Educator

The Laboratory

“Curiouser and curiouser!” – coined in Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland” goes through my mind when I’m in the process of learning, teaching, inquiring, observing the oddity of life as it passes by. I am descendant of a lineage of musicians and teachers and taught for the first time when I was twelve years old. I was substituting for my mother, the director of the Young European Strings School of Music in Dublin, as she had an unexpected (and thankfully brief) illness. This was the definitive moment which ignited my passion for teaching. From the age of sixteen onwards, I have engaged in intensive research and development of music methodology and violin pedagogy. A number of renowned musicians, including pianist György Sebök, encouraged me in this field. My research and work extends from beginner students to professional violinists.

“Music is a gateway to the world”

Aged twenty-one I wrote a manuscript on violin technique, pedagogy and music theory for beginner students. The resulting, award-winning book “Michaela’s Music House, The Magic of the Violin” was published in 2009 by Müller & Schade. It uses imaginative stories to underline the technical details of playing violin and can be adapted to suit the teaching of any string instrument. It has received sweeping praise in international press reviews and is recommended by music pedagogues worldwide. The German translation is available since 2018, accompanied by compositions of my own. I am the youngest female author to date to compile and publish my own method.

Edu 1a (1304x1000) Gwendolyn Masin
Edu 1b (580x492) Gwendolyn Masin
Edu 1c (580x492) Gwendolyn Masin
“To teach music is to hear beyond the notes into the heart of the music”

My approach to teaching music to children as young as three involves assessing each child's natural affinity to music and instinctive response to their instrument. This evaluation is based on short, unassuming games that naturally engage the child. They are designed to glean and intuit a student's eye-limb coordination, short and long-term memory abilities and sound recognition. My method also serves to acquaint the instructor with the innate physical and emotional aspects of the student.

I obtained my Teacher's Licentiate from the Royal Schools of Music London, and further degrees from the Hochschulen in Bern and Lübeck. I hold a PhD from Trinity College where I completed a doctoral thesis examining the similarities and differences of twentieth-century violin pedagogy. This work is entitled “Violin Teaching in the New Millennium — In Search of the Lost Instructions of Great Masters or Remembering the Future of Violin Performance”. It addresses challenges to the artistic and technical heritage of violin pedagogy and playing—challenges that threaten the ability and opportunity for young players to develop as well-informed musicians whose technical and artistic decisions are rooted in the accumulated wisdom of centuries of violin playing. Although a number of these issues have been discussed in isolation by other authors, this is an attempt to present them in a broad historical and cultural context, and to make specific recommendations about how their consequences might be ameliorated.

“Strike a chord – ignite music's journey to understanding”

Violin in hand, I have been a keynote speaker at platforms as diverse as international conferences of the European String Teachers Association, TU Dublin’s Conservatory of Music and Drama, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Conservatório de Música da Metropolitana Lisbon, and a string of colleges in North America including Princeton University, Berklee College of Music, Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus and the Faculty of Music of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

I regularly adjudicate for Kalaidos’ University of Music and the Zurich University of the Arts PreCollege Department.

I teach violin and chamber music masterclasses at institutes and festivals throughout Europe and North America. These include invitations to Hochschule für Musik Saar, Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, Franz Liszt Academy of Music Budapest, Utrecht Conservatory, HSLU – Hochschule Luzern – Musik, the IPAC Academy in Seoul, Keshet Eilon and Jerusalem Music Centres in Israel, and the University of Hong Kong Department of Music. I frequently gives masterclasses and seminars for the Swiss Music Pedagogy Assocation (SMPV), and the Polish Association for Chamber Musicians (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Muzyków Kameralistów). From 2013 to 2020, I was professor and researcher of violin studies at the Haute École de Musique de Genève, Switzerland.

I currently lead a class of professional and amateur students in Berne.