Why Teach Music? (by Kathryn B. Hull)

Music is 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 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, and often in multiple combinations simultaneously. Music is a Foreign Language. Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French; and the notation is certainly not in 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 creation, and often even the country and/or racial feelings. Music Develops Insight and Demands Research. Patterns are analyzed, similarities and differences identified, and style and period characteristics observed.

Music is Physical Education. It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, feet, lips, cheeks 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 These Things — but most of all, Music is Art. It allows a human being to take all 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.

THIS IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC:

• ...Not because we expect you to major in music
• … Not because we expect you to play or sing music all your life
• … Not only so you can relax or just 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 retain for enrichment.
• So you will have more love, more compassion and more gentleness.

. . . in short, more LIFE! Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?

THAT IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC!