What is the Suzuki Violin Method?

The Suzuki Method is designed for teaching music from a very early age : beginners are typically aged between 3 and 6.

The children learn their first pieces without reading, mainly through imitation, with the help of the teacher and of the parent, and by listening to a recording of the pieces to be learnt. Reading, analytical listening and theory are introduced later, according to the pupil’s age and its progress.

Violin group lessons as well as single lessons take place on a weekly basis . There are also regular concerts.

One of the parents’ participation at each lesson is essential and requires a real commitment in terms of time and effort, especially through the first few years ! It is this parental involvement which gives the Suzuki Method its beauty and its force.

Shinichi Suzuki was born in Nagoya in Japan in 1898. He studied the violin from the age of 17 and from 1920 to 1928 was a pupil of Karl Klinger in Berlin, where he also met several other notable persons, including Albert Einstein, who were to influence the development of his ideas as well as their humanist bend. But above all he then made a very simple observation : whereas he had the greatest difficulties learning to speak German, German children seemed to master that language without any effort ! From this he concluded that young children have superior learning abilities and that these abilities are universal… in other words : every child is gifted ! Having returned to Japan, he decided to devote himself to the development of what he sometimes called the « Mother Tongue Method », by applying to the teaching of violin playing the principles that he derived from his observations on the natural acquisition by children of their mother tongue.

Suzuki Violin at Ecole Eos

The Suzuki violin group lessons organised by Suzuki Music Brussels take place weekly at Ecole Eos, next to Parc Leopold near Place Jourdan in Etterbeek. These lessons bring together both Eos and non-Eos students.

Individual Suzuki lessons are also available at Eos, for both Eos and non-Eos students, although single lessons more usually take place at the teacher's own place.

Info : alexis.oberreit@suzuki-music-brussels.be