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Learning Music the Suzuki Way
| Article
# : |
11169 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1986 |
1,890 Words |
| Author
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Paula Steen
Paula Steen has taught in Germany and America for the past
fourteen years. She now resides in New Haven, Connecticut, and
is a staff writer for a business journal. |
Beethoven began practicing the piano at four. Mozart was learning to play the violin by the time he was three. But these men were prodigies. "Normal" children, it was thought, couldn't play an instrument so early. Or could they? Today children all over the world are learning to play instruments before they can play games.
Jeanne Switzer and Frances Dapkus are violinists and music teachers in Wallingford, Connecticut. Both began playing as children. Dapkus believes "music is like a language, first you learn to listen and then you learn to make the sounds yourself." Switzer teaches the Suzuki Violin method, which was developed in Japan especially for young children. She recommends that parents who want their children to love music take them to concerts, too. They should have classical music in the home. "In Japan parents begin playing a Mozart sonata to their babies a week after their birth, over and over every day. They wait until the child responds physically. When they realize he or she knows the piece, then they add another one. By the time the child is three, he has a huge listening repertoire."
Two hundred and fifty thousand children in the U.S. are learning the Suzuki method now. Barbara Ullrich of Guilford, Connecticut, is a product of that instruction. In her early 20's, she plays the violin with the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra. Her parents and both her older brothers play an instrument. Barbara's early years were spent listening to their music. By seven she was eager to play.
Records were also popular in the Ullrich home. "My parents used to play classical music Sunday mornings during breakfast. Later when my brothers and I
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