Violin Pedagogy - Selected Chronological List of Traditional Violin Instructional Material

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Violin Pedagogy: How Did They Learn?

By Dr. Robin Kay Deverich

Selected Chronological List of Traditional Violin Instructional Material

1751	Geminiani. The Art of Playing on the Violin. London.
1756	Mozart, Leopold. A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing. Ausburg.
1756	Tartini, L'arte del arco. Paris.
1761	L'abbe le fils. Principes du violon. Paris.
1771	Tartini, Traite des agremens. Paris.
1782	Corrette. L'Art de se perfectionner dans le violon. Paris.
1791	Galeazzi. Elementi teorico-pratici. Rome.
1798	Cartier. L'Art du violon. Paris.
1798	Woldemar, Michel. Methode pourl e violon. Paris.
c1800	Gavinies. Les vingt-quatre matinees. Paris.
1803	Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer. Methode de violon. Paris.
c1800s	Fiorillo. Etudes de violon formant 36 caprices. Vienna.
c1815	Rode. 24 caprices enforme d'etudes. Berlin.
1820	Paganini. 24 capricci. Milan.
1824	Campagnoli. Nouvelle methode de la mecanique progressive du jeu de violon, op. 21. Leipzig.
1832	Spohr. Violinschule. Vienna.
1834	Baillot. L'Art du violon. Paris.
1844	Alard. Ecole du violon. Paris.
1850	Dont. Etudes for the violin.
1854	Wieniawski. L'ecole moderne, op. 10. Lepizig.
1855	Dancla. Methode elementaire.
1858	de Beriot. Methode de violon, op. 102. Paris.
1864	David. Violinschule. Leipzig.
1867	Kayser. 36 Studies for violin, op. 20.
1873	Courvoisier. The technics of violin playing.
1875	Schradieck. School of violin-technics.
1880	Mazas. 75 Etudes melodiques et progressives pour violon, op. 36. Brunswick.
1881	Sevcik. Schule der Violintechnik, op. 1. Prague.
1895	Sevcik. Schule der Bogentechnik, op. 2. Leipzig.
1902-5	Joachim and Moser. Violinschule. 3 vols. Berlin.
1916	Capet. La Technique superieure de l'archet. Paris .
1921	Auer. Violin Playing as I Teach It. New York.
1923-8	Flesch. Die Kunst des Violin-Spiels. Berlin.
1941	Dounis. New aids to Technical Development, op. 27. London.
1962	Galamian. Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
1963	Galamian and Neumann. Contemporary Violin Technique. New York.
1961	Havas, Kato. A New Approach to Violin Playing. London.
1964	Havas, Kato. The Twelve Lesson Course in a New approach to Violin Playing. London.
1969	Suzuki, Shinichi. Nurtured by Love. New York.
1970	Suzuki violin school. Princeton, New Jersey.
1971	Menuhin. Six Lessons with Yehudi Menuhin. London.
1971	Rolland, Paul. Prelude to String Playing. New York.
1974	Rolland, Paul. The Teaching of Action in String Playing. New York.
1981	Havas, Kato and Jerome Landsman. Freedom to play: A string class teaching method. New York.
1986	Menuhin. The Compleat Violinist: Thoughts, Exercises, Reflections of an Itinerant Violinist. New York.

It should be noted that two string pedagogues listed above, Paul Rolland and Shinichi Suzuki, have also exerted an influence on many contemporary amateur string players. Rolland pioneered new concepts regarding freedom of motion in violin playing as demonstrated in The Teaching of Action in String Playing, a University of Illinois String Teaching Research Project. Rolland produced seventeen demonstration films that correlated with his method book Prelude to String Playing , and many string educators have utilized his theories in teaching strings.

Suzuki’s methodology, also referred to as Talent Education, is centered around the “mother-tongue method,” defined by Suzuki in the following terms:

Talent Education has realized that all children in the world show their splendid capacities by speaking and understanding their mother language, thus displaying the original power of the human mind. Is it not probably that this mother language method holds the key to human development? Talent Education has applied this method to the teaching of music: children, taken without previous aptitude or intelligence tests of any kind, have almost without exception made great progress.[32]

Key elements of Suzuki’s Talent Education include:

The philosophy that all children can be educated through the proper environment, and that environmental factors are more important in the musical growth of a child than so-called talent.
Listening is emphasized, and students are encouraged to frequently listen to recordings of music they are learning.
Parents are active participants in the student’s learning process
Students begin lessons at an early age, sometimes as young as two.
Students learn to play by rote.
Each piece is memorized, even after reading music has commenced.
Technique is learned through the repertoire found in Suzuki’s music books.
Teachers are encouraged to use physical activity games to free the body from tensions.
Frequent performances are encouraged.
Teachers emphasize proper posture, good sound production, and secure intonation.[33]

A 1996 article cited the following statistics regarding the number of Suzuki pupils in America: “More than 5,000 teachers belong to the SAA [Suzuki Association of the Americas] and use Suzuki’s philosophy and methodology with more than 150,000 students.” [34]

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REFERENCE NOTES

[32]Kendall, J. “Suzuki's Mother Tongue Method,” Music Educators Journal, 1986: 49.

[33]Landers, R. The Talent Education School of Shinichi Suzuki—An Analysis. New York: Exposition Press, 1984.

[34]Starr, Kathleen. “Suzuki Association of the Americas,” American String Teacher. Summer 1996: 31.

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