About Shinichi Suzuki
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. An influential pedagogue in music education of children, he often spoke of the ability of all children to learn things well, especially in the right environment, and of developing the heart and building the character of music students through their music education. Before his time, it was rare for children to be formally taught classical instruments from an early age and even more rare for children to be accepted by a music teacher without an audition or entrance examination. Not only did he endeavor to teach children the violin from infancy and early childhood, his school in Matsumoto also did not screen applicants for their ability for admittance. Suzuki was also responsible for the early training of some of the earliest Japanese violinists to be successfully appointed to prominent western classical music organizations. During his lifetime, he received several honorary doctorates in music including from the New England Conservatory of Music (1956), and the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He was proclaimed a Living National Treasure of Japan, and in 1993 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Prange had been a soprano soloist at a Roman Catholic church in Berlin; Suzuki began attending, at first, in order to hear her sing. In 1916, at the age of 17, 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. For example, official school records were found that indicate that Suzuki, auditioning with Handel's Violin sonata in D major, failed his conservatory audition for Karl Klingler. Suzuki and his wife eventually evacuated to separate locations when conditions became too unsafe for her as an ex-German citizen, and the factory was struggling to operate due to a shortage of wood.
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