"What is Music?"

(author unknown)

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 most exact control of time.

Music is MATHEMATICAL

It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done, 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 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 creations, often even the country and/or racial feeling.

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.

Music is all of these things, but most of all ...

Music is ART

It allows a human being to take all these dry, technical (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate - humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

Thank you to Pastor Jim Young for sharing this appropriate description.