Why Study Music?

1. Music is a Science.  It is exact, specific, and demands exact acoustics.  A conductor’s score is a chart, or graph, which indicates frequencies intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

2. Music is Mathematical.  Rhythmically, it is based on divisions of time into precise fractions, which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

3. Music is a Foreign Language.  Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French.  The notation is certainly not in English but a highly development kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.  Music itself is the most complete and universal language.

4. Music is History.  Music reflects the environment and time of its creation, including its national and ethnic sources.

5. Music is Physical Education.  It requires great coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip cheek, and facial muscles, and extraordinary control of the back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

6. Music develops insight and demands research.  Organized, independent thought is required.

7. Music is all of these things, but most of all, Music is Art.  It allows a human being to take all these technical terms, facts, and techniques and use them to create emotion.  That is one thing science cannot duplicate: Humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.  Organized, independent thought is required.