This week, I was so impressed by our 5th grade band performance at South Middle School! These fine young musicians have made such great progress in such a short time. Kudos to their band director, Dr. Smith! They demonstrated such poise, maturity and respectful team spirit as they made beautiful music together. We are so fortunate to have music education in our schools starting in kindergarten. Below is an essay that my own children's music teacher would include in their concert programs from time to time. I have kept a copy because it so beautifully captures the many ways music positively impacts our lives. Listening to our fifth grade musicians inspired me to share it with you.
Why Teach 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 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 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, culture and times of its creation.
Music is physical education.
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of diaphragm, 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 human beings 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.
Why is music taught?
Not because we expect our students to major in music. Not because we 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?
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