Kato Havas Research Paper

Abbie Marosi
Kato Havas Pedagogy

MUS 433
May 6, 2014
Kato Havas was born in Transylvania, Romania, November 5, 1920 and is
currently still alive at the age of 93. She was a child prodigy of the violin,
performing concerts at age seven and received virtuoso training at the Budapest
Academy of Music under Imre Waldbaue. At seventeen, she made her debut at
Carnegie Hall. Havas claims that Hungarian Gypsy violin players had a profound
influence on her later development of the New Approach. After developing great
pain and aches, she retired from the concert world and taught violin as well as the
viola. After war started between Hungary and America, she was unable to return to
her country. She then got married and raised her children for eighteen years. After
retiring, she began thinking about playing and the problems it created.
Having been a child prodigy, a professional player, and successful soloist,
Kato Havas knows all the aspects of performing, including stage fright. She noticed
that Hungarian gypsy players played with ease and therefore developed a New
approach to playing that eliminates physical tension which, in turn, eliminates stage
fright.
Here is a picture of Kato Havas in an article in ESTA Italia Magazine:
Havas wrote the book, Stage Fright in order to address the complexity of
playing and performing. She quotes, A first recital is always a big event I should
look on the audience as if they were so many cabbages and on no account was I to
take any notice of them. The second was that I should go on playing no matter what
happened. The cabbage idea I did not understand at all. Why should I turn the
audience into cabbages when I could hardly wait to play for them? (Havas 23).
Because she started performing at such a young age, her approach as a player
changed as she began to grow older, and inevitably grew in tension simultaneously.
Video recordings of her teaching can be found on the Internet including this
site: http://www.monicacuneo.com/Kato-Havas.html (I do not recommend reading
her biography on this site, the information is not very reliable.) It is a series of ten
workshops by Havas broken down into The Rhythmic Pulse, Suspended Arms,
Right Arm Movement: the Lower Half, Right Arm Movement: the Upper Half, The
Left Hand Action, The Bridal, a Folk Tune, The Trembling Bow, The Thumb:
Telemann, Sing the Note Names, and What I Learned from Hungarian Gypsies.
What is Havass New Approach? She says, when I began to teach, I
realized that a whole new approach was necessary- an approach which eliminates
physical disturbances and makes it possible for the mind to have full reign over the
music This approach is based on the idea of balance, not of strength (Havas 2). It
is about natural balances that are found in the bodys movements. It is about playing
with ease, without worries, so that we are free to give the music to our listeners,
communicating music instead of trying to prove how good we are. A teacher in
Oxford, UK says this perfectly:
This starts with eliminating all physical tensions we have when playing,
which cause pain, physical injuries, harsh sound and insecurity and nerves, a serious
problem for most payers. It is not enough to say, practice more, play more in
public, etc. A lot of teachers are good at teaching the interpretation of a piece,
what about the emotional side of playing? In our drug-oriented society there is the
tendency to solve every problem with a specific drug, and this more and more often
applies to musicians and their stage fright. (Monicacuneo)
In one of her three books, Stage Fright addresses the physical, mental, and
social aspects of stage fright, in that order. First, physical tension makes every
technical aspect difficult to execute and even impossible to play. It eventually
causes pain and serious physical injury. It comes from tension such as gripping the
bow; pressing chin on the chin rest, bow on the strings, left hand fingers, etc., in
which prevents the player from playing in high positions, double stops, or fast
passages. Secondly, stage fright generates insecurity to those who feel unable to
overcome difficult passages and is therefore a mental tension (the fear of not
making it). She writes about a thorough understanding of holistic playing and
performing.
In her lessons, Kato Havas keeps it light-hearted. A direct quote form her is
this: Dont look at me so seriously. You give me stage fright. Music can be tragic,
exuberant, everything but never, never, never, serious business. Her goal is to
create an increase of confidence as well as ease of playing by the end of each lesson.
She also says, Please dont play well. Good playing is so boring. Please dont try to
be good to please me. Instead give me pleasure and joy in your playing and give the
audience pleasure and joy with your playing. Performing, to Havas, is to give
pleasure to the listener. Her lessons start of as a two-hour experience when the
student has a new piece of music. Though the student is anxious to play the piece,
she first asks the student to tell her everything they know about the background of
the music, composer, and genre. She even asks what the student sees visually and
finally requires the student to sing it. This is for the purpose of knowing and
learning the drama of intervals, which is one of the main points of the New
Approach: the realization that music really is in the left hand in between the finger
spaces. She proceeds with having the student play the piece silently (without the
bow) and fingering the notes on the page, then the opposite; playing without the
instrument and only the bow. In this approach, she breaks down the piece into
tolerable segments until the students is able to pick up the violin, having an in-depth
understanding of the music without having played a note.
One of her elements of teaching is suspended arms. This has to do with

having light arms when playing (instead of heavy). She teaches this concept with
exercises such as what she calls winging, flip flop, and the no violin-hold.
Winging is a swimming-like motion with the arms mirroring each other like bird
wings, swinging out and in. Flip flopping is taking the arms out and in by rotating
the forearm from the elbow. The no violin-hold is demonstrated by holding the
violin in the left hand facing upwards at the plane where the arm naturally falls and
swung left to right. These exercises are to release tension and create movement for
letting go. She also encourages using the voice more often in order to release that
tension (held in the neck and throat).
In another one of her workshops, Havas separates the violin from the bow.
She focuses on the right arm movement with the bow, specifically the upper half.
She works with students first, with large motor skills. She talks about the two
hinges of the right arm. She says that problems occur in the elbow, especially in
relation with the wrist. She mentions that as a teacher, one should never mention
what NOT to do, but rather what TO do.
A huge component in Kato Havass teaching is something many instrumental
musicians fail to recognize on a regular basis. This is the exercise of singing note
names. By singing before playing, we coordinate all separate parts including left
hand and right arm movement, rhythmic pulse and melody, into a whole in order to
focus the mind of the music alone. This directs the performers full attention on this
single aspect in which worry, self-consciousness, fear, and anything else cannot fill
the mind with anything but the music.
These are just a few important elements in Kato Havass teaching in her New
Approach. These big ideas first change the mindset of the performer, because we
are all people and struggle in some sort of way with what thoughts we allow into
our minds and what type of movement results in performance. To really
understand the music, one must embody the elements, the instrument, the
composer, and the performance as a whole and should come forth with a love for
that music; for many times we forget the point of why we began to play in the first
place.
I love the idea of performing as being a form of communication. This
approach releases the stress of trying to play perfectly and allows the performer to
be an artist. What comes out on the stage is a direct result of what is going on inside
the performer; what he or she allows in their mind in order to make sound in the
moment. Havas calls it having a sense of giving. The audience is there to hear
music because they have problems and are there to relieve their problemsthere is
nothing like music. As performers, if we do not go in with that sense, we are merely
playing for ourselves. In all of her videos, Kato Havas is a spunky little woman full of
life and enjoyment. She creates a stress-free environment to foster learning.
Her books reaches performers who desire to eliminate tendonitis and stage
fright in order to improve tone and play with more ease.

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Abbie Marosi

Kato Havas Pedagogy

One of her elements of teaching is suspended arms. This has to do with

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