Why Study Music?
Music is Science.
It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics.
A conductor's full score is a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities,
volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact
control of time. It embodies many levels of physics from acoustics to
architecture.
Music is Mathematical.
It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into
fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper,
in a highly specific form with regard to exact placement and symmetry.
Music is a World Language.
Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French; and
the notation is certainly not English. It is 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, taking on the emotion of a nation, region or a people. It is
the only Art form we can hear as people hundreds of years ago had. Unlike
paint, whose image is always there once created, Music is perpetually
"Repainted" each time it is performed. The feelings and thoughts
of countless generations are forever cast in Sound.
Music is Physical Education.
It requires fantastic coordination of the fingers, hands,
arms, lips and facial muscles, and control of diaphragmatic, back, stomach
and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears
and the mind interprets. There are as many calories burned by a symphony
trumpet player in one performance as there are by a quarter-back in a
professional football game.
Music is Art.
It allows a human being to take technical and sometimes
difficult areas of learning and translate them into human emotion. It
helps every person to recognize and understand beauty, and to understand
love, compassion and how to live more fully within this world.
This is Why We Study Music.
Not because we expect you to major in music. Not because we expect people
to play music all their lives. 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 more sensitive, especially to all the thoughts and feelings
put into sound throughout the ages, 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?
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