A Quote by Mark Twain

Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge. — © Mark Twain
Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.
Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.
If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.
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.
I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.
I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.
There is always a piano in an hotel drawing-room, on which, of course, some one of the forlorn ladies is generally employed. I do not suppose that these pianos are, in fact, as a rule, louder and harsher, more violent and less musical, than other instruments of the kind. They seem to be so, but that, I take it, arises from the exceptional mental depression of those who have to listen to them.
To know the piano is to know the universe. To master the piano is to master the universe. The spectrum of piano sound acts as a prism through which all musical and non-musical sounds may be filtered. The grunts of sheep, the braying of mules, the popping of champagne corks, the sighs of unrequited love, not to mention the full lexicon of sounds available to all other instruments-including whistles, scrapes, bleatings, caresses, thuds, hoots, plus sweet and sour pluckings-fall within the sovereignty of this most bare and dissembling chameleon.
I grew up in a musical environment. My parents played music and had it playing on the radio. They brought me to a concert at the age of 5, the same age I started violin lessons.
I took four years of violin, but got bored of it - over the years, I've been ADD with instruments. The only two that I've really stayed true to are guitar and piano.
Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.
All my musical foundations go back to the age of 3. My family tell me that I used to listen to the old crystal set, then go to the piano and pick out the tune that I just heard.
Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.
So I always liked to sing, and apparently when I was about four or five I also started to be attracted to pianos and musical instruments. Whenever we went to a friend's house, I vaguely recall climbing up on the piano, plunking on it, and trying to figure it out. So my parents figured I was interested and asked me if I wanted to take piano lessons. I said sure.
There is perhaps nothing that is not musical. Perhaps there's no moment in life that's not musical... All instruments, musical or not, become instruments.
I quit piano and violin because it felt too rigid. It was just my thing, something I fell in love with from a very early age.
I don't let the children watch TV on weeknights. They practice playing musical instruments instead. Both my sons play piano, drums and guitar, so my husband and I listen to them in the evening.
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