Cello Music Quotes

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.

There's that thing that can happen to you when you meet somebody and you don't consider them extraordinary at all and then they do something like play the cello or write amazing poetry or sing and suddenly you look at them completely differently.

How could anybody think of Bach as 'cold' when these [cello] suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry," Casals said. "As I got on with the study I discovered a new world of space and beauty... the feelings I experienced were among the purest and most intense in my artistic life!

For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.

It [Bach's cello suites] is like a great diamond," said [Mischa] Maisky in a thick Russian accent, "with so many different cuts that reflect light in so many different ways.

Cello music swelled out from the house, rising higher and higher until it lifted off the earth, sailing toward Venus.

But the greatest difference between children and adults is that most of the children to whom I offer a turn on the cello accept it, while most adults, particularly if they have never played any other instrument, refuse it.

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

I could feel everything. From the tragic cellos, to the tender sounds of the piano giving awe to my touch. My body slowly swayed to the sweet feel of the air sweeping over me. I felt myself being taken away as the hearts of my fans soared with me.

(regarding the prelude from suite two)... The key is minor, the three notes a tragic triad. The tones move closer and closer to a harrowing vision, weaving spiter-like, relentlessly gathering sound into thighter concentric circle that come to an abrupt stop. Nothing fills the empty space. A tiny prayer is uttered.

APPROACH Rain is falling. Winter approaches. I drive towards it. In the slow rain. In the semi-darkness. Cello music is playing in the car. The deep sad sound of the cello. It almost swamps me. Routine endeavours to swamp me. The everyday paying of bills. But I paint men walking in a city of icebergs and crystal. Some of the icebergs are red. I paint a woman swimming in green wavy water. Surrounded by desert mesas. Bright orange in the sunlight. With darker orange for shadows. I paint two people. With purple and pink and yellow and blue circles overlapping the boundaries of their bodies. Dancing. Life is not ordinary. When I see you tonight I will press my lips to your eyelids. Each one in turn. I will rub my fingertips over the skin on the back of your hands and around your wrists. I will sigh. I will growl. I will whinny. I will gallop into your smile. One sharp foot after the other.

He welcomes the chance to do fatherly things with the little girl, and those ten morning minutes with dear little four-year-old Ruby, with her deep soulful eyes, and the wondrous things she sees with them, and her deep soulful voice, and the precious though not entirely memorable things she says with it, and the smell of baby shampoo and breakfast cereal filling the car, that little shimmering capsule of time is like listening to cello music in the morning, or watching birds in a flutter of industry building a nest, it simply reminds you that even if God is dead, or never existed in the first place, there is, nevertheless, something tender at the center of creation, some meaning, some purpose and poetry.

As I sit here on a snowy morning watching the flakes gently fall outside my window, I look at the 300-year-old building across the street and the beautifully carved angels on its facade. There was a time people would create, just to give something beautiful to the world which we are so blessed to live in and a time when people understood the work of all of the arts.

But in my family, playing music was still more important than the type of music you played, so when after a few months it became clear that my love for the cello was no passing crush, my parents rented me one so I could practice at home. Rusty scales and triads

He cupped her face and held her still, as he looked into her brown eyes; she was all flash and no bang. She talked big, but when it came down to it, she was a simple girl.

I close my eyes, letting the calm wash over me, and putting my bow against the cello's strings, I play.

After a few minutes, the lull of the piano joins in, and we play together. It’s the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced

Playing the cello did feel nicely neolithic, or at least a civilized way to process the primitive.

The music, all violins and cellos, swells in the room, then recedes, like the water out in the Gulf before a big storm.

As the drummer, I know that drums fully support the band. Their rhythm keeps things within the pulse and contributes to the overall energy of each performance. I am a very balanced person and I realize that through my personal level of balance, I also outwardly balance Stjepan and Luka.

You can't rush art." I crumpled another lost attempt and tossed it behind me. "Besides, patience is a virtue." "It's a virtue until it's a waste of time," he pointed out. The cello unleashed a few notes that sounded strangely bright for such an instrument, and Hal nodded in its direction. "See; even a musical instrument agrees with me.

Most of our fan experiences include many touching moments. There are even fans who have told us that our music saved their lives and that is very powerful to hear and to realize, that our music can make such a profound difference.

The Australian sculptor who made leather sandals said that Beethoven’s duet for viola and cello sounded to him like two bulky women rummaging under a bed. Behind him a girl said, —Of course I like music, but not just to listen to.

Their musical ability and performance seems to derive from the past collective experience and presents itself in the individual unconscious today. Through it we tap into something eternal and it is apparent even in how they approach their playing. Perhaps we relate to it because, of any other instrument, the cello has a range that matches the human voice.

While the concept of the muse is noteworthy, the development of the muse has changed substantially in today's online world. The tables have practically turned as the artist who is responsible for creating music in today's world is now being the muse to others. They have been responsible for the creation of "fan art," a style of performance where people create new forms of media based off of existing creations. It was originally that the muse was what prompted the artist to create something new. Today it has changed to where the artist is the muse to others in society.

The world of technology has made it easier for people to get in touch with their modern muses regardless of the genres that they are trying to utilize and even if they create a new genre based on a mixing of others. The potential for modern-day muses is as vast as individual creativity.

This was a great idea; he needed to go into tonight knowing that this was the last time he would ever be with Barry. He needed to savour it and enjoy it, to lock it tight in his memories, so that he would never forget how it felt to be with him. This would be his final goodbye. ~ A Case of the Ex

It was like looking into a dream. An imagination of what seduction in its purest form would look like. This woman was so intense, so deep and utterly sensual, the music flowed right out of her onto the cello and the process moved her so much, she couldn’t contain it. It was passion and it pulled him in.

One significant development with regards to these muses of modern-day art is that the gender roles that were used in the past are no longer valid. The days where the women were the ones who solely inspired the men are no longer as both men and women alike are able to make efforts to create music and other forms of art.

Whether you are five years old and irresistibly drawn to the piano in your home, or you are an adult who suddenly falls in love with music and decides to take lessons, the knowledge that you belong in the world of music is deep and indestructible. It is part of your basic nature, as much as the color of your eyes or the sound of your voice. Even your choice of instrument might feel choiceless; you hear a piano or a cello and somehow know that that is the instrument you must play.

the deep rich notes of the cello pick up on a solo and quickly catch my attention. Each note tugs at my insides, drawing me closer and closer.

Even if we married, I might always be second fiddle to his cello, his mistress as he devoted himself more to his music.

My cello is my voice. It's my world. My whole life

My gaze returns to earth and when it does, it’s her eyes I see. Not the way I used to see them—around every corner, behind my own closed lids at the start of each day. Not in the way I used to imagine them in the eyes of every other girl I laid on top of. No, this time it really is her eyes. A photo of her, dressed in black, a cello leaning against one shoulder like a tired child. Her hair is up in one of those buns that seem to be a requisite for classical musicians. She used to wear it up like that for recitals and chamber music concerts, but with little pieces hanging down, to soften the severity of the look. There are no tendrils in this photo. I peer closer at the sign. YOUNG CONCERT SERIES PRESENTS MIA HALL.

Jack had inquired if much music had been written for organ and cello—he certainly hadn’t heard any—but the woman from Sibelius Academy said that Ritva and Hannele were famous for being “improvisational.

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, ’cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color.

I am grateful that their unyielding passion is completely allowed to flow through their delicate fingers and wrists onto their lovely instruments, sharing this on a level which is beyond words, resonating with one's deepest soul.

Clive was losing sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos in mirror image. Her face in it. The end.

Oh well,' said Jack: and then, 'Did you ever meet Bach?' 'Which Bach?' 'London Bach.' 'Not I.' 'I did. He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man copied them out fair. But they were lost years and years ago, so last time I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library. We searched through the papers — such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees — we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this: Bach had a father.' 'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.' 'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry.' 'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?' 'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great passion according to St Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern taste, but I do assure you, Stephen, there is meat in it. I have tried this partita in C a good many times, and the argument goes so deep, so close and deep, that I scarcely follow it yet, let alone make it sing. How I should love to hear it played really well — to hear Viotti dashing away.

He waits until dark. Marie-Laure sits in the mouth of the wardrobe, the false back open, and listens to her uncle switch on the microphone and the transmitter in the attic. His mild voice speaks numbers into the garret. Then music plays, soft and low, full of cellos tonight . . .

Consider yourself and the cello. As you play the music moves out to the listener, and also enters the core of your own being, for somehow you are tuned to the cello. Well, I am persuaded that this is because you are a chord. I am a chord. Our DNA dictates our physicality-made up of billions of little notes-on a basic level. Add to that our geography, background et cetera, and you have your original score. Life is the layering of chords, but the underlying one that we are will never change. This brings us to string theory and love. Our personal chord resonates with the personal ones of others, and sometimes we encounter another person who is completely harmonious with us. It is a dominant, overwhelming attraction on the DNA level. However, such a person can appear to be our opposite-and that's where this 'opposites attract' notion comes from-because they have tuned their chord in a different way. In reality, we are attracted to the person we have chosen not to become, an alternative adjustment to a chord that is nearly the same as our own. The clashing portions of the chords sounding together advance the richness of it. So when you make love you aren't expressing emotions or showing affection, you are merging melodies. You are players in the same symphony.

Learning how to play an instrument has always been near the top of my to-do list, but what are the chances now? There's little downtime with a column and a two-year-old, and after reading Goldilocks and the three Bears and going through half a bottle of wine with dinner on an average evening, imagining a day when I join Nathaniel on the Elgar Cello Concerto is not a vision but a hallucination. I'm at the point where the things on your to-do list get transferred to a should-have-done list, and one reason I write a column is for the privilege of vicariously sampling other worlds, dropping in with my passport, my notebook and my curiosity.

Anyways, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you won't believe this - they hear chamber music. They hear violins and cellos. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and and all kinds of wierd chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. All the whole time, in the background, there's stil that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock, it's TALKING. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monnkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly TALKS.

Let the smoky Käll sustain himself on Mars, and Yuko lay rue on Beethoven’s grave. Let the lord of the manor of Rochdale clap his coffin into a canoe and disport himself on the waters. Let Zsa-Zsa sleep on a pillow of haddock in Maria’s cello case. Let Mrs Wessen live to see her thousandth moon. Let Ysobel unknit her forehead. Let not poor Virginie weep. Let all and no things come to pass, for how will I pass these days?

Regardless of the age of the people in the audience, they are clapping, screaming with joy and enjoying each and every note. I used to think classical music was boring. But that was because I never really gave it a chance. When I first saw 2CELLOS' cover of Smooth Criminal, I was mesmerized by their talent and instantly intrigued. With just two instruments, they created a sound so powerful and incredible, a sound I had never known could come from a cello.

How could I love a man as uptight as Nathan Edwards and still have a raging crush on someone as wicked as Ronnie Radke? Maybe I am an undiagnosed schizophrenic. That’s what happened to Jamie Foxx’s character in The Soloist. One day, he’s a gifted musical student at Julliard, and the next day he’s toting his cello through the streets of Los Angeles, disoriented and muttering to himself. “What are you thinking, Vivian?” I drop my hand and look at my best friend. “Nothing.” “Vivian?” I grimace. “Do you think I have schizophrenia?” Fanny tosses her pillow at me. “Shut up!

It took only a few bars to assure her that Thomas Lynn was a very good cellist indeed. His playing had that drive to it which gave you the sense of the shape of the music opening out before him as he played. And he kept that drive and shape, whether the cello was grumbling against the piano, crisply duetting, or out on its own, coaxed into hollow golden song. That feeling of pattern being made, Polly thought, that I had in the pano. Except that this was so expert and so tried that it was hard to believe that it was being done with a musical instrument in somebody’s hands. (p. 360)

Get your sticky fingers away from my cookies,” Ben ordered, without turning his head, to see Jaxton trying to steal one from the cooking tray. “You weren't saying that last night,” Jaxton retaliated, coming up to Ben's side, to give him a nudge. They were both smiling, while looking down at the counter, where Ben was making his delicious rosemary cookies. “In fact, I seem to remember you grabbing my sticky fingers and putting them in your mouth,” he teased, speaking quietly, so that Lyon wouldn't hear them at the other side of the room. Ben turned to Jaxton and abandoned his baking, to catch his face in flour covered hands and plant a deep kiss on his lips. Jaxton opened his mouth, in acceptance of his kiss. ~ From the Heart

Beside her, the strings were tuned. The quartet started to play. When Tom began it, gently rolling sullen, swelling notes out of the cello, she assumed it would be designed to show him as the superb cellist he was. But when Ann’s viola came mourning in, she wondered if it might be intended as a dirge. Beyond Ann, Sam’s violin sang, and Ed’s sang and soared, and the music became something else again, nearly light-hearted. Showing how much the quartet needed Tom? Polly wondered. There was no question they were a good quartet these days. They had improved almost out of mind from the afternoon Polly had spent hearing them practice in the green basement. … The music broadened and depend, put on majesty and passion, and moved onward in some way, fuller and fuller. All four of the players were putting their entire selves into it. Polly knew they were not trying to prove anything—not really. She let the music take her, with relief, because while it lasted she would not have to make a decision or come to a dead end. She found her mind dwelling on Nowhere, as she and Tom used to imagine it. You slipped between Here ad Now to the hidden Now and Here—as Laurel had once told another Tom, there was that bonny path in the middle—but you did not necessarily leave the world. Here was a place where the quartet was grinding out dissonances. There was a lovely tune beginning to emerge from it. Two sides of Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the voice that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before. That’s a discovery I must do something about, Polly thought, as the lovely tune sang out fully once and then fell away to the end, as the piece had begun, in a long, sullen cello note. And her mind was made up. (p. 399-400)

Did dinosaurs sing? Was there a teeming, singing wilderness with all the species thumping around, tuning up for the next millennia? Of course, dinosaurs sang, I thought. They are the ancestors of the singing birds and cousins to the roaring crocodiles…turns out, no. Turns out the syrinx, the organ that produces birdsong and the larynx, the organ that produces operatic arias, didn’t evolve until after the dinosaur extinction event…Some dinosaurs blew air into their closed mouths and through nasal cavities into resonance chambers, which we see in fossils as bony crests. They made the forest echo with clear, ominous tones, eerily like a cello. I have heard it in recordings scientists made of the sound they produced when they blew air through crests constructed to mimic lambeosaurus’s. Some dinosaurs cooed to their mates like doves…turns out that even if dinosaurs didn’t sing, they danced. There is evidence in vigorous scrape marks found in 100-million year old Colorado sandstone. From the courting behavior of ostriches and grouse, scientists envision the dinosaur males coming together on courting grounds, bobbing and scratching, flaring their brilliant feathers and cooing. Imagine: huge animals, each weighing more than a dozen football teams, shaking the Earth for a chance at love. What the story of the dinosaurs tells me is that if the earth didn’t have music, it would waste no time inventing it. In birds, tantalizing evidence of birdsong is found in 67-million-year old fossils, marking the first know appearance of the syrinx. Now the whole Earth can chime, from deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere with the sounds of snapping shrimp, singing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears, clattering dragonflies, and a fish calling like a foghorn. Who could catalog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth? And more songs are being created every year.

getting into the rhythm of nightly homework. Cello practice became part of his nightly routine—and mine. Just ten minutes in the beginning, but then fifteen and even twenty as he moved up through the grades. It was never onerous; always fun. Playing music became as natural as dinner, homework, and bedtime. The Suzuki books start easy but quickly accelerate to more

Did you know that without rosin, the bow slides across the cello strings and makes a faint whispery sound, or no sound at all? It’s the rosin that provides the friction in order to produce sound when it’s pulled across the strings. Before you, Jamie, I was whispering through life. With you, I’m whole. I’m melodious and tuneful. Pure musicality.” She smiled up at him. “You’re my rosin, Jamie.

We really feel very humbled that we are a part of so many lives around the globe and that we can help connect people from everywhere with and through our music. My experiences with fans are mostly wonderful and I am always so grateful when I see what kind of positive effect our music has on people. All of our fan experiences are memorable in different way, but it is especially powerful and meaningful when you can feel that someone is really inspired with what you are doing. This is especially true for the young generation. It feels good to know that we can get these kids to pick up classical instruments and see them as instruments they can rock on.

I believe that all of these studies, activities and outings are memorable in their own way, and that they do have subtle effects on our lives. On a deep level, what we see as art, hear as music and learn as history touches us and we are moved.

We await their creative interpretations of works by others and we love how they freely adapt and alter the music we like and enjoy. The wonderful magical alchemy they co-create is enough to spur the imagination of the audience. There is no need for other instruments or vocals. The music alone suffices. Listening to them, we can close our eyes and be taken away to a faraway place, we can envision a story or embellish a memory. We can connect to spirit and source and what we connect to in our deepest being is akin to religious experience. They dedicate themselves to each performance fearlessly, courageously, passionately, and generously.

The unifying theme I found while reading each chapter as I arranged them for the book was that we are all connected to the timelessness of music and the passion it arouses in all of us. We strive to be more than we are and to make a worthwhile contribution in the world, in much the same way 2CELLOS are doing through their music. This is perhaps the best quality that makes us CELLOGIRLS.

Her thighs felt slippery and her bottom could easily slide against the lining of her dress. Outside, her silken folds remained undisturbed. There was a woman on the stage straddling a cello, swaying herself behind it. Playing the cello or viola da gamba seemed to Martha at that moment to be about something else entirely than creating a sequence of sounds. “Yes, very much,” she said to Jeanne who shared her enthusiasm for the type of wine being served. The evening went on, the conversations picked up where they were abandoned, but Martha’s physical excitement persisted like a drone that only she could hear. When there was no release, her body went on elated. She must not look at Petra. When her breast accidentally touched the edge of the table, she moved her chair further back. Edges were risky, air was safe. How could they fail to see how searing she is inside? Maybe nobody saw anything because she blinded them. This propelled her through the evening and late into the night and still further on the ride back home.

And so I played, and they held their breath, as they heard the beauty of the music, so like a human voice, yet so beyond it. I drew the bow across the strings. The first notes of the Bach Sarabande sounded in the room and I felt the sound waves travel through me, through the body and guts of my cello, through the endpin and into the wood of the floorboards and through the feet of the audience and up through their skeletons to their hearts and into their brains and the music reached their brains and their hearts at the same time - for sound travels according to the laws of physics, and I saw the light behind their eyes catch fire and heard them intake breath as they felt the rush of the music take over their bodies, aethereal and corporeal combined.

Only John Steinbeck, who as both a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner in Literature, had the words to properly and beautifully describes helicopter pilots. In 1967 he wrote the following to Alicia Patterson, Newsday’s first editor and publisher after a chopper ride. “I wish I could tell you about these pilots. They make me sick with envy. They ride their vehicles the way a man controls a fine, well-trained quarter horse. They weave along stream beds, rise like swallows to clear trees, they turn and twist and dip like swifts in the evening. I watch their hands and feet on the controls, the delicacy of the coordination reminds me of the sure and seeming slow hands of (Pablo) Casals on the cello. They are truly musicians hands and they play their controls like music and they dance them like ballerinas and they make me jealous because I want so much to do it.

A sudden bolt of thunder shook the castle as if it were under attack by an artillery barrage. Not surprisingly, the quartet lost their places, making their music degrade and collapse into a cacophonous wreck, though no one except for Berva and the queen seemed to notice. When the first violinist cautiously looked to the queen for guidance, she responded with a nasty glare and a hand twirl, ordering the derailed musicians to get back to earning their pay. Once the quartet resumed playing, Berva took a moment to examine and try to identify the individual musicians. First Violin: some old guy. Second Violin: some old woman. Viola: another old guy. Cellist: Mom… Wait a minute... Something’s not right. Mom doesn’t play cello ... this must be a dream.

He was getting undressed and it snapped something inside of him that had been drawing taut, ready to break for months. “I'm hungry, Bruno,” he said, in a soft voice, as he removed the shirt from his broad shoulders, revealing a perfect sight of smooth dark skin. “I can't wait for dinner,” he continued, with a smile. When he put his hands to the fastening of his trousers, Bruno let out a sigh and put the take out menus on the counter. He couldn't look at him, because he knew Lyon was trying to seduce him on purpose. He didn't want to talk or hear him out or spend time with him that didn't end with an orgasm. “I can't do this anymore,” Bruno confessed, quietly.

Chocolate makes everything better, in the end,” he announced, and Thayer fully agreed. Thayer gave him a smile of gratitude and watched Castel lift his spoon from the saucer. He dipped it, gracefully, into his coffee and gave it a light stir. “Too many people rush to stir such delicate flavours. Take too long and they will clog together to become a lump of bitterness in your coffee. But take your time and be gentle with them,” Castel explained, quietly, “and they will create a symphony of flavours, to melt in your mouth,” he said, leaning down, just until his nose was over his cup, to take a long inhale. He smiled and straightened, extracting the spoon to place it back on his saucer. “Now try it.” Thayer took a sip and almost felt his toes curl at the luxurious taste. ~ Cinnamon Kiss

Jaxton smiled and caught his hand, holding it tight in both of his. “Are you burnt out? Is it all too much?” he asked, getting straight to the root of the matter, in one go. “Yes,” he sighed, hating that it was true. “Then you'll stay home.” “You know I can't. It's impossible,” Roman complained about the unfairness of it all. He was due to return to the studio in two days times, to finalise the tracks he'd recorded yesterday. Then he had to sit down with Jalen next week, to pick out a new piece of his artwork for the next album cover. And two weeks after that, he had three interviews with three different music channels, to film. “Try telling that to Ben.” Jaxton winked at him, then ducked down to kiss him. ~ From the Heart

He read an email from Music Prodigies of America—the latest edition was about a young genius who played the guitar.  Amazing. Most music prodigies played the piano, violin, or cello. But one who played the guitar? That was almost unheard of and so cool. And he was a California kid too, which made him even more special.

The tape had not been rewound fully and the room filled immediately with music. Lauren Adler, celebrated cello soloist and Elodie’s mother, was in close-up on the screen. She hadn’t started yet, but was embracing the cello, its neck entwined with her own as the orchestra played behind her. She was very young in this video. Her chin was lifted, her eyes fixed on the conductor; long hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. She was waiting. The stage lights illuminated one side of her face, throwing the other into dramatic shadow. She was wearing a black satin dress with spaghetti straps, and her fine arms—deceptively strong—were bare. She wore no jewelry except for her simple gold wedding band; her fingers, resting on the strings, were poised, ready. The conductor was on-screen now, a man in a white bowtie and black jacket. He brought the orchestra to a pause and, after a few seconds of silence, nodded at Lauren Adler. She drew breath and then she and her cello began their dance. Amongst

Suddenly, he wanted all of them, wanted to gather them up—David and Delores, Juanita and Carine and Katherine, Uncle Connor and Brad—and place them in an orchestra that would play the music of his life. He wanted to leave out none of it—not the trombone, not the cello, not the cymbals or the violin. Synthesis. He needed a fusing together of all the strands of his life: past and present, black and white, poor and rich.

But she said people should be able to dance to music, so she learned the church songs and played them double time

Opened to the music, I became first the strings, could feel on my skin the exquisite friction of the horsehair rubbing over me, and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips of the instrument and went out to meet the world, beginning its lonely transit of the universe. Then I passed down into the resonant black well of space inside the cello, the vibrating envelope of air formed by the curves of its spruce roof and maple walls. The instrument’s wooden interior formed a mouth capable of unparalleled eloquence—indeed, of articulating everything a human could conceive. But the cello’s interior also formed a room to write in and a skull in which to think and I was now it, with no remainder.

The viola and the clarinet made for an interesting pairing: we had to imagine the accompaniment of other instruments, ideally a violin and a cello.

As I was heeding gravity’s pull down the hill, I also heard music coming from upstairs. Three instruments, a violin, a flute, and a cello, were playing in a second-floor apartment. They were murdering a piece by Bach, I think. The murder was not in question, I just wasn’t sure if it was Bach or Haydn or someone else being killed upstairs. I stopped dead in my tracks to listen to them. They played with such a confident erring. On they stumbled and they never stopped to correct themselves. They pushed forward through their mistakes to the end. I applauded. I had to. I’m not sure they noticed me, but what luck for me to witness their attempt that morning. I looked out at the bay. What fine luck. Moments like the soloist practicing scales in Portland and the trio murdering Bach in Iceland give me such energy and such hope. These musicians were playing loud for all to hear and tough luck to the world if it was not perfect and the world judged them harshly. There is only one way to the proficiency of the master, and the budding violinist knew it as did the trio. Practice. Keep practicing until the notes have the precision they require. Keep practicing until the work is transformed, until the work transforms you, until study becomes Mastery.

The voice in her head was drowned by a rush of music. Low bass notes of a cello swept through her in an elegant, heart-wrenching melody of love and loss. It was the sound of Alexis reaching out to her. Penelope gripped tighter to their connection, holding into it like a lifeline. The music became loader and louder. "I can hear your heart," she said, dazed. "Can you hear it? It's singing to me." "It's because it belongs to you," Alexis replied simply.

After a blast of trumpets the violins and cellos were left on their own for a while, creating a noise that started small and tender, and rose to create a kind of symphonic storm. And, yes, it did nothing at first. But then, somehow, it got in. No. Not got in. That’s the wrong way of putting it. Music doesn’t get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn’t necessarily know you had inside you, and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts.

But that afternoon there was an orchestra playing. Music filling the brownstone. Black fingers pulling violin bows and strumming cellos, dark lips around horns, a small brown girl with pale pink nails on flute. Malcolm’s younger brother, his dark skin glistening, blowing somberly into a harmonica. A broad‐shouldered woman on harp. From my place on the stairs, I could see through the windows curious white people stopping in front of the building to listen.

You’ve got two violin sections, violas, cellos, basses, woodwinds, brass, percussion—but it operates as a whole. It has rhythms.” You need space in your life for the spotlight of focus—but alone, it would be like a solo oboe player on a bare stage, trying to play Beethoven. You need mind-wandering to activate the other instruments and to make the sweetest music. I thought I had come to Provincetown to learn to focus. I realized that, in fact, I was learning to think—and that required much more than the spotlight of focus.

Writer Miroslav Volf explains this more poetically. We experience time, he says, the way we hear a beautiful note from cello. It may sound like a single pitch, but in reality it is a complete tone, including other voices from the string’s half-length, eighth-length, and so on. “It is similar with the music of our lives,” says Volf. “At any given time we do not hear only the simple, solitary tone of the present; rather, in that present resonate many sounds of past actualities and future possibilities. This is how our present acquires depth.” In other words, our present-day lives are constantly echoing those of others. (p. 113)

Writer Miroslav Volf explains this more poetically. We experience time, he says, the way we hear a beautiful note from cello. It may sound like a single pitch, but in reality it is a complete tone, including other voices from the string’s half-length, eighth-length, and so on. “It is similar with the music of our lives,” says Volf. “At any given time we do not year only the simple, solitary tone of the present; rather, in that present resonate many sounds of past actualities and future possibilities. This is how our present acquires depth.” In other words, our present-day lives are constantly echoing those of others. (p. 113)

The three ideas of order, connection, and proportion are extremely important in understanding Bach’s musical thinking

The whole problem is further complicated by the fact that there were two distinct musical units on the Titanic, not just a single eight-piece orchestra, as is generally assumed. First, there was a quintet led by violinist Wallace Hartley and used for routine ship’s business—tea-time and after-dinner concerts, Sunday service and the like. There was no brass or drums. Vernon and Irene Castle had introduced the foxtrot, but it hadn’t reached the White Star Line yet. In addition to this basic orchestra, the Titanic had something very special: a trio of violin, cello, and piano that played exclusively in the Reception Room outside the À la Carte Restaurant and Café Parisien. This was all part of White Star’s effort to plant a little corner of Paris in the heart of a great British liner, and appropriately the trio included a French cellist and a Belgian violinist to add to the Continental flavoring. These two orchestras had completely separate musical libraries. They had their own arrangements, and they did not normally mix. It is likely (but not certain) that on the night of the collision they played together for the first time. Hence whatever they played had to be relatively simple and easy to handle without sheet music— the current hits and old numbers that the men knew by heart.

The thing I love about Edna, compared to Cello’s Prom Date or Little Shop’s Mrs. Luce, is that she is such a wonderful, well-rounded (pun not intended) character. I felt that Mrs. Luce and the Prom Date were one note characters, whether they were played by a man or a woman - but were definitely played for laughs by throwing me in a wig and dress, that playing Edna was a breath of fresh hairspray…I mean air. She was actually developed into a human being; she loves her husband and her daughter, she has her fears about how the world would view her and her daughter for being overweight, disappointment that her hopes and dreams didn’t come true (explaining why she is strict with Tracy), and the pride she feels when Tracy becomes successful.

The judge drummed with his fingers on his desk but the band of toes still wouldn’t let him in yet. Though he didn’t want to be in that special orchestra where a practical joker was known to put water and a powdered fruity dessert mix in large stringed instruments of which the stunt was known as cello Jello.

Scandalous as it may sound, it is even possible that the world's greatest cello music was not in fact written for a cello.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. This one sentence could well serve as a crash course in how to create atmosphere. First the bare wires of where and when are suggested (a country road; an autumn day in a time period when men still road on horseback to reach their destinations). Then lights and sound are added: the scene is dark and shadowy; a palpable silence reigns. It’s not a peaceful quiet, the kind that might soothe a tired traveler. Rather, it’s a disturbing silence described only in terms of what it lacks : “soundless.” Other details add to the foreboding: clouds hanging low; a lone rider. And beneath it all a subliminal music plays. I imagine an oboe or a cello, its tones mournfully forlorn. Soon it’s joined by a chorus of deep vowels whose tones are split by harsh consonants and stopped rhythms striking like gongs foretelling doom: dull, dark, soundless, day. Each phrase of the description, like each step of the rider’s horse, draws us deeper toward the gloom that awaits us. Nothing

...Nico, dresses in virginal white, sang in a voice one writer described as "like a cello getting up in the morning

Cultural Diplomacy—and an Accolade Among Piazzolla’s tasks during his first summer at the Chalet El Casco was the composition of “Le Grand Tango,” a ten-minute piece for cello and piano commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom Piazzolla sent the score. Rostropovich had not heard of Piazzolla at the time and did not look seriously at the music for several years.7 Written in ternary form, the work bears all Piazzolla’s hallmarks: tight construction, strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity and melodic inspiration, all apparent from the fierce cello scrapes at the beginning. Piazzolla uses intervals not frequently visited on the cello fingerboard. Its largely tender mood, notably on display in the cello’s snaking melodic line in the reflective middle section, becomes more profoundly complex in its emotional range toward the end. With its intricate juxtapositions of driving rhythms and heart-rending tags of tune, it is just about the most exciting music Piazzolla ever wrote, a masterpiece. Piazzolla was eager for Rostropovich to play it, but the chance did not come for eight years. Rostropovich, having looked at the music, and “astounded by the great talent of Astor,” decided he would include it in a concert. He made some changes in the cello part and wanted Piazzolla to hear them before he played the piece. Accordingly, in April 1990, he rehearsed it with Argentine pianist Susana Mendelievich in a room at the Teatro Colón, and Piazzolla gently coached the maestro in tango style—”Yes, tan-go, tan-go, tan-go.” The two men took an instant liking to one another.8 It was, says Mendelievich, “as if Rostropovich had played tangos all his life.” “Le Grand Tango” had its world premiere in New Orleans on April 24, 1990. Sarah Wolfensohn was the pianist. Three days later, they both played this piece again at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. [NOTE C] Rostropovich performed “Le Grand Tango” at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in July 1994; the pianist was Lambert Orkis. More recently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has described “Le Grand Tango” as one of his “favorite pieces of music,” praising its “inextricable rhythmic sense...total freedom, passion, ecstasy.

The varied players—objects and events, currently present or recalled from memory—do not pluck the strings of any violins or cellos and do not press the keys of countless pianos, but the metaphor captures the situation. Objects and eventsdo “play,” in the sense that they, as distinct entities within the organism’s mind, can act on certain neural structures of the organism, “affect” their state, and change those other structures for a passing moment. Over the “playing time,” their actions result in a certain kind of music, the music of our thoughts and feelings and of the meanings that emerge from the inner narratives they help construct. The result may be subtle or not so. Sometimes it amounts to an operatic performance. You can attend it passively, or you can intervene, modify the score to a greater or smaller extent, and produce unpredicted results.

After Jimena left, Serena sat in a chair and set her cello on the end pin between her knees. She loved the way she had to hug the cello when she played. She dreamed of meeting her idols some day in a master class or onstage, someone like Yo-Yo Ma or Han-Na Chang. She picked up her bow and began to play. The music flowed around her, sad and filled with longing.

The cellists don't look. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They are fucking their cellos with their fingers, stroking music out, promising the ghost yodels and Patsy Cline and funeral marches and whole cities of music and music to eat and music to put on and wear like clothes. It isn't music Louise has ever heard before. It sounds like a lullaby, and then it sounds like a pack of wolves, and then it sounds like a slaughterhouse, and then it sounds like a motel room and a married man saying I love you and the shower is running at the same time. It makes her teeth ache and her heart rattle.