Quotes About Music

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.

A violin is tuned to a fifth. But a guitar is tuned to a fourth with a one-third middle. It is very perplexing to composers.

When I started learning the violin, my choir teacher thought I could sing. But when I first got on stage, I froze!

I know Ornette was playing violin sometimes - that was his bridge into the classical world, to break up that whole pecking order.

I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I've always really enjoyed music.

I studied violin since I was a boy, and my dream was to be a violinist and to play.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

If I like dubstep and electronic, why don't I make the violin fit me rather than making myself fit the violin?

Of course the most difficult thing on the violin is always intonation. The second one is rhythm. If you play in tune, in time with a good sound that's already high level. Those three are the main things.

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.

My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.

The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.

I would also like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

It was really amazing. I mean, he'd never mentioned that he played in the symphony, like serious violin playing, not fiddle playing. And he just blew us away.

When I was five I had violin lessons.

I learned, too, how it was possible with the help of the picture and action to transform an apparently insignificant violin passage into an incident, and to lift a simple horn call into a thing of stupendous significance by means of scenic emphasis.

You know, if you really want to fiddle the old-time way, you've got to learn the dance. The contra-dances, hoedowns. It's all in the rhythm of the bow. The great North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell said, 'If a feller can't bow, he'll never make a fiddler. He might make a violin player, but he'll never make no fiddler.'

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.

Even in classical music, the cello doesn't get a lot of respect because the piano and the violin get it all.

When you fall in love, you genuinely hear violin being played in the background. You genuinely feel that clouds are bursting and you look at every small thing as really beautiful.

Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.

Well my dad forced me into playing the violin when I was about three and it all started from there. I went to Suzuki for violin lessons, and you learn to play by ear instead of reading music.