V.com weekend vote: Who is in your violin family tree?

August 16, 2008 at 12:12 AM

I'd like to test my hypothesis: Seems like if you can make a connection to Ivan Galamian, Josef Gingold or Dorothy DeLay, you can connect with just about any violinist on the planet.

I was observing this while thinking about Kevin Bacon, degrees of separation, and Six Degrees of Simon Fischer.

So my question is, are you directly connected to any of these Big Three teachers, through one of your teachers? What is your "Teacher Tree"? If you don't know your violinistic lineage, you should check into it. Just like Great-Great Grandpa Günther, whom you never saw or knew, gave you that enormous nose, taste for bratwurst and ability to tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue, your musical predecessors likely continue to offer techniques, philosophies, interpretations and attitudes toward the art of violin playing, through the way you learned (or are learning) from your teacher.

Here are my own incomplete and unscientific observations about the Big Three: When I think of Ivan Galamian, who taught several of my teachers, I think of a technical approach, developing the left side of the brain, working with permutations of rhythm, bowings, etc. for practice. For Josef Gingold, who was still at Indiana when I went there and influenced all the teachers there, I think of an attention to beautiful tone, a kind, nurturing but demanding teaching approach, expression, and fidelity to the composer's intentions. For Dorothy DeLay, I think of nurturing musical independence and attending to basics, even at the highest level.

Though Dorothy DeLay was Galamian's assistant, I'm going to count her as her own entity. That's another thing that you guys can argue with me about down below ;)

Now I know that these three teacher's aren't in everyone's lineage, so if your teacher traces back to another influence, please mark "none of the above" and tell us below in the comment section about your teacher's major influences.

I'm going to make some rules for this: Your family tree includes only teachers you've studied with (and paid for lessons, either directly or through school tuition) for at least a year, and people they'd studied with for at least a year. You can't claim a connection through one lesson, a week at an institute, or through your hairdresser or the guy next to you on the plane!

Also, you may have had all three in the tree; so it's okay to mark more than one.

My Current teacher says his teacher was Igor Ozim, who studied under Max Rostal (whom my teacher also spent a brief amount of time with) who studied with Carl Flesch. It's pretty amazing for me to think that I'm only 4 links away from Flesch.
I studied 4 1/2 years under someone who was a student of Broadus Erle and Josef Gingold, and my current teacher did undergrad with Dorothy DeLay and Paul Kantor
Sorry for the double post but my current teacher also did his graduate studies with Arnold Steinhardt, who I just read was a student of Ivan Galamian, so that's all 3!
I have three routes back to Ysaye

1. Through Leon Sammetini (one grandteacher)
2. Through Joseph Gingold (another grandteacher
3. Harold Hess yest another grandteacher.

I didn't study with any of these three just their students.

My current teacher studied with Delay at Juilliard.
My teacher studied with Paul Zukofsky who studied with Galamian. She also studied with Leonard Posner and David Schneider but I don't know who they studied with.
I go back to Auer about three ways. Unfortunately, Auer's philosophy was teach yourself.
My teacher in Pasadena studied with Mehli Mehta, who studied with Galamian. My current teacher studied with Raphael Bronstein (who studied with Leopold Auer) and Roman Totenberg (who studied with Carl Flesch).
I don't know my violin family tree, but I once shook hands with someone who once shook hands with the Dalay Lama.

;-)

Sorry, that would have to be the DeLay Lama.
My last teacher studied with Heifetz. Lots of fascinating stories...
My teacher last semester, Dr.Pinell, had the pleasure of being taught a thing or two by Issac Stern. And of course I rank Javier and his wife Naomi right up there with the best.
David Oistrakh is my teacher's teacher. My high school teacher traces back to at least Joachim. I don't really take after either of them, I'm afraid.
I studied awhile with Igor Gruppman who studied with David Oistrach.
My current teacher studied with Paul Kantor, who was a Dorothy Delay student.
Two of my major teachers studied with Syzmon Goldberg, who was a student of Carl Flesch.
I know I've got Galamian and Gingold in there, not sure about DeLay but probably.

I have but one degree (Mr. Danchenko) separating me from David Oistrakh....which I'm perhaps a little too proud of...:)

incidentally, you might want to specify that this "Big Three" are the big three primarily of the American school.
My violin teacher from High School knows Joshua Bell's first violin teacher.

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