Quotes & Sayings About Stradivarius

I want you to play for me," he told her as he passed the violin back.
Her elegant fingers gripped the neck of her Stradivarius as she gently pulled it up and rested it on her left shoulder. She turned her chin, so it sat perfectly in the chin rest at the base of the lower bout.
"What would you like me to play?" she asked, closing her eyes.
"Something you want me to hear. — Ella Frank

The trick to playing second fiddle is to play it like second Stradivarius. — Robert Breault

The beauty of a Stradivarius is that you can play in Carnegie Hall without any amplification, and it has this - the sound has, inside it, has something that projects, and it has multifaceted sound, something that kind of gets lost when you use amplification anyway. — Joshua Bell

Synths are a very low level of artificial intelligence. Whereas you have a Stradivarius that will live for a thousand years. — Thomas Bangalter

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. — David Foster Wallace

In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block." — Freda Bright

Most people traffic in abstractions and generalizations because they are grossly incompetent at culturing their intuition or powers of evidency, refining it to grasp the Thisness (Haecceitas) of what is before them. Thinking is like a Stradivarius that has more potential variations in how it is played than any human can finitely perform or capture. — Kenny Smith

Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely. — Joshua Bell

I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel. — Irving Penn

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio. — George Eliot

Jobs tended to be deeply moved by artists who displayed purity, and he became a fan. He invited Ma to play at his wedding, but he was out of the country on tour. He came by the Jobs house a few years later, sat in the living room, pulled out his 1733 Stradivarius cello, and played Bach. "This is what I would have played for your wedding," he told them. Jobs teared up and told him, "You playing is the best argument I've ever heard for the existence of God, because I don't really believe a human alone can do this." On — Walter Isaacson

If you have a Stradivarius and nobody to play it, it's just a Stradivarius. Or is it even that? It's nothing. — Peabo Bryson

I inherited a painting and a violin which turned out to be a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, Rembrandt made lousy violins and Stradivarius was a terrible painter. — Tommy Cooper

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla. — Jim Bishop

I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine. — Joshua Bell