The guardian | 14:00 01-01-2026 | Lifestyle
The instrument’s biggest difficulty is simultaneously its greatest joy – to make a sweet sound you must relax
I knew the violin was an unforgiving instrument but I had always wanted to play it. I didn’t make the decision to learn lightly.
My violin is about 120 years old. It’s a family heirloom: imported from Europe before the first world war by my German-Lutheran great-great-grandfather, a wheat and sheep farmer in western Victoria. It came into my mother’s hands in rather battered condition more than a century later, after the death of a beloved great-aunt. Mum pledged to get it fixed up if one of her children ever chose to learn.
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