Suzuki Music Quotes

Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.

Perhaps it is music that will save the world.

If a musician wants to become a fine artist, he must first become a finer person.

First character, then ability.

As I have said before, I had no illusions about my performing ability. But I did not know that my despair was brought about not because I had no talent but because I did not know how to develop it.

old, my mother took us to a production of Hair, a mirage of music, revolution, and raw penis; we gave it a standing ovation. By third grade, I wrote screenplays, confessionals, and fan letters to reporters at the New York Times. I played Suzuki-method violin and picked up the bassoon because it was so awkward and oafish that I felt bad for it. I acted and danced,

The guiding philosophy of the Suzuki method is that children should learn music as if it were a language, and that they should begin lessons as early as possible, ideally at the age of two and no later than five. Research by Oliver Sacks and others has confirmed this claim. After a certain age—somewhere between eight and twelve years old—the window for learning a spoken or musical language with native-level proficiency slams shut.

getting into the rhythm of nightly homework. Cello practice became part of his nightly routine—and mine. Just ten minutes in the beginning, but then fifteen and even twenty as he moved up through the grades. It was never onerous; always fun. Playing music became as natural as dinner, homework, and bedtime. The Suzuki books start easy but quickly accelerate to more