Music led creator of Suzuki method to Catholic Church

The sight of 3,000 children playing the violin in unison is astounding. The sheer number impresses. The children also play well, displaying technical precision and genuine musicality. After hearing 400 children perform a concert of folk songs, Vivaldi, and Bach, the famed cellist Pablo Casals cried. A film of 1,200 young violin players so intrigued American musicians that many traveled to Japan to study directly with the man whose vision had worked these miracles. Shinichi Suzuki's revolutionary method of teaching music has spread internationally and transformed the way we think about education in general.

What was the secret of Suzuki’s approach?  What was the goal? 

Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998) did not set out to become a musician. Born into a family of businessmen, he had always envisioned working in the family violin factory. Suzuki recalled spending time in the luthiers’ shops, where he and his brothers would engage in mischief, hitting each other with violins, which they viewed merely as toys.

It wasn’t until his teens that Suzuki actually heard a violin recording. Mesmerized by the sound, he began to teach himself the instrument. This led to formal lessons. Eventually, Suzuki sailed to Germany where he sought out the famed violinist Karl Klingler, who took him on as a pupil.

Suzuki’s music education commenced in earnest.

Having picked up the instrument late in life, Suzuki knew he would never become a first-class musician. In his memoir Nurtured by Love he wrote that his aim was not to “become a performer but to understand art.”  He attended every concert he could. He practiced five hours a day.

In the course of their studies, Klingler introduced Suzuki to the cultural circles of Berlin. There, he met other musicians: a young violinist who improvised virtuosic miniatures in a friend’s living room, a medical doctor who also turned out to be a splendid pianist, and the doctor’s wife — a singer in her own right. Suzuki even met Albert Einstein and heard him play the violin at private gatherings.

Most importantly, during this period Suzuki encountered his future wife, Waltraud Prange. According to a short biography written at the time of her death in the International Suzuki Journal:

In her own memoir, My Life With Suzuki, Waltraud Prage Suzuki wrote, “Suzuki often went to church without my knowing it, and became a Catholic long before we married.”  

In his encounters, Suzuki discovered a reality more far-reaching than the most advanced musical skills: All these exceptional people were modest and possessed of high intellectual sensibility, generous and well-mannered. They not only excelled at their respective occupations but, more importantly, captured his heart. Suzuki realized “what the study of music can do for a person.”

It was not achievement that attracted him, but the profound humanity of the people themselves, an unpretentious and magnanimous spirit that made their external accomplishments credible and attractive.

To instill excellence and virtue through music became Suzuki’s mission. Back in Japan, he began to teach. Asked to take charge of a very young pupil, Suzuki cast about for a suitable method to instruct the little boy. It occurred to him that every child learns to speak without the slightest effort and coercion simply because he hears others speak, imitates speech, and has opportunities to practice. If the same method could be applied to music, Suzuki speculated, children could learn eagerly and quickly. Suzuki later described the approach this way:

By enlisting the parents’ help to surround a child with music, having him listen to recordings, then teaching actual technique by breaking down tasks to their smallest possible components and practicing every day, Suzuki taught children music with astonishing results.

His aim was not to turn out professional musicians, but to form fine people whose personal qualities and proven skills would allow them to flourish in any field.