Leonor Michaelis and music: Transcript of a conversation with Kunio Yagi in 1986

Abstract

I met Kunio Yagi in 1986, on the occasion of the International Symposium on Bioenergetics held in Nagoya and organized by Takayuki Ozawa, right hand man of Kunio and later director of the Department of Biochemistry. Kunio showed me his Institute and mentioned to me that Leonor Michaelis, after studying in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau, became head of the bacteriological department at the Urban hospital of Berlin until 1922. What was new to me was the fact that at that time, in 1922, he moved to Nagoya, where he founded the first Department of Biochemistry in Japan. Kunio told me that Michaelis imported chemicals, instruments and personnel from Germany. The textbooks were written in German and the teaching language was also German. Kunio himself spoke some German, as part of the tradition continued after Michaelis. Being born in 1919, Kunio could not obviously have met, as a scientist, Michaelis, who moved in 1926 to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Kunio told me about the passion for violin music and the professional competence of Michaelis in playing this instrument. In fact, I remember having seen a poster announcing a public concert given by Michaelis in Nagoya. According to Kunio, Michaelis used also to listen to young violinists and advise them. Once he was asked by a young man if he could become a violin soloist. Michaelis, after having listened to him, told him to go to Europe and study further in Germany. After his return Michaelis listened to him again, but was not convinced of his talent and told him: ‘‘If scientists, like me, or artists, like you, cannot fly as high as they would like, we have always an alternative: teaching’’. The young man, Kunio said, thanked Michaelis and decided to dedicate himself to teaching violin. His name was Shinichi Suzuki, the inventor of the ‘‘Suzuki method’’ of teaching violin and other instruments to children. Shinichi Suzuki was born on 17 October 1898 in Nagoya, Japan. His father was a violin maker. Once Shinichi brought home a violin and began to teach himself. He was in his 20s when, acting on the advice of Michaelis, he traveled to Germany, where he studied with a famous violin teacher, Karl Kinger. Shinichi had always thought that young children could learn music just as they had learned to walk and talk. This was his method. Thank you Kunio. I found this story fascinating, for the link between science and art and for the influence that a German professor of biochemistry could have on the teaching of music in Nagoya, in Japan and in the entire world.