Jacqueline Du Pre

'The English cellist Jacqueline du Pre was one of the most stunningly gifted musicians of our time. Tall, blonde and ebullient, du Pre would wrap herself around her cello and play with an intimacy and intensity that transported her audiences. She was a musical lioness, ferocious and playful, uninhibited and passionate.'

http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/news/May1999/BookReviewsduPre.html

'Jacqueline du Pré is arguably the greatest talent to ever play the cello. She combined mind, heart, body and soul to produce the most expressive tones ever to emanate from the instrument. Shy and at the same time bold, she was not only expressive, but played with precision, fullness and purity of tone.
She could not pinpoint the time when she started losing feeling in her fingers, and her arms, as she said, felt like lead. By the fall of 1973 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She continued to teach on occasion, but the deterioration of her health gained momentum and finally, on October 19, 1987, she died at the age of forty-two.'

http://www.jacquelinedupre.net/jdupre/whoisjdp.htm




Sorry for the poor quality ending of the clip, but it was the only suitable I could find.

I filed this posting under inspirational segment. You might wonder what is inspirational about it? Well, the inspiration could be found from several different angles. You find the one, which sounds true to you.

One of the angles could be that MS could affect almost anyone…

All individuals I worked with whose lives were affected by MS were talented and inspirational human beings in some way or another. Some managed to stand out from the crowd before diagnosis and some had talents and inspirations that are still to be recognised by themselves and by the people around them.

When we work with individuals using Petö’s exemplary ideas, concepts and practice we must remember his teaching, which clearly defines that we must have the highest respect for everyone we work with whether they are babies or grownups. Regardless of creed, age, colour, talent, social background, diagnosis or any identified criteria previously given and imposed upon them.


A poem which was recited by Paul H. one of our participants in the Multiple Sclerosis Group.

There is a young boy within us
which we would exclude from the pitiless
surfaces of the mirrors which life would hold up to us

'Grow up' which is what time would say to us.
The brow furrows, the mouth sets, the eyes which were made
for the reflection of first love have a hole in the centre
through which we may look down into the abyss of meaning,

and yet there is the crying within of the young boy who has fallen
and will not pick himself up knowing there is nobody to run to.