Music is a  SCIENCE:

It is exact, specific and it demands exact acoustics.  A musical 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 reflects the environment and times of its creation

often even the country and/or ethnic feel.

 

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 PHYSICAL EDUCATION:

It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, and lip, cheek and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles.  These muscles must respond instantly to the sound the ears hear and the mind interprets.

 

Music develops insight and demands research.

 

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 the one thing that many other disciplines cannot duplicate.

 

…So you will be human

…So you will recognize beauty

… So you can relax and have some fun

… For what value will it be to make a prosperous

living, unless you know how to live?

 

~Southern Music Company

San Antonio, TX