What is Music?
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, 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 creations, often even the country and/or ethnic feeling.
Music is physical education
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which 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
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 your life.
NOT so you can relax.
NOT so you can have fun.
BUT - so you will be human
so you will recognize beauty
so you will be 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