TRAINING THE BRAIN

Greek violinist and pedagogue Demetrius Constanti ne Dounis

Probably 70 per cent of professional violinists have a large blue book in their collection. Perhaps it comes out occasionally, perhaps not, but this oversized volume is _ e Dounis Collection: Eleven_Books of Studies for the Violin (_ rst published as a set in 2005) by the legendary Greek pedagogue Demetrios Constantine Dounis (1893- 1954), who made a name for himself in New York and then Los_Angeles in the _ rst half of the 20th century, and whose reputation and legacy continue to this day. Rarely has a teacher_been surrounded by such mystery or caused such di_ ering and extreme reactions, viewed by some as a god or a_saint, and by others as a charlatan or an egomaniac - with rumour even circulating that he hypnotised his students; yet many great players studied with him. Sadly, as Dounis never_revealed their identities it is impossible to know the full extent of his ‘class’.

It is known that he taught violinists John Corigliano (concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic), Sybil Eaton, Leona Flood, David Nadien (soloist and concertmaster of the_New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein), Joseph_Silverstein (concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Paul Winter and Eugène Ysaÿe’s wife Jeanette Ysaÿe;_violists Louis Kievman and William Primrose; and cellist_George_Neikrug (LA Philharmonic principal). Other_soloists wanted to study with him, but could not _ nd_the_time in their busy concert schedules: Yehudi Menuhin and Joseph Szigeti were just two of them. Most famously, his pupil Bernard Eichen recounted that after talking to_a highly excited doorman he asked Dounis if he had had an_important visitor, to_which Dounis responded, ‘Oh, you mean Mr Heifetz? Yes, he was here, and we discussed the violin.’ Apparently, Jascha Heifetz consulted with Dounis a_number_of_times.

_ e remarkable story of Dounis starts with his birth in Athens into a wealthy family on 21 December 1893 (though some sources give an earlier date). Early on he showed a great love for the violin, so much so that at the age of ten he sold his roller skates and bicycle and set o_ to Italy to study; in the end, his father had to travel there to bring him back. At 14 he was taken to the US by a concert manager and was a great success, but again a furious parent travelled there to force him home. As_far as his father was concerned there were only three proper professions: the Church, law and medicine. Dounis eventually capitulated and agreed to study medicine in Vienna (at what is now known as the Medical University of Vienna), where he also studied with František Ondrícek, the Czech violinist and composer who in 1883 had performed the premiere of the Dvorák Violin Concerto.

In 1909, Ondrícek and Dounis - under the pseudonym of Dr_Siegfried Mittelmann, and seemingly aged only 15 or 16 - published Neue Methode zur Erlangung der Meistertechnik des Violinspiels auf anatomisch-physiologischer Grundlage: Fingerund Bogentechnik (‘New Method for Acquiring the Master Technique of Violin Playing on an Anatomical and Physiological Basis: Finger and Bow Technique’). _ is lengthy two-volume work includes in its _ rst part a detailed explanation of anatomy as related to playing the violin: the nervous system, muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments are all included, as well as the basic mechanics of violin playing, accompanied by anatomical detail. _ e second volume is a set of etudes focusing on _ nger extensions. Dounis later confessed to his student William Carboni that he had written these pieces (in conversations that are detailed in the 1985 book Demetrios Constantine Dounis: His Method in Teaching the Violin by Chris_Constantakos). However, given the medical content of the _ rst volume it seems credible that that also is Dounis’s work, and that Ondrícek’s name was included in order to give the whole thing some authority. As Dounis himself (under the name Mittelmann, of course) explains in the introduction, ‘No_less an_authority than František Ondrícek, the great violinist, has honoured the practical part of this book with his collaboration_and for that reason the writer entertains the hope that the work will be favourably received in the musical world.’

RARELY HAS A TEACHER BEEN SURROUNDED BY SUCH MYSTERY OR CAUSED SUCH DIFFERING AND EXTREME REACTIONS - VIEWED BY SOME AS A GOD AND OTHERS AS AN EGOMANIAC

Those known to have studied with Dounis include:

Violinist Sybil Eaton

Violinist David Nadien

Violinist Joseph Silverstein

Violist William Primrose

EXAMPLE 1 Essential Scale Studies Scales of all keys are in two octaves, but with five fingerings, all of which must be dispatched with equal ease and phrasing

SHIFTING EXERCISES

EXAMPLE 2 The Artist’s Technique , Chapter 3 This exercise is for practising shifting from the first to the second finger, while prioritising energy and lightness. On the way up, the shift is played once, very quickly and very lightly, without the thumb moving, and then again, slightly slower, also without the thumb moving. Once you have landed in the new position the second time, the thumb follows the rest of the hand. On the way down, the thumb moves first and the shift is again played once very quickly and then at a slower speed. The shifting finger should glide unimpeded without pulling to either side of the string, and should be undetectable.

EXAMPLE 3 Change of Position Studies , Chapter 1 Dounis identifies shifting problems as being the result of a loss of the balance of the hand, and this exercise is designed to address that issue.

Start in first position and then shift into third position on the fourth note (D), and then immediately back into first position on the E. This is then repeated twice, and after shifting into third position for the G and the A, start again in first position on the A string. This idea is reversed on the way down. I would advocate trying to keep the thumb in one position during these exercises in order to develop its flexibility and to maintain the balance of the hand.

As with all Dounis studies, vibrato must be used at all times as this encourages the student to keep their hand and arm relaxed and avoids dry, inexpressive practice.

Following his graduation and the death of his father, Dounis decided to pursue music full-time. During his concert tour of Germany (as a soloist), war broke out in the Balkans, and in 1913, while on tour in Bulgaria, he was arrested. Although Greece was not fully involved in the First World War until 1917, Dounis was conscripted because of his medical training and it was during this time that he wrote his _ rst major work, _ e Artist’s Technique of Violin Playing op.12, which was subsequently published in 1921.

By 1923 Dounis had moved to New York. He played with various orchestras using the Russian name of Yalto_ , and he performed on the mandolin under the name Anton Dounis. For the next 30 years, until his death from cancer, he taught and gave lectures on violin playing and technique. Even at the end of his life, he was teaching from his hospital bed, encouraging students to play to him and ask questions.

One of the fascinating aspects of Dounis’s career was that he was not limited to teaching the violin. He taught many violinists, but believed his principles worked equally on other instruments. All his books except one (for the viola) were written for the violin, yet he taught violinists, violists, cellists, bassists, horn players and pianists.

THE FOUNDATION OF PRACTICE

Central to Dounis’s teaching is the concept that one needs to train the brain and the memory, not just the arms and the _ ngers. As he writes in the opening of _ e Artist’s Technique:

e true technical training of the violinist is not merely a training of the arm and the _ ngers but, principally, a training of the brain and the memory. _ e _ ngers and the arm should obey perfectly the intention of the player in order to be able to perform any movement with complete mastery. To accomplish this, a distinct and clear picture of the movement should be _ rst impressed in the memory and then reproduced at any given moment under the impulsion of the brain. What we call technique is nothing but a series of brain re_ ected movements.

order to achieve this the player has to change the way they approach performance and practice. Not only should they practise as if they are performing (always with an active mind), but they should consciously avoid the dry and dull repetition that is so common, namely of scales and exercises. Dounis believed that this type of study was worthless and would test the patience and stamina of most players. Additionally, practice should not be long - no more than two hours a day - and it does not matter if players do no practice on some days. He believed that if the mental picture is strong enough and players have exercised the muscles in the right way they will not forget how to use them: in fact, rest might help.

In support of this argument he raises a salient point, again in _ e Artist’s Technique: ‘_ is procedure [repetitive practice of scales and studies] explains why after years of intensive study, there are very few violinists, very few indeed, who acquire an infallible technique.’ If we pause for a moment, we can see how right he was, and that the trend continues to this day: considering the thousands of hours many of us have dedicated to ‘learning’ the violin or viola, have we achieved enough? In any other _ eld, one would expect to be a world leader after that amount of e_ ort. Consider what Dounis says here, too: ‘To play a scale as it should be played means complete mastery of shifting and of the vertical and horizontal _ nger movements […] Yet, most violinists use a directly opposite approach: THEY START THEIR DAILY PRACTICE BY PLAYING THE SCALES, INSTEAD OF BEGINNING WITH SHIFTING AND FINGER EXERCISES. THIS IS ABSURD.’

_ is is not to say that Dounis did not advocate scales. He did, and in fact he wrote the scale book Essential Scale Studies op.37 (1947), in which he states that scales should be used primarily to develop perfectly even and rhythmic _ ngers - not to improve shifting, as is so often advocated. Consequently, his scale manual contains only two-octave scales; however, each key has _ ve di_ erent _ ngerings, all of which must be played with equal ease and phrasing (example 1). _ e manual also features scales on one string, and annotations in a copy that belonged to one of his students show that he recommended that these be practised with trills (for evenness) and in _ ngered octaves. Obviously, such exercises involve a good deal of shifting, but Dounis intended that the mechanics of shifting be developed in other exercises, which are found in _ e Artist’s Technique and in his other 1947 book Change of Position Studies op.36 (published as a companion volume to _ e Development of Flexibility in Violin Playing op.35 (1945); Shifting Exercises, examples 2 and 3). Dounis’s ideas about bowing are in a similar vein, as seen in this extract from The Artist’s Technique:

Cellist George Neikrug was a pupil of Dounis

THE TRUE TECHNICAL TRAINING OF THE VIOLINIST IS NOT MERELY A TRAINING OF THE ARM AND THE FINGERS BUT, PRINCIPALLY, A TRAINING OF THE BRAIN AND THE MEMORY’ DEMETRIUS CONSTANTINE DOUNIS

Violinist and rumoured Dounis pupil Jascha Heifetz

APPARENTLY HEIFETZ CONSULTED WITH DOUNIS A NUMBER OF TIMES

Violist Louis Kievman described in detail his first lesson with Dounis in The Strad’s November 1990 issue

Hundreds, even thousands of exercises are offered to violin students, taxing their patience to the utmost. After years of diligent practice, after exhausting their physical and nervous energy, dulling their musicianship and, at times ruining their health, they find themselves incapable of controlling their bow and maintaining the purity of their tone every time a so-called difficult passage presents itself.

Again, Dounis is relentless in his critique: what is the point of all these studies if you cannot master the relation of the bow to the violin? His principles of the bow are clearly detailed by former student Valborg Leland in The Dounis Principles of Violin Playing: Their Meaning and Practical Application (1949). To clarify the issue, Dounis divided bowing into just two different types of stroke - a simple détaché and an accentuated détaché - from which all bow strokes are derived.

For Dounis the secret of violin technique lay in using the body in the correct way and engaging the mind in learning as soon as possible. It was this constant mental activity, the development of mental alertness and the corollary physical response that he considered to be the key to technical perfection.

APPROACH TO LESSONS

As with his practice and performance ideas, Dounis’s vision of lessons was unique. For one thing, he did not offer one-off lessons, as he felt this would be more destructive than helpful and would leave the student confused. Pupils had to commit to six pairs of lessons over a six-month period, during which time all areas of technique would be covered. The main lessons were once a month and would last between four to six hours; there would then be a check-up lesson a week later to make sure the student had absorbed all the information.

Louis Kievman studied with Dounis in the 1950s, and his experience upon arriving at his teacher’s apartment for his initial eight-hour lesson in New York is recounted in ‘Pedagogy, Practice & Performance’, published in The Strad in November 1990:

entered the studio to find that Doctor Dounis was a very short man, immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit, wearing pince-nez glasses. He asked me to be seated in a large comfortable armchair and he sat facing me. We talked for about 45 minutes. […] Later I found all lessons began this way. […] After asking about my musical background, he asked why I had come to him. I told him of my concern regarding aspects of left-hand control. Later on, after a number of lessons I came to realise that his objective was not primarily to relax me through friendly conversation but to find what matters were of concern to me. The ‘problem’ uncovered, whether real or imagined, would become the first order of business when my viola was taken in hand. It was his objective to eliminate before all else anything causing tension or anxiety.

The next surprise was the order of the lesson itself. […] In almost every lesson I had had with former teachers, […] we had begunalways with technical work. […] But not so with Dounis. His lesson began with repertoire. As almost always in his teaching, there was a dual purpose. He reasoned that since one studied to learn to perform music, why not show right off what one could do without the usual preparatory warm-up. But the hidden reason was that he knew under the stress of performance one’s strengths and weaknesses showed more clearly.

I began to realise that he rarely made outright statements. Instead, he asked questions which involved the player in joining him in seeking solutions. This Socratic method stimulated the student and challenged him to take an active part in the process. […] [When demonstrating] he played facing a full-length mirror while I stood at his shoulder observing the demonstration. Next, he asked me to perform the same exercise, and I, too, faced the mirror. In this way I saw myself from the same perspective in which I saw his demonstration. […]

He could have written directions for me, but he wished me to write the notes in my own words. My words would have greater relevance when I returned home to practise by myself. Dounis would have the student read back the notes verbatim to be sure there were no mistakes and that nothing had been omitted. He allowed no room for error.

In many ways Dounis’s teaching seems to have reflected the Socratic method. He generally avoided direct answers and solutions, rather depending on demonstrations and questions, requiring the participation of the student. Teaching and learning were a cooperative dialogue between two individuals, both asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking. As all things were proved by a scientific or musical idea, the student was able to accept the theory readily, especially as Dounis had often led the student to arrive at the answer themselves. Because of this, the idea left a strong lasting impression.

An important factor in Dounis’s teaching was that he never pointed out errors. He would never, for example, be negative about a passage. Instead, he would design an exercise to help the student correct the problem.

As Dounis believed that memory was key to technique, students were required to memorise pieces from the start. Often Dounis would ask them to look at a few bars, recollect what they could, then write this down on paper. This process was repeated throughout the piece and students needed to be able to write down everything, including bowings and fingerings, from memory. In addition, he would ask his students to sing the entire work. As his pupil Bernard Eichen pointed out: ‘The stronger the mental picture, the better it is going to be.’

When one looks at the works of Dounis it is easy to dismiss them as dry exercises, designed to befuddle and frustrate violinists. But in truth they are quite the opposite. Music and musical freedom were all-important to Dounis, and his etudes are designed to free violinists from the technical constraints of the violin.

So why are these seminal works so rarely used by students of the violin? Why is the blue book of studies so rarely on the music stand? Probably there are many reasons for the latter, not least the large and intimidating appearance of the volume. The main reason for this neglect of Dounis’s works, however, may be that we are too wedded to the idea that mastering both scales and studies is the only way to improve our technique. As Dounis does not, for the most part, use scales, we might feel that his studies are too far removed from the harmonic system of most classical music - as compared with, for example, the Carl Flesch Scale System. There is also the general absence of knowledge or instruction surrounding exactly how to approach practising these studies. Strangely, many of the same biases and prejudices surrounding the validity of these exercises remain 70 years on. In 2020 his ideas are just as revolutionary and extraordinary as they were when they were first published.

FOR DOUNIS, TEACHING AND LEARNING WERE A COOPERATIVE DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO INDIVIDUALS, BOTH ASKING AND ANSWERING QUESTIONS TO STIMULATE CRITICAL THINKING