Shinichi Suzuki was a Japanese violinist, philosopher, composer, and educator and the founder of the international Suzuki method of music education and developed a philosophy for educating people of all ages and abilities.
21 Facts About Shinichi Suzuki
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Shinichi Suzuki was born on October 17,1898, in Nagoya, Japan, as one of twelve children.
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Shinichi Suzuki spent his childhood working at his father's violin factory putting up violin soundposts.
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In 1916, at the age of 17, Shinichi Suzuki began to teach himself to play the violin after being inspired by a recording of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, performed by the violinist Mischa Elman.
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Shinichi Suzuki claimed to have spent time there under the tutelage of Albert Einstein, who was an amateur violinist.
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For example, official school records were found that indicate that Shinichi Suzuki, playing Handel's Violin sonata in D major, failed his conservatory auditions for Karl Klingler.
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However, Klingler's daughter, Marianne Klingler, has said that Shinichi Suzuki had indeed studied with her father, who did not normally extend his activities to private teaching and thus, Shinichi Suzuki was Klingler's only private student.
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Shinichi Suzuki left with other family members for a mountainous region to secure wood from a geta factory, and his wife moved to a "German village" where Germans and ex-Germans were sequestered.
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Once the war was over, Shinichi Suzuki was invited to teach at a new music school, and agreed on condition that he be allowed to develop the teaching of music to children from infancy and early childhood.
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Shinichi Suzuki adopted into his family, and continued the music education of, one of his prewar students, Koji, on learning that Koji had been orphaned.
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Shinichi Suzuki was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
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Shinichi Suzuki died at his home in Matsumoto, Japan, on 26 January 1998, aged 99.
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Shinichi Suzuki is not trying to create the world of violinists.
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Shinichi Suzuki developed his ideas through a strong belief in the ideas of "Talent Education", a philosophy of instruction that is based on the premise that talent, musical or otherwise, is something that can be developed in any child.
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Shinichi Suzuki collaborated with other thinkers of his time, like Glenn Doman, founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, an organization that studies neurological development in young children.
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Shinichi Suzuki employed the following ideas of Talent Education in his music pedagogy schools:.
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The epistemological learning aspect, or, as Shinichi Suzuki called it, the "mother tongue" philosophy, is that in which children learn through their own observation of their environment, especially in the learning of their first language.
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The worldwide Shinichi Suzuki movement continues to use the theories that Shinichi Suzuki himself put forward in the mid-1940s and has been continuously developed to this day, stemming from his encouragement of others to continue to develop and research the education of children throughout his lifetime.
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Shinichi Suzuki trained other teachers, who returned to their respective countries and helped to develop the Suzuki method and philosophy internationally.
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Shinichi Suzuki's guiding principle was "character first, ability second", and that any child can learn.
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Shinichi Suzuki wrote a number of short books about his method and his life, several of which were translated from Japanese to English by his German born wife, Waltraud Shinichi Suzuki, including Nurtured by Love, Ability Development from Age Zero, Man and Talent: Search into the Unknown, and Where Love is Deep.