Why Teach Music?

Music is a Science
Music is exact, specific: and it demands precise 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 accurate control of time.

Music is Mathematical
Music is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

Music is a World Language
The text of choral works utilize every known written language of the world. 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 reflects the society, environment and times of its creation.

Music is Physical Education
Music requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the back, abdominal, diaphragmatic and chest muscles, which must 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
Music allows a human being to take all these techniques and use them to create and interpret feelings. This is one thing science cannot duplicate: the expression of emotions, that which makes us human.

This Is Why We Teach Music:
So students can recognize beauty
So students learn to be sensitive
To provide something for students to cling to
So students will have more love, more beauty, more compassion, more life!

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?

This is why we teach music!