There is no complete spiritual life without music, for the human soul has regions which can be illuminated only by music.

Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine. Only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate.

The characteristics of a good musician can be summarized as follows: 1. A well-trained ear. 2. A well-trained intelligence. 3. A well-trained heart. 4. A well-trained hand. All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong. So far most of you have met only the requirement of the fourth point: the training of your fingers has left the rest far behind. You would have achieved the same results more quickly and easily, however, if your training in the other three had kept pace.

To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.

Music is a manifestation of the human spirit, similar to language. Its greatest practitioners have conveyed to mankind things not possible to say in any other language. If we do not want these things to remain dead treasures, we must do our utmost to make the greatest possible number of people understand their idiom.

Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this...only the best is good enough for a child.

Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song.