The life of Shinichi Suzuki (1898 – 1998) brings together the East and the West. He was born into a family who had been Samurai. After the Samurai had been disbanded his father, an English teacher and instrument maker, had begun to make violins and had built a factory to do so. Suzuki’s father played a great part in shaping his view of the world and also his attention to detail and self discipline.

Suzuki was also influenced by the European thinker Leo Tolstoy who ingrained in him a sense of the nobility and purpose of human life. When Suzuki heard a gramophone recording of the great violinist Mischa Elman he was 17 years old. He went to his father’s factory took a violin and started to teach himself by ear – later he was to study violin in Europe and spent time in the company of Albert Einstein who also inspired him to commit his life to a great task.

In 1930 while playing in a quartet Suzuki had his breakthrough insight. Like all break throughs it was remarkably simple: all children speak their mother tongue! They do not need to read it first, they learn it in their families as naturally as they learn all the other ways of their culture. He realised that music could be learnt in such a manner and that such learning would produce a great naturalness in the musician. His whole method stems from this single insight.

Suzuki realised of course that such a method of learning had general application:

“…a baby starts from scratch at birth and by five or six years of age has internalized the language. Here is a wonderful method of education. The best method in the world is hidden within the mother tongue education, I thought. This event should fit into all education methods.”

As Suzuki developed his method of teaching it always came back to his deep philosophy of life – love nurtures ability, life is a precious gift, all children have the ability to learn, do not rush but never rest, we are products of our environments, and life for deepest satisfaction must have a noble purpose.

After the Second World War, Suzuki began to teach in earnest. He believed that music could make the world a better place and that if taught properly would not just make fine musicians but more importantly fine human beings.