Music is a Science

It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics.  A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

 

Music is mathematical

It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

 

Music is a foreign language

Most of the terms are Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.  The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

 

Music is history

Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often reflecting events of the country and/or racial feeling.

 

Music is physical education

It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

 

Music

is all these things, but most of all, Music is art.  It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion.  That is one thing science cannot duplicate; humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

 

THAT IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC!

 

Not because we expect our students to major in music

Not because we expect them to play or sing all their life

Not so they can relax

Not so they can have fun

 

but ---

 

So they will be human

So they will recognize beauty

So they will be sensitive

So they will be closer to an infinite beyond this world

So they will have something to cling to

So they will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good

...

in short, more life

 

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?

 

THIS IS WHY ... MUSIC!