It promotes spatial awareness, abstract and mathematical thinking, physical coordination and self-esteem. Furthermore, it is a way to learn about diverse cultures and historical periods, and it teaches an individual to cooperate with each other through group rehearsals and performance.
Music's direct effects are far more important than its side effects. Music is as fundamental to thought as is mathematics; it does not merely promote abstract thinking, it is one of the highest forms of abstract thought; music is not merely good for self-esteem, it sensually, intellectually and emotionally organizes the mind. This is an ancient concept.
Plato wrote in The Republic: "...rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten..." Pythagoras and his disciples understood music to be the "harmonization of opposites, the unification of disparate things." These ancient definitions of music, which we should broaden to include the arts generally, find resonance in current neuroscience research that defines creative activity in the brain as the merging of reason and intuition. Neuro-scientist Antonio K. Damasio has compared the workings of the mind/brain to a musical score. Beethoven, who knew little or no science, sensed the value of the comparison in 1824. He wrote: "I wish you all success in your efforts on behalf of the arts; it is these, together with science, that give us inclines of a higher existence and the hope of attaining it."
Music's direct effects are far more important than its side effects. Music is as fundamental to thought as is mathematics; it does not merely promote abstract thinking, it is one of the highest forms of abstract thought; music is not merely good for self-esteem, it sensually, intellectually and emotionally organizes the mind. This is an ancient concept.
Plato wrote in The Republic: "...rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten..." Pythagoras and his disciples understood music to be the "harmonization of opposites, the unification of disparate things." These ancient definitions of music, which we should broaden to include the arts generally, find resonance in current neuroscience research that defines creative activity in the brain as the merging of reason and intuition. Neuro-scientist Antonio K. Damasio has compared the workings of the mind/brain to a musical score. Beethoven, who knew little or no science, sensed the value of the comparison in 1824. He wrote: "I wish you all success in your efforts on behalf of the arts; it is these, together with science, that give us inclines of a higher existence and the hope of attaining it."
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