| 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 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 in 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 the times of its creation,
often even the country and/or racial feeling.
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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 of these things but most of all -
Music is ART ...
It allows a human being to take all of these dry, technically boring
but difficult techniques and use them to create emotion. That is
one thing science cannot duplicate; human feeling, emotion, call
it what you will.
That is why we teach music! Not because we expect you to major
in music. Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life.
But -
So you will be human;
So you will recognise beauty;
So you will be sensitive;
So you will have something to cling to;
So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more
good;
In short, more life.
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