Book review: Teaching Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass: Historical and Modern Pedagogical Practices

Teaching Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass: Historical and Modern Pedagogical Practices

Dijana Ihas, Miranda Wilson and Gaelen McCormick

436PP ISBN 9780367724757

Routledge £35.99 

In the introduction to this ambitious publication, the authors write: ‘We conceived this book as a concise yet detailed, research-based resource on pedagogical content knowledge for four bowed stringed instruments: violin, viola, cello and double bass. Rather than focusing on only a few select approaches and historical treatises and books, we have analysed and summarised all major string pedagogy treatises and approaches of the last 250 years.’ The resulting text includes analytical summaries of more than 120 historical treatises from the 18th century to the present day, together with analyses of a further 50 approaches suitable for a range of contexts.

Each section that follows, one for each instrument, is similarly structured, starting with a chapter on ‘Historical treatises and approaches.’ The earliest treatise mentioned is Michel Corrette’s 1738 L’École d’Orphée, an important precursor to Geminiani’s 1751 Art of Playing on the Violin. The cello’s story begins a little later, with Jean-Louis Duport’s 1806 Essai sur le doigté du violoncelle, et sur la conduit de l’archet, and the double bass’s just three years after that, with Wenzel Hause’s 1809 Méthode Complète de Contrebasse.

The authors go on to trace lineages through institutions and publications, showing how various technical and musical ideas have been passed down through the generations, illustrated by many ‘family trees’. The section on Simon Fischer, with the diagram on page 125 illustrating his ‘synthesising mind’ and all the influences that came to bear on his practice, is particularly striking in this regard.

After the historical section comes one on ‘Approaches and methods for beginning and intermediate students’. These are more focused, concentrating on the work of a few key figures in the teaching of beginners, largely those whose work has been influential in North America. The next section, ‘Applications to modern teaching’, follows the same pattern of five overarching topics for each instrument: Foundations, Left-Hand Techniques, Right-Hand Techniques, Musical Expression and Interpretation, and Practising. Within these topics the content is all arranged using the same conceptual framework to provide cohesion.

As the introduction declares: ‘This book is not meant to replace the original texts nor to discourage readers from expanding their pedagogical knowledge through further trainings.’ Nor is it designed to provide students and teachers in the early stages of a teaching career with a blueprint for setting up and maintaining a successful teaching practice. Rather, it provides a wealth of information about a range of different approaches, and students of both the instrument and its pedagogy will doubtless find much of interest here.

In one of the introductory sections, Dijana Ihas suggests: ‘teaching stringed instruments is not alchemy, but a science based on transferrable principles mixed with an art of understanding another’s learning needs.’ This book could be seen as food for the enquiring, scientific mind when it comes to string pedagogy; the art will come from a mixture of lived experience, reflective practice and a good amount of empathy.

PHILIPPA BUNTING