It is all about the bow, it is like a paintbrush." David Game

"The major goal of all violinists is an effortless and beautiful tone." Kato Havas

"A violinist without rhythm is no violinist, he is as helpless as a painter who is colour blind. Rhythm is a principle underlying all life, and all the arts, not that of music alone." Leopold Auer 1845-1930

"Music is an art of time, and playing is a relationship-shaping time and being shaped by time." Yehudi Menuhin 1916 - 1999

"The violin is one of the most beautiful artefacts ever created by man and one of the most elusive to handle. It is this elusiveness that adds to its magic, for unless you become its slave the violin will take its revenge and withold its manifold voices and you will be left holding a lovely piece of musical furniture, offended and inert." Yehudi Menuhin 1916 - 1999

"Teaching is a matter of launching a student on the search, in the right direction." Yehudi Menuhin 1916 - 1999

"We follow the groove and accent it regardless of bow direction." Donna Hebert

"The original idea of the composition (The Deil's Concert) was that I had descended to Hades, and there held converse with His Majesty of the Tail and Cloven Hoof." J. Scott Skinner 1843-1927

"When Charles II had come to the throne, one of his first acts was the bringing over to England a band of 24 fiddlers, each a prodigy in his own way, but immeasurably inferior to their leader Baltzar. This man performed such marvels on the four slender strings of the violin that an honest gentleman of the period suggested his identity with Satan and seriously examined his feet in the expectation of finding them cloven." Irish Minstrels and Musicians, O'Neill c.1913

"The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet." Yehudi Menuhin 1916 - 1999

"To regard one's immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth." Anton Chekov 1860-1904

"Music is a great gift, one of the greatest anybody can have, because it's something nobody can take away from you. Money can't buy it. It's a very precious thing, I think, very precious." Ernie Carpenter 1909-1997 Appalachian fiddler.

"The violin requires beautiful passages, distinct and long, with playful figures and little echoes and imitations repeated in several places, passionate accents." Agazzari c.1607

"Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory." Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

"There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord in melancholy." Thomas Hood 1799-1845

"The truth of the matter is, though violin playing is very close to singing, one feels rather exposed standing up and playing a melody alone. To do this takes a special kind of talent." Kato Havas

"Over the greater part of the world the viola (fiddle) with a bow is used in the recitation of epics." Tinctoris c.1487

"One occassionally hears dire warnings against the dangers of 'over ornamentation.' Generally, those who level such accusations are unable to perform much ornamentation, either because of an ignorance of what to do or an inability to do it." L.E. McCullough c.1976

"Tone, pitch and rhythm are the basic elements of all music. It is only logical then, that the technique of the violin be firmly founded on these three elements in terms of beauty of tone, accuracy of intonation and precise control of rhythm." Ivan Galamian

"I lived in the wood until I was slain by the relentless axe. In life I was silent, but in death my melody is exquisite." Motto carved on a viol by luthier Gasper Duiffoprugcar 1514-1572

"Music and the violin are a great protection… If I descended by parachute on to a country unknown to me, without my violin, with no money, and unable to speak the local language, I don't know how long I could survive. That would be a real test - one that I am not particularly keen to try!" Yehudi Menuhin 1916-1999

"A Hungarian Gypsy prisoner will die of melancholy in gaol unless he is given wood to make himself a fiddle. I gave them wood and took leave of them. Ten days later I went to see the five gypsies , and to my surprise I found that out of the packing cases they had fashioned violins and bows and they were playing away like demons." Walter Starkie (c.1947) 1894-1976

Fiddle Quotes

Quotes