And summer’s lease hath all too short a date . . . —Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII

Yehudi Menuhin—and his small but potent family—have never lacked for publicity. The barrage of words began in the mid-1920s, when Menuhin (born in New York in 1916) burst upon the musical world, first in San Francisco, then in New York, and finally in Europe. From the first his playing was felt to possess an unearthly quality, and Albert Einstein, for one, thought that it was a proof of the existence of God. A younger sister, Hephzibah (1920-81), was a brilliantly gifted child pianist; the youngest sister, Yaltah (born 1922), was also a considerable talent at the piano. The Menuhin parents, father Moshe (1893-1982) and mother Marutha (born c. 1891), both Russian-Jewish immigrants by way of Palestine, were notable personalities as well: Moshe in his later years became an outspoken, not to say vicious, anti-Zionist, and Marutha very obviously tried to run her children’s lives with an iron hand—even after they were married and themselves parents.

The Menuhin publicity was not simply a matter of newspaper and magazine copy. A biography of Yehudi by Robert Magidoff appeared in 1955, and an autobiography, Unfinished Journey, came out in 1977. A collection of his occasional writings, Theme and Variations, was published in 1972; Conversations with Menuhin was done by Robin Daniels in 1979; The Compleat Violinist, Menuhin’s thoughts on playing the violin, was brought out in 1986. Lionel Menuhin