Yehudi Menuhin Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

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

Yehudi Menuhin
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
The best teacher is the one who himself has had to struggle to learn.

Yehudi Menuhin
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
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
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
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
Many people don't realize that it takes considerably more art & skill to play the violin lightly than it does to play it loudly. The best possible training for a young violinist is learning to play pianissimo and without pressure.

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

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

Yehudi Menuhin
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
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
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
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
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
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
Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature

Yehudi Menuhin
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
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
To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.

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

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

Yehudi Menuhin
In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior.

Yehudi Menuhin