Leopold Auer brought his violin method to America

Person: Leopold Auer
Lived: 1845–1930
Field: Violin teaching
From: Hungarian-born

The story

Leopold Auer, born in 1845 into a poor Jewish family in Veszprém, Hungary, had already spent nearly half a century teaching violin at the St Petersburg Conservatory when the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought that life to an end. His students there had included Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist and Nathan Milstein. Rather than retire, he left Russia and arrived in New York in February 1918, aged 73. He played at Carnegie Hall on 23 March 1918.

In America he began again as a teacher. At first he took private students at his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. In 1926 he joined the Institute of Musical Art in New York, the school that later became the Juilliard School, and in 1928 he joined the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he taught until his death in 1930. He became a United States citizen in 1926.

Auer also did something few great teachers manage: he set down his ideas in print so that students who would never meet him could learn from them. His book Violin Playing as I Teach It appeared soon after his arrival in America. It was followed by his memoir My Long Life in Music, by Violin Master Works and Their Interpretation in 1925, and by a Graded Course of Violin Playing published in 1926 and 1927.

These books explained the approach that had made his St Petersburg classroom so successful. He cared most about interpretation and musical understanding, rather than technique as an end in itself, and he expected students to play whole movements of major works with discipline, accuracy and real vitality. By writing it down, he turned a personal teaching style into a method that any teacher or student could study.

His time in America was short, but it came at a crucial moment. Several of his most famous former pupils had also settled in the United States, and his former student Zimbalist joined the Curtis faculty in 1928 and later directed the school. The Curtis Institute says its violin teaching today still draws on traditions that trace back to Auer and Zimbalist.

Why it matters

Auer's books and his years teaching in New York and Philadelphia helped root his approach in American music schools, where generations of violinists have learned from it.

About Leopold Auer

Hungarian-Jewish violinist whose St. Petersburg class produced Heifetz, Elman, Milstein and Zimbalist, and who used his influence to shield Jewish students from Russia’s residence laws.

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Leopold Auer

1845–1930 · Violin teaching

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