Yehudi Menuhin: Deeper insights into playing the violin ..

Yehudi Menuhin, painting by Myfanwy Pavelic

Excerpts from Menuhin's memoir Unfinished Journey, to read and reread ..

"The performing violinist continually reviews the hours, days and weeks preceding a performance, charting the many elements that will release his potential ... he knows that when his body is exercised, his blood circulating, his stomach light, his mind clear, the music ringing in his heart, his violin clean and polished, its strings in good order, the bow hair full and evenly spread, then - but only then - he is in command ... But neglect of the least of these elements must gnaw his conscience. 

“So a violinist lives in training. He makes his body his vocation. His stance must be erect yet supple so that, like a graceful reed, he may wave with the breeze and yet remain perfectly aligned from head through spine to feet. He is a living structure stretched between the magnets of sun and earth. Just as only a stretched string can vibrate, so before a violinist's body vibrates he must feel drawn upward, his head delicately poised on the vertebrae, his diaphragm raising him on a cushion of air, while the working parts of his anatomy - shoulders and arms, hands and fingers -float and balance at different levels. Elegant management of the body is among the qualities civilisation denies us, and too often the violin, inviting surrender, only makes rigidity more rigid."

"All influences pointed towards 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, of proportion and balance."

"..what the eye sees - the raised arm - is but the last link in a chain of events originating in the mind. To be conscious of these events as they happen, before they are apparent to the eye, is a lesson in the subtlety I believe to be a cardinal principle of violin playing; but just to awaken oneself to them is enough."

"Not for the violinist the exhibitionist and fiery springing from seat or keyboard of a virtuoso pianist, or the acrobatics of certain conductors. He is part of his violin, his left hand fingering its way, without any margin for error, over the millimetric subdivisions of a space that varies like a slide rule, and his bow never leaving the string but under precise, controlled conditions."

"Perfection cannot be achieved unless its pursuit becomes a way of life. My goal has been so to play the violin that whatever I play is an exercise for whatever I might play. Concentrated observation and practice of minuteness are gradually absorbed; the conscious brain is short-circuited;"