Albert Einstein - Love of Music

Love of Music

Einstein developed an appreciation of music at an early age. His mother played the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him a love of music but also to help him assimilate German culture. According to conductor Leon Botstein, Einstein is said to have begun playing when he was five, but did not enjoy it at that age.

When he turned thirteen, however, he discovered the violin sonatas of Mozart. "Einstein fell in love" with Mozart's music, notes Botstein, and learned to play music more willingly. According to Einstein, he taught himself to play by "ever practicing systematically," adding that "Love is a better teacher than a sense of duty." At age seventeen, he was heard by a school examiner in Aarau as he played Beethoven's violin sonatas, the examiner stating afterward that his playing was "remarkable and revealing of 'great insight.'" What struck the examiner, writes Botstein, was that Einstein "displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student."

Botstein notes that music assumed a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on. Although the idea of becoming a professional himself was not on his mind at any time, among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, and he performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music also became a regular part of his social life while living in Bern, Zurich, and Berlin, where he played with Max Planck and his son, among others. In 1931, while engaged in research at California Institute of Technology, he visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles and played some of Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet, recently retired from two decades of acclaimed touring all across the United States; Einstein later presented the family patriarch with an autographed photograph as a memento. Near the end of his life, when the young Juilliard Quartet visited him in Princeton, he played his violin with them; although they slowed the tempo to accommodate his lesser technical abilities, Botstein notes the quartet was "impressed by Einstein's level of coordination and intonation."