Quotes

"Musical ability is not an inborn talent but an ability that can be developed"
Shinichi Suzuki, Violin educator 1898 - 1998

"Talent is not inherited"
Shinichi Suzuki, Violin educator 1898 - 1998

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

"While playing violin, finishing a phrase
is the spiritual attitude in music; it is an
important matter of time. Although the
piecehas ended, the musichas 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

"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

"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

"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

"Music is a release from the tyranny of
conscious thought"

Kevin Burke

"You can network your way to opportunity
but you can't network your way to success."

Martin Hayes (talking at VCA 12/3/08)

"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!"

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

"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

"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

"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

"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 1835 - 1910

"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

"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

"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

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

"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

"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

"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

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

"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

"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

"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 1854-1900

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

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

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

"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

"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

"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