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.
Ø Music is Mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivision of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Ø 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.
Ø Music is History. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
Ø 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.
Ø Music Develops Insight and Demands Research.
Ø Music is all these things, but most of all, Music is Art. It allows a human being to take all these techniques and uses 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 you to major in music or to play or sing all of your life
But so:
you will be human, you will recognize beauty, you will have
something to cling to,
you will have more: love, compassion, gentleness
in other words
a good life!