Tutor Profile
I am a professional violinist, violist and conductor, studying for a PhD in Music at the University of Cambridge. As a Supervisor in the Faculty of Music, I teach undergraduate music students at Cambridge. I also teach conducting, violin, viola, and chamber music at the Saffron Walden Centre for Young Musicians in Essex. With over nine years of tutoring experience, I also offer private tuition in violin, viola, orchestral conducting, music, music theory, philosophy, history, essay and dissertation skills, english literature, classical civilisation and violin performance.
From the age of 17, I have taught violin and viola to a variety of students, ranging from children and adults beginning their studies, to more advanced performers looking to improve their technical facility and performance skills.
Alongside my MPhil studies at Cambridge, in which I specialised in the cultural history and musical aesthetics of Germany and France in the Long Nineteenth Century, I began working as a freelance academic tutor, and taught Music, History, Philosophy, English Literature, Dissertation Skills, and Classics to A-Level Students. I have since developed two years’ experience, in which I have taught over 900+ hours of educational content with a diversity of tutoring organisations and online education platforms. I also have experience teaching in a classroom setting. I worked as an Assistant Music Teacher at a Sixth Form College, which involved teaching Music A-Level students. I have also worked with academic summer schools in Oxford to prepare Oxbridge hopefuls for their entrance examinations.
My academic expertise is strongest in the fields of the history of philosophy, the philosophy of music, and nineteenth-century music history. I am comfortable teaching both Violin and Viola, as well as Music, History, Philosophy and Writing Skills to final-year undergraduates. I also teach Classics and English Literature to a first-year undergraduate level, and I have intermediate reading skills in French.
Additional Professional Credentials – Violinist and Recording Musician
– I have an extensive portfolio of performing credits on documentary films. Recent highlights include the BAFTA-nominated score for the BBC docuseries on Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein 'House of Maxwell' (BBC2, 2022), and 'Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In' (Netflix) (Passion Pictures / Universal Pictures) (2021).
Approach to Teaching
– I favour a structured approach to teaching. I devise lesson plans in advance of every lesson, catered to the student's specific needs. I also inform the design of my classes through a constructive dialogue with my students. This enables me to structure my lessons within a curriculum that meets my students' specific educational needs, and serves to enable my students to achieve tangible improvements in their academic performance and musical ability.
Academic Tuition
– My academic lessons tend to be structured around specific sections of the syllabus, or particular topics that students require help with.
– I employ a seminar style format, in which I flesh out ideas with the aid of quotations, other audio-visual resources, and analytical commentary which my students can use to develop essays, essay plans, revision tools, and exam revision packs.
– I use Powerpoint to provide students with a variety of resources and visual stimuli.
– I structure my lesson plans with a view to providing short points of rest or temporary closure, in which students are able to ask questions about the content. I am also happy for students to interrupt the flow of the lesson if a burning question arises.
Musical Performance
– Violin lessons tend to be carefully planned to focus on specific technical aspects of performance. To train musicality, I often teach this through the use of Kreutzer and Fiorillo etudes, Dont studies, and also pieces of repertoire catered to the student's musical interests and technical requirements.
– I am open to considering student repertoire suggestions if they are particularly passionate about a certain piece.
Lesson Structure
– Academic lessons tend to be 45–60 minutes in length, but I can adapt my teaching schedule to provide students with additional support if needed.
– Typically violin lessons range in length from 30 minutes to an hour, but I am flexible: I am more than happy to devise a lesson structure that caters for a student's requirements.
Curriculum
Areas of Historical Expertise
1. Europe in The Long Nineteenth Century
– The Music, Politics and Culture of France and Germany in The Long Nineteenth Century (1776–1914)
2. Medieval and Early Modern History
– The Political, Economic and Military History of Anglo-Saxon England 827–1066
– The Norman Conquest and The Plantagenets 1066–1216
– Tudor History (1509–1603), The Stuarts (1603–1649), The English Civil War (1642–1649), The Commonwealth (1649–1659), and The Restoration of Charles II (1660–1685)
– The Crusades (1095–1204)
3. Ancient History and Classical History
A. Roman History
– Republican Rome from the First Punic War to Caesar's Crossing of the Rubicon 264 BC – 49 BC
– Caesar's Civil War, The Second Triumvirate, and The Second Roman Civil War 49 BC – 29 BC
B. Ancient Greece and Classical Philosophy
- The Homeric World
- The Persian Wars 499–449 BC
– The Peloponnesian War 431–404 BC
– Herodotus
- Thucydides
– Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and so on)
– Plato
– Aristotle
– Ancient Greek Stoicism
– Epicureanism
– Scepticism
– Democritus and the Classical Metaphysics of Atomism
– Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology and Ontology in Ancient and Classical Greece
– Sophocles and Classical Tragedy
4. Methods of Historical Research
– Methods of Primary Source Analysis
– Secondary Source Analysis
– Techniques and Strategies of Exegesis
– Techniques of Cultural History
– Ethnography
– Sociological and Anthropological Methods
– Qualitative and Quantitative Research
– Score Studies and Techniques of Music Historiography
– Numismatics
– Military Strategy and War Studies
– Literary History
5. Philosophies of History and Historiography
– Positivism
– The New Historicism
– The New Materialism
– Marxist Historiography
– Actor Network Theory
– The History of Technology
– Critical Theory
– Philosophies of History
6. Literary Theory and Philosophy
– Psychoanalytic Exegesis
– Marxist and Post-Marxist Approaches
– Critical Theory
– The Frankfurt School
– Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
– Vitalism
– Romanticism
– Wittgenstein
– Robert Brandom, Dan Caplan, Ulf Loebel, Quine, and Normative Semantics
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Daniel Phillips
Tutor, Teacher, Instructor
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