A Teacher Lineage - Galamian

Having taught students such as Pinkazukerman, Michael Rabin, Kyung Hwa Chung, Itzhak Perlman, and many others, Ivan Galamian stands as one of the pillars of modern violin pedagogy.

According to Armenian parents, on January 23, 1903 in Tabriz, Persia, his mother, Mariam, was musically trained and provided him with his earliest violin instruction.

His family moved from Tabriz to Moscow very soon afterwards, and in 1916 he entered the Moscow Philharmonic School as a student of Konstantin Mostras.

Mostras had been a student of Boris Sebor, who was himself a disciple of Leopold Auer, and that lineage helped shape Mostras' analytical approach to violin pedagogy.

During his time in Moscow, Galamian played in the Bolshoi Opera Orchestra, but there were political problems in Russia, so he eventually left and moved to Paris, where he studied Capet was a central figure of the French tradition that emphasized refined bow control as the foundation of expressive playing.

Galamian studied with Capet from 1922 to 1924, but he did not think of himself as a product of the French school.

In Paris, Galamian taught at the Conservatoire Rachmaninoff, and in 1937 he emigrated to the United States.

Initially he established himself in New York as a private teacher, but his reputation soon caught the attention of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

In 1944, apparently through a recommendation from Zeno Francescotti to Curtis director Ephraim Zimbalist, he was appointed to the faculty.

That same year he founded Meadowmount, a rigorous summer training program for young string players in upstate New York.

For Galamian this was an important step, as he believed technical control needed to be. Two years later he started teaching at the Juilliard School in New York, but he did not need to abandon one institution for the other as he was able to maintain his position at Curtis at the same time.

Curtis, Meadowmount, and Juilliard were now in place, forming a framework through which his ideas could spread.

These ideas were the foundation of his book, Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching, that was published in 1962.

I've been told that one of the things Galamian was known to say was, if you want to study interpretation, study with someone else.

I teach how to play the violin.

Now some might find this to be a bit odd, but to me it reveals a belief that artistry cannot occur without technical command, the kind that gives a violinist the freedom to bring notes to life.

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