Sevcik

A Conceptual Analysis of Otakar Ševčik’s Violin Method:

A Cognitive Approach of Studentship and Preceptorship

Abstract of PhD Thesis

  Among music educators and particularly violinists, Otakar Ševčík and his violin method are accepted as important parts of the music education heritage. Starting from the initial stages of teaching and learning the violin, and reaching the most advanced thematic constructs, Ševčík’s method is the only one which covers in its content the widest – if not the whole – breadth of violin education, and debates in the most fervent way many variable approaches on musical and technical topics.

However, even if its educational value is constantly acknowledged, nowadays it is not widely used in music teaching, as it is characterised by many instrumentalists as boring, complex, or difficult to understand. The surprising fact to all this is that during the end of the nineteenth and till the mid-twentieth century, more than 1000 registered studentswere taught directly by Ševčík effectively through this method, while many others supported, used and weredevoted to it, reaching through its path of knowledge their highest performing or teaching potential.

My thesis, seeking to define a deeper understanding of the Ševčík ‘phenomenon’, and attempting to establish a more scientific view and conceptualisation of the substance of Ševčík’s work, performs an analytical investigation on the method’s explicit and implicit inner-structure. Using three different but equally important sets of data – the historical context of the method’s existence, the actual content of the method’s 26 Opuses, and the method’s educational aspects of studentship and preceptorship –, my research reveals a system embedded within Ševčík’s work, providing on the one hand a cognitive approach to its direct usage for violinists, and on the other hand a pedagogical approach that refers to a more general educational utilisation.        

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