Why is Music in our schools?
MUSIC IS A SCIENCE.
It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A Conductor’s 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 HISTORY.
Music usually reflects the environment and time of its creation, often even the country and/or racial 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 accumulated knowledge and skill and use it 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 you to major in music.
Not because we 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 more human, recognize beauty, be more sensitive, be closer to an infinite beyond this world, have something to cling to and have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good.
In short, more life!