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.
Music is Mathematical. Rhythmically, it is based on divisions of time into precise 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. The notation is certainly not English but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. Music itself is the most complete and universal language.
Music is History. Music reflects the environment and time of its creation, including its national and racial sources.
Music is Physical Education. It requires fantastic 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.
Music Develops Insight and Demands Research. Organized, independent thought is required.
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.
YOU SHOULD STUDY MUSIC…
Not so you can major in music,
Not so you can 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. For of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live!