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Suzuki

Dr. Shin'ichi Suzuki, (1898-1998), was a Japanese violinist and music educator. In the late nineteenth century, Japan's borders were opened to trade with the outside world, and in particular to the importation of Western Culture. As a result of this, Suzuki's father, who owned a company which had manufactured the Shamisen, began to manufacture violins instead. The young Suzuki was born into a large family, and was surrounded by the sound of violins at his father’s violin making factory. He spent his childhood not learning how to play the violin, but working at the factory, putting up violin sound posts.

It was a family friend who encouraged Shinichi to study Western culture, and after becoming inspired by a recording of Mischa Elman, playing Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, Suzuki, aged 17, was so gripped by the beauty of the music, that he began teaching himself to play the violin by ear. He would listen to recordings, and try to imitate what he heard. A couple of years later, he took his violin to a teacher in Tokyo, where he then began taking formal instruction.

At the age of 22, Shinichi persuaded his father to allow him to study in Germany, where Karl Klingler eventually became his violin teacher. Whilst he was there, he spent several years under the guardianship of Albert Einstein, becoming great friends, and who encouraged Suzuki to play classical music. Suzuki also met, courted, and married his wife, Waltraud. Upon his return to Japan, he formed a string quartet with his brothers, and began teaching at the Imperial School of Music, and also at the Kunitachi Music School in Tokyo.

During World War II, his father’s violin factory was bombed by American war planes, and Shinichi lost one of his brothers. The family was also left penniless, and Shinichi decided to leave his teaching positions and move to a nearby city, where he constructed parts for wooden airplanes in order to raise some money. Poor and hungry, at one point almost dying, he began to teach violin to the orphan children in the outer cities where he lived. He adopted an orphan boy, Matsui, and then began developing his teaching strategies and philosophies. Shinichi combined his new practical teaching applications with traditional Asian philosophy.

Suzuki died at his home in Matsumoto, Japan, and students, teachers, and performers all around the world mourned the loss. Robert Klotman said, "With the passing of Shinichi Suzuki, the music world has lost a distinguished philosopher-pedagogue. He was more than a music pedagogue, Suzuki was a unique human being who was concerned with the emotional welfare of all humanity, and used his artistry to further his commitment. His teaching reflected his philosophy that there were no limitations to the capabilities of young people. There have been many emulators, but no one will ever replace him".

The life lessons of Shinichi Suzuki, and the philosophies which surrounded him throughout his life, were recapitulated in the lessons he developed to teach his students. It was very important to Suzuki that his teaching was not viewed as a "method" as it is today. His aim was not in fact to create a world of fantastic violinists, but rather to allow the beauty of God-given music to be enjoyed, and to find pleasure in its rewards. Raising children with "noble hearts", (inspired by great music and diligent study), was one of his primary goals. He believed that people raised and "nurtured by love", in his method, would grow up to achieve better things than war.

Considered to be one of the most influential pedagogues of the 20th century, Suzuki often spoke about the ability of all children to learn things well, given the right environment.
“Any child who is properly trained can develop musical ability, just as all children develop the ability to speak their mother tongue. The potential of every child is unlimited. Where love is deep, much can be accomplished”. (Shin'ichi Suzuki)

Suzuki created the international Suzuki method of music education in the mid-20th century. His desire was to bring some beauty to the lives of children in his country after the devastation of World War II. Suzuki noticed that all children pick up their native language very quickly, and even dialects which adults consider difficult to learn, are spoken with ease by children of 5 or 6 years. He reasoned that if a person has the skill to acquire their mother tongue, then they have the necessary ability to become proficient on a musical instrument. He pioneered the idea that any pre-school age child could begin to play the violin, provided that learning steps were small enough, and if the instrument was scaled down to fit the size of their body. He modeled his method, which he called "Talent Education", after the natural process of language acquisition. Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a high level of musical achievement. He also made it clear that the goal of such musical education was to raise generations of children with "noble hearts", as opposed to creating famous musical prodigies.

Suzuki employed the following ideas of Talent Education to his music pedagogy schools:
The human being is a product of his environment; The earlier, the better - not only music, but all learning; Repetition of experiences is important for learning; Teachers and parents, (adult human environment), must be at a high level, and continue to grow to provide a better learning situation for the child; The system or method must involve illustrations for the child, based on the teacher’s understanding of when, what, and how.

The “mother tongue” philosophy, as Suzuki called it, is that in which children learn through their own observation of their environment. The central belief of Suzuki, based on the evidence of universal language acquisition, is that all people can, and will, learn from their environment. Thus, the essential components of the method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music. He also believed that this positive environment would help to foster excellent character in every student. The method discourages competitive attitudes between students, and advocates collaboration and mutual encouragement for those of every ability and level.

The principal components of the Suzuki method include:

Saturation in the musical community - including attendance at local concerts, exposure to, and friendship with other music students, and listening to music performed by professional musicians of high caliber in the home every day, starting before birth if possible.

Deliberate avoidance of musical aptitude tests, or "auditions", to study music - Dr. Suzuki firmly believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude, or teachers who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to those who have already started their music education. Just as every child is expected to learn their native language, Suzuki expected every child to be able to learn to play music well when they were surrounded with a musical environment from infancy.

Emphasis is put on playing from a very young age - sometimes beginning formal musical instruction between the ages of 3 and 5 years old.

Using well-trained teachers - Suzuki Associations all over the world offer ongoing teacher-training programs to prospective and continuing Suzuki teachers. 

Emphasis is put on learning music by ear over reading notation - from the beginning, this parallels language acquisition, where a child learns to speak before learning to read. In relation to this, memorization of all solo repertoire is expected, even after a student begins to use sheet music, as a tool for learning new pieces.

Students are encouraged to perform in the public eye - in addition to individual playing, regular playing in groups, including playing in unison. Performing frequently ensures the music flows naturally, and is more enjoyable.

Retaining and reviewing every piece of music ever learned on a regular basis - this works in order to raise technical and musical ability. Reviewing pieces, along with "previewing" parts of music a student is yet to learn, are often used in creative ways to take the place of the more traditional etude books.

Another important feature of the Suzuki method is that the parent of the young student is expected to supervise instrumental practice every day, rather than leaving the child to practice alone between lessons, and to attend every lesson, so as to be able to supervise the practice effectively. It is not necessary for the parent to be able to play as well as the child, or at all, only that the parent knows from the lessons what the child is expected to do, and how the child should be doing it.

Although Suzuki was a violinist, the method he founded is not a "school of violin playing”, like that of the French or Russian schools, whose students are always easily identified by the particular set of techniques they use in playing the violin. However, some of the technical concepts Suzuki taught his own students, such as the development of "tonalization", were so essential to his way of teaching, that they have been carried over into the entire method.

Other non-instrument specific techniques are used to implement the basic elements of the philosophy in each discipline. Tonalization is a term coined by Suzuki, and is deliberately similar to the word "vocalization”, as used by singers when they talk about warming up their voices. Tonalization is defined as the student's ability to produce and recognize a beautiful, ringing tone quality on their instrument. While initially developed for violin education, the tonalization technique has been applied to other instruments, including: viola, cello, harp, piano, organ, flute, and voice. Suzuki believed that a student must learn tonalization in order to properly reproduce and perform music.

Using audio recordings is another technique common to all the musical instruments taught in the Suzuki method. Records, tapes, and CDs, are used in order to assist students in learning notes, phrasing, dynamics, rhythm, and beautiful tone quality, by ear. Suzuki pointed out that great artists, such as Mozart, were surrounded with excellent performances from birth, and that the advent of recording technology made this aspect of their environment possible to achieve for large numbers of "ordinary" people, whose parents were not themselves great musicians or teachers, like Mozart's father was.

Full-sized adult instruments are adapted to meet the needs and requirements of a small child's body, in various ways. This lowers the age at which individuals are developmentally ready to begin studying an instrument. Scaled down instrument sizes are used for children studying stringed instruments, although alternative adaptations have also been made to other instruments, and are available for small children to play. For example: curved head joint flutes, with displaced keys, which are closer together than normal flute keys; & small flutes with holes, the fife, are also available making it possible for children as young as 3 years old to study the flute through the Suzuki method. Height adjustable chairs, benches, and footrests are also used for piano, guitar, cello, and string bass.

Suzuki Institutes were established to encourage a musical community, raise the quality of teachers, and to provide a place where teachers' ideas can easily be distributed to the whole community of Suzuki students, teachers, & parents. These short term music festivals began in Matsumoto, Japan, where teachers & students came to learn from Suzuki himself.  Depending on the location, festivals may last for a week or two, and include daily master classes; group repertoire classes; teacher training courses; concerts; discussion sessions; seminars; and various enrichment classes in different musical styles, instruments, or non-musical, usually arts, crafts, or dancing, activities.

Today, many schools often continue to teach from traditional method books, while it is most common for private music teachers to conduct their lessons with the Suzuki method, as lessons can then be easily adapted to suit each student’s needs and ability. The core Suzuki literature is published on audio, and in sheet music books for each instrument, and Suzuki teachers supplement the repertoire common to each instrument as they feel necessary. One of the innovations of the Suzuki method was to make quality recordings of the beginners' pieces widely available, performed by professional musicians. Many traditional, non-Suzuki trained, music teachers also use the Suzuki repertoire, often to supplement their curriculum, and adapt the music to their own philosophies of teaching.

“If it is true that "everything in music is preparation" (Gerhart Zimmermann), then the genius of Suzuki is truly expressed in the scope and sequencing of the music…” Edward Kreitman.