Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Shinichi Suzuki about talent

I have the firm belief that there is no inherited talent for music; therefore, we could make a child become either an excellent musician or a tone-deaf person according to the law of ability and principle of the life force activity.

If we do not educate at all, the child will learn nothing. For instance, the talent for music can only be had by cultivating it and can not be achieved by itself. This is my conviction.

If music talent could be acquired naturally, the cultural history of mankind would have been quite different, I am sure.

If a newly bor baby is played a record of a Vivaldi violin concerto every day whenever it cries, the baby will have learned the concerto well after four or five months. The same thing is true if the baby is brought up listening to a Bach concerto.
This method of training is being put into practice today everywhere in Japan.
This fact entirely demolishes the common-sense notions that we have long held about the inborn talents of human beings, since it proves that there is no such thing as a person literally born with a special aptitude, such as an inborn talent for music.

Haydn's Miracle Symphony No.102

They call Joseph Haydn the father in music. He is considered to be, indirectly, the father of both the symphony and the string quartet, hav...