Yehudi Menuhin Quotes (41 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Yehudi Menuhin: 41 quotes1 like

Famous Yehudi Menuhin Quotes

Said to be famously attributed to Albert Einstein after hearing him play
1999: Violinist Yehudi Menuhin dies

“Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: "And you'll be glad to know I don't take Jews." Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called "The Jew"”

Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi <br class="br">Source: Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), Issue 372 http://newint.org/features/2004/10/01/yehudi-menuhin/, New Internationalist Magazine

“It is absolutely vital to hold it as lightly as possible - rather as one might pick up a newborn bird.”

Yehudi Menuhin

On proper holding of the bow
Source: Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist, p. 100

“What guides us is children's response, their joy in learning to dance, to sing, to live together. It should be a guide to the whole world.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Tessa Souter Anything I Can Do... You Can Do Better: How to unlock your creative dreams and change your life http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GJzWPzwI79kC&pg=PA156, Random House, 31 July 2011, p. 156

“We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process… We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Jacob Bergen The Mandate http://books.google.co.in/books?id=1N6xXTCGzIMC&pg=PA33, Xulon Press, 1 June 2006, p. 33

“Even at the risk of losing all the golden eggs of the future, I had to find out what made the goose lay those eggs”

Yehudi Menuhin

When he realized that his shortcoming was knowing the basics to teach in a class.
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin Quotes about learning

“The teacher offers guidance here and there, but the primary factor, the driving force, in your relationship and work together is the student's own commitment and desire to learn. Teaching is like sailing: The wind and the sails give the boat its motion. Your role (as a teacher) is to steer and guide.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“Many people do not realise that it takes considerably more art and skill to play the violin lightly than it does to play it loudly. Indeed, the best possible training for young violinists is learning to play pianissimo and without pressure.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist, p. 68

“Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature”

Yehudi Menuhin

Quote from his autobiography,Unfinished Journey”
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“The best teacher is the one who himself has had to struggle to learn.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“The idea that a pupil is a passive recipient, a container waiting to be filled by the teacher's knowledge and instruction - all this is nonsense. Teaching is a living relationship, of give and take, of mutual learning.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin Quotes about life

“Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.”

Yehudi Menuhin

In: A message of Lord Menuhin http://www.menuhin-foundation.com/, International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation.

“This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the Jews, who have striven to abide by a code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet deny the sharing of its great qualities and benefits to those dwelling amongst them.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Americans for Justice in the Middle East A J M E News, Volumes 14-17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=lTVtAAAAMAAJ, 1988, p. 30

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

“When I was a boy no one seemed to ask where the energies come from. Land, oil, coal, air seemed inexhaustible. Now we are realizing how our very life depends upon restoring not only our balance with nature, but also that balance within ourselves. We are depleting our reserves of spirit, health, courage and faith at an alarming rate. The quiet practice of yoga is, in its humble yet effective way, an antidote.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Sushama Londhe in “A Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom Spanning Continents and Time about India and Her Culture”, p. 341

“Actually, I was gazing in my usual state of being half absent in my own world and half in the present. I have usually been able to 'retire' in this way. I was also thinking that my life was tied up with the instrument and would I do it justice?”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Kevin Hindle, Kim Klyver Handbook of Research on New Venture Creation http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nFb7U0qKJNgC&pg=PA79, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1 January 2011, p. 79

Yehudi Menuhin Quotes

“One should feel in the right arm the vibration of the bow hair on the strings. […] The moment tension or hardness enters into the hand then of course the vibrations will not be felt- they cannot penetrate.”

Yehudi Menuhin

On proper holding of the bow
Source: Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist, P.143

“To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Rene J. Smith The Spirit of Flight http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Euu4e-4qNAUC&pg=PT30, Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 15 January 2012, p. 30

“There were other gurus and other lessons, but not until I met Iyengar did I take up the study regularly. My first meeting with him was like the casting of a spell. We made each other's acquaintance in Mumbai. He appeared in my rooms one morning and straightaway made it clear that the "audition" to follow was mine as much as his. For all my celebrity, to him I was just another Western body knotted through and through.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Yehudi's Yoga http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=3779,hinduismtoday.com

“Peace may sound simple — one beautiful word — but it requires everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream, every high ideal.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: U S Congress Congressional Record, V. 151, PT. 6, April 21, 2005 to May 5, 2005 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=feq-KS57zeUC&pg=PA7471, Government Printing Office, 2009 , p. 7471

“Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility — these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Just for Animals; quoted in Souls Like Ourselves by Andrea Wiebers and David Wiebers (Rochester, MN: Sojourn Press, 2000), p. 16.

“I've had marvelous and incredible luck, and devoted parents, sisters, friends, and teachers. What more can one ask? These things contribute enormously. Probably the major part of one's success is due to these factors.”

Yehudi Menuhin

As stated in his interview with Martyn Lewis in Lewis' book, Reflections on Success(1997)

“The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Katie Ahlquist concept http://sparkledesign.net/Concept.shtml, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

“[At age 7] In eight hours of concentrated practice between my twice-weekly lessons, I memorized the A major and played it for Persinger.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: The complete violinist: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist http://books.google.co.in/books?id=qC0xAQAAIAAJ, Summit Books, 1 April 1986, p. 95

“I would hate to think I am not an amateur. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: The compleat violinist: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist http://books.google.co.in/books?id=qC0xAQAAIAAJ, Summit Books, 1 April 1986, p. 79

“This is the best and ultimate purpose of conducting: Not only to lead (the musicians) and keep them together, not only to make their performance easier and simpler, but also to guide them so that they can play as they have always longed to play.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“Undoubtedly I had lost time in balking at scales, arpeggios. […] There is an advantage in establishing the top story of one's constructions first: One has seen the heights; one knows what one is building for and what must be sustained.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“We in the Western world have grown to understand matter as imprisoned light, and light as liberated matter, yet this has had no influence on our spiritual thought. In practical terms it only led to the creation of the atom bomb.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Sushama Londhe A Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom Spanning Continents and Time about India and Her Culture http://books.google.co.in/books?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ, Pragun Publications, 2008, p. 341

“There comes a time when the student turns his back on the teacher. His playing cannot have the necessary security, autonomy, self-faith, or communicative power until he believes his interpretation is his own.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“What fascinated my imagination was the tremendous feat, which I felt I should be perfectly able to accomplish.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“In playing Beethoven the violinist should be a medium. There is little that is personal or that can be reduced to ingratiating sounds, pleasing slides and so on. Everything is dictated by the significance, the weight, structure and direction of the notes and passages themselves.”

Yehudi Menuhin

In p. 78
Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist

“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Jamesh A. Leit, George Whalley Symboles Dans la Vie Et Dans L'art http://books.google.co.in/books?id=pRZEKhofl_gC&pg=PA29, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1987, p. 29

“Homeopathy is the safest and more reliable approach to ailments and has withstood the assaults of established medical practice for over 100 years.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: Monica Troughton Magical menopause: Relief and remedies for the symptoms of menopause http://books.google.co.in/books?id=wu84AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA89, Infinite Ideas, 24 January 2007, p. 89

“The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Source: The compleat violinist: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist http://books.google.co.in/books?id=qC0xAQAAIAAJ, Summit Books, 1 April 1986, p. 95

“To be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“I imagine that whatever contribution I can make to teaching derives from having had to rethink and re-create my technique.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

“I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Quoted in: Dream It. List It. Do It!: How to Live a Bigger & Bolder Life, from the Life List Experts at 43Things.com http://books.google.co.in/books?id=_PBV0WJr9vsC&pg=PA98, Workman Publishing, 25 December 2008, p. 98

“As well as campaigning for human rights, Menuhin was a keen yoga practitioner and health food enthusiast, warning against the dangers of white rice, white bread and red meat. He also spoke of the dangers of pollution long before environmentalism became a buzz word.”

Yehudi Menuhin

1999: Violinist Yehudi Menuhin dies

“Menuhin felt a close kinship with Stern, who also was born of Russian immigrants.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Violinist and Visionary Yehudi Menuhin Dies at 82

“There is… no definitive interpretation for him but the search for repose, for a place where music, far from any pretension, vibrates naturally, where it can breathe more than show off.”

Yehudi Menuhin

Eric Taver in: About Yehudi Menuhin http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/yehudi-menuhin/about-yehudi-menuhin/661/, Public Broadcasting Service Organization, 28 October 2006