Suzuki Method 1

(section 1 of 6 from the article Introduction to the Suzuki Method)

Who was Shinichi Suzuki?

Shinichi Suzuki, born in Japan in 1898, was the son of a violin manufacturer.  Suzuki began to learn to play the violin as a teenager after hearing a recording of a famous violinist named Mischa Elman.  In 1921, Suzuki traveled to Germany to study further.  He marveled at the fact that although each language is marvelously complex, he had learned Japanese with little effort while young children around him spoke German much better than he ever would.  He began to think that just as every child could learn his mother tongue, so also every child could learn music.  He returned to Japan and began teaching small children based on this mother tongue philosophy.  Surviving the Japanese depression and World War 2, he also began to hope that learning music would not only teach a skill, but would mold children’s characters.  He continued to teach and refine his method and it was eventually introduced in the United States in the early 1960s.