Music is…….
Music is a Science
It is exact, specific: 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 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 certainly not in English but in a highly developed kind of short hand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complex and universal language.
Music is History
Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country or racial feeling.
Music is Physical Education
It requires fantastic coordination of the fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles which respond instantly to the sound the ears hear 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 techniques and use them to create emotion. That is the one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, emotion, call it what you will.