Eta Cohen
ETA COHEN was a pioneering violin teacher and author of best-selling violin tutors, The Eta Cohen Violin Method. A charismatic teacher, Eta Cohen was unanimously awarded a European String Teachers Association lifetime award in 2012 for her exceptional contribution to string teaching. She launched the first teaching method for beginners in 1940, which has been published in many different languages.
In the course of her 70 year career she lectured extensively in Australia, the US, the UK and Europe, and published articles in leading journals.
Cohen was one of four daughters of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. When she was a child, her father bought her a violin. She studied the violin locally, and after leaving school at 17, began teaching privately and in schools.
She looked for a violin tutor to assist her, but in 1933 there were no books she considered adequate. Undeterred, she painstakingly wrote out each lesson for her students, skilfully organising the material.
These lessons became the foundation for the first volume of the Eta Cohen Violin Method, published when she was 25.
During the war Cohen moved to Cheltenham and taught at schools there. She also took lessons herself with the distinguished violin teachers Max Rostal and Carl Flesch who became very influential on her thinking.
In 1945 she married Ephraim Smith, a businessman working in the cloth trade, whose parents were also Lithuanian Jews.
The couple lived in Leeds where their daughters, Maureen and Hazel, were born. Cohen turned the home into a workplace from which she taught and wrote three more volumes of the Eta Cohen Violin Method.
Cohen’s great insight was that teach- ing the violin would be most successful if taught incrementally, the very opposite of her own first lesson. Her ability to break down difficult technical tasks is a hallmark of her books.
The rigour of Cohen’s method was matched by her personal teaching skills, fuelled by her love of children. She taught with energy, patience and imagination, tailoring her method to each pupil.
She thought that a parent should be present at lessons and conditions for learning should be made alluring. For instance, she would check that the lesson time did not coincide with favourite TV programmes.
During her life in Leeds, Cohen became a well-known local figure. A fanatical walker and gardener, she always spoke her mind. She was also a prominent member of a thriving local music community.
A large number of Cohen’s pupils have occupied prominent positions in the musical profession as successful soloists, chamber musicians, musical managers, composers and teachers. Her daughter Maureen became a wellknown violinist, and is now a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, while Hazel was also a professional violinist but is now a writer and professor at the University of Western Sydney.
Cohen is survived by Maureen and Hazel, granddaughters Emma and Sophie, and a great-grand daughter Anna. Ephraim died in 1989.