Original language:
Japanese Translated from: English
Authors: Shinichi, Suzuki
Translated by: Lipavičienė, Miglė
ISBN: 978-609-95070-0-2
Published in: Kaunas
Published on: 2009
Publisher: Lithuanian Suzuki Association
\”What is man\’s ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty\”. “Nurtured by love” is Shinichi Suzuki’s autobiography. Musician, philosopher and educator’s essential teachings and Talent Education philosophy are laid out in this book. The writer tells various stories, which happened during the course of teaching children to play the violin: their first encounter with this instrument, teaching techniques, teacher, parents and children’s relationships.
A lot is written about his past students, who not only turned out to be great and noble people, but a great deal of them became excellent musicians, performing all around the world. There is a particularly interesting story about a blind boy, whom Suzuki taught to play the violin; as well as about a girl named Hiroko, the epitome of slowness. She kept failing to put her little fingers in the right position on the violin, but the teacher managed to find a way how to develop the girl’s skills and become a great musician. Suzuki writes a lot about one of his best students – Koji. After World War II, Suzuki sheltered this student to live with him, and he not only became the first Japanese concertmaster of the Berlin Radio-Philharmonic Orchestra, but also a very humble, kind-hearted and noble person, the type the teacher was trying to raise.
Suzuki lays out the main principles of Talent Education method – he is certain the talent is developed depending on the surroundings and not inherited. This thought he justified using various real life examples. He writes about the girls that lived in the India’s forest, who managed to adapt while living with the wolves. Author especially emphasizes children’s ability to learn their native language easily. Every child can develop excellent skills not only in music, but in other favorite fields. Human’s abilities reside deep inside, that’s why the environment and people around are the most important factors in kid’s development. It is important to start training the kid as early as possible, repeat the things which are already learnt, cultivate not only the abilities, but character first, as well as closely cooperate with teacher and parents. Teacher has to be not only a professional of his work, but he also has to have great personal qualities, such as love and respect for kids, patience, empathy and enthusiasm. Suzuki motivates people to improve themselves, by saying that earnest work and regular repetition allows skills to completely be engraved in to the person’s subconscious mind.
Shinichi Suzuki was born in the biggest violin fabric founder and owner’s Masakichi Suzuki family, in 1898, in Nagoya, Japan. At age 17, he began learning to play the violin, became a performing violinist and one of the most notable 20th century’s music educator. After World War II, Suzuki founded a school in Japan, in which he taught music by using Talent Education method. This method spread around the world and became very successful.