"Music has a power of forming the character, 

and should therefore  be introduced into 

the education of the young." — Aristotle

"Young people can learn from my example that 

something can come from nothing.  

What I have become is the result of my hard efforts."

-Franz Joseph Haydn

WHY I TEACH  MUSIC

Author Unknown

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 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/ or racial feeling.

Music is physical education.

It requires fantastic coordination of 

fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek and facial muscles,

in addition to extraordinary control of 

diaphragmatic, 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 of these dry, 

technically boring(but difficult) techniques 

and use them to create emotion.

That is one thing science cannot duplicate;

humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

That is why I teach music.

Not because I expect my students to major in music,

Not because I expect them to play or sing all their life,

Not so they can relax,

Not so they can have fun,

But so they will be human,

So they will recognize beauty,

So they will be sensitive,

So they will be closer to an infinite beyond this world,

So they will have something to cling to,

So they 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?

That is why I teach music.