Here's What You Should Know about Dorothy DeLay

If you’re a music educator, you may have encountered a student or two who showed signs of musical giftedness, but perhaps you struggled with how to address the special needs that accompany all that talent. While working with a highly gifted student presents some challenges, it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences of your career.
 
Whatever goals and challenges come along with working with a gifted student, a music teacher could not find a better role model to study than Dorothy DeLay, the 20th-century violin teacher whose life, career, and teaching methods have become renowned all over the world. 
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A legend during her lifetime

Dorothy DeLay’s approach to teaching music continues to be frequently cited and praised by experts. DeLay, who died at age 84 in 2002, taught a roster of notable pupils, including Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Chang, Kyung-Wha Chung, Nigel Kennedy, and Midori. 
 
DeLay’s reputation was such that any pupil she accepted could with some degree of confidence expect to enjoy a distinguished career. Her connections among talent agents were well-known, and often, families of talented musicians went out of their way to persuade her to accept their children into her program. 
 
She also had an encyclopedic knowledge of the way the music and performance worlds functioned, and she was a master of understanding what did and did not work on the concert stage. 
 
The greater part of DeLay’s teaching took place at The Juilliard School in New York City, although in the summer she traveled to work at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, as well as at other venues throughout New England. 
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An unconventional nurturing of talent

DeLay, who was a student of psychology, strongly believed in developing a musician’s inner powers of concentration and attitude through a focus on gentle but consistent encouragement of individual strengths. This may have been particularly important to her because she herself had many teachers and musicians in her family. 
 
Experienced teachers today who have learned from her methods emphasize the point that timing is everything. Working with gifted students in a music program centers on a delicate balance of educating them as much as possible as early as possible while guarding against creating a program so intense that it becomes self-defeating—or even physically or emotionally detrimental.
 
DeLay would often recommend to her students books on mental focus, such as The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey. The tennis pro’s now-classic self-help book has helped people make positive changes in their lives far beyond the world of sports. Gallwey’s instructions for overcoming the self-doubts, equivocations, and fears that can destroy even the most talented person’s performance have had a lasting influence in business and the arts as well. 
 
Applying Gallwey’s wisdom to teaching the violin, DeLay encouraged her students to become their own coaches and teachers, working through their problems themselves. 
 
DeLay would also take pains to ensure that each of her pupils engaged in a range of other activities beyond studying their individual instruments. And even with her softer, looser style, DeLay did require her students to put in plenty of hours dedicated to their craft. She believed in giving her students her best, in order to help them become their best. 
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A gifted student who understood other gifted students

Dorothy DeLay was born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in 1917. She was a gifted child herself, learning to read at the age of 3. She became an excellent violinist by the age of 4 and performed in a local concert at age 5. She entered the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio at 16, and later matriculated at Michigan State University, fulfilling her parents’ wishes that she obtain a more wide-ranging education.
 
As a student at Juilliard, DeLay studied with, among others, Louis Persinger, who was the first teacher of legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin. However, she decided that performing was not for her—she felt she was simply too shy and too anxious about the quality of her performance.
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Marriage, motherhood, and teaching

In 1941, DeLay married journalist Edward Newhouse, with whom she would have two children. She returned to Juilliard a few years later to become a teaching assistant to her old instructor, the revered Ivan Galamian, while still in her early 30s. She would soon become Galamian’s chief assistant. 
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Feuding methodologies

DeLay eventually came to disagree with Galamian’s teaching methods. In 1971, she created her own series of classes at the school, and students were forced to choose between her or Galamian. Perlman was among the students who transferred from Galamian to DeLay. This put the finishing touch on a life-long breach between the two great teachers that began when DeLay transferred her teaching outside Juilliard to Aspen, rather than continuing at Galamian’s Meadowmount program.
 
According to former students, there could not have been a greater contrast than that between the motherly, nurturing DeLay—she often called her pupils “sugar plum”—and the more iron-handed Galamian. 
 
Still, DeLay expressed respect for Galamian, even long after their feud had set in. Displaying her trademark psychological insight and sensitivity, she remarked that he came from a traditional Armenian background in which the father of the family delivered the word of law. She noted that dignity was, for him, a prime requirement, and spoke admiringly of how he worked to create a dignified, no-nonsense atmosphere in his classroom.
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Earning her laurels

By the 1980s, DeLay had achieved her own international acclaim as a teacher. Her master classes were eagerly sought after by students from around the world. She received numerous awards, including the first-ever National Medal of Arts awarded to a teacher, which she earned in 1994. The following year, the National Music Council presented her with its American Eagle Award.
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Documenting genius

Dorothy DeLay believed in teaching students, not just subjects. In 2000, author Barbara Lourie Sand published Teaching Genius: Dorothy DeLay and the Making of a Musician, her book-length study of DeLay and her methods.
 
Much like The Inner Game of Tennis, Teaching Genius details DeLay’s technique of nurturing her students’ inner focus, as well as her gentle encouragement. The book shows how she worked to build students up and empower them with the knowledge that their talent mattered and that they could translate musical ideas into empowering experiences for their audiences. The music world remains in her debt.