Why Music?
Why Learn Music?
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 times of
its creation, often even the national and or cultural
feeling.
Music is physical education...
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands,
arms, lip, 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 I TEACH MUSIC...
Not because I expect you to major in music
Not because I expect you to play or sing all your life
Not so you can relax
Not so you can have fun
BUT-
so you will be human
so you will recognize beauty
so you will be sensitive
so you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
so you will have something to cling to
so you 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?
THAT IS WHY I TEACH MUSIC!!!
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 times of
its creation, often even the national and or cultural
feeling.
Music is physical education...
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands,
arms, lip, 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 I TEACH MUSIC...
Not because I expect you to major in music
Not because I expect you to play or sing all your life
Not so you can relax
Not so you can have fun
BUT-
so you will be human
so you will recognize beauty
so you will be sensitive
so you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
so you will have something to cling to
so you 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?
THAT IS WHY I TEACH MUSIC!!!