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 MenuhinRead
We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal expression through creativity instead of relying on pre-existing works.
Yehudi Menuhin highlights the necessity for individuals to take charge of their creative expressions by transforming raw materials into personal artistic statements. This process not only fosters a unique identity but also encapsulates the complexities of life, including joy and frustration, suggesting that true satisfaction comes from individual creativity and self-discovery.
Themes
CreativityIndividualityExpressionArtSelf-Discovery
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on the importance of creativity during a school graduation.
More from Yehudi Menuhin
All quotes →Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.
Yehudi MenuhinRead
The practice of yoga induces a primary sense of measure and proportion. Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it, drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony.
Yehudi MenuhinRead
Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.
Yehudi MenuhinRead
It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.
Yehudi MenuhinRead
Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into_x000D_ a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what_x000D_ is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into_x000D_ knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality_x000D_ incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love
Yehudi MenuhinRead
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