WHY MUSIC?

This is an article written by a former Coloma Choir director, Pamela Pierson, who is currently teaching at West Ottawa High School in Holland, MI. I feel that this article really describes why we love music and is a great final message to the end of our school year.

As we go through this difficult time in our nation, I think about the role that music has played in our response to the Sep. 11 crisis. We have been regaled with many versions of heartfelt patriotic songs and the power of the human voice has been very dominant in helping us to react to the crisis in many ways. This reaction brings to mind the question,

“Why Teach Music??”

Music Is A Science – It is precise, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A musician’s score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once with absolute 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, French, the notation is certainly not English, but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music are the most complete and universal language.

Music Is Physical Education – It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, 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 Mostly Music Is Art – It allows a human being to take all these dry, technical, different techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate; feeling, emotion; call it what you will. THAT IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC. Not because we expect you to major in music, Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life. Not so you can have fun. But….So you will be human. So you will recognize beauty. So you will be sensitive. So you will get closer to an infinite beyond this world. So that you will have something to cling to. So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more goodness – in short, more life. Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live? This is why we love music.

- Pam Pierson