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 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 country and culture.
Music is Physical Education
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, 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 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 of your life
Not so you can relax
Not so you can have fun
But...
So you will be more human
So you will recognize beauty
So you will be more 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?
Courtesy of Simi Valley High School Band. Simi Valley, California.