Why is music so important?
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 subdividing time into exact fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a foreign language
Most of the terms are in Latin, German, French or Italian, and the notation is certainly not English, but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.
Music is history
Music usually reflects the environment and lines 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 the 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 these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and to use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate.
This is why we do music
Not because we expect you to major in music,
Not so you can relax,
Not so you can have fun,
BUT
So you will be human,
So you will recognise beauty,
So you will be sensitive,
So you will have more love,
More compassion,
More gentleness,
More goodness,
In short – more life!