Why Consider an Education in Music?

The ability to feel music and to express it expands a person's ability to experience themselves and the world around them. Playing music cultivates a person's ability to communicate and trains individuals in social behaviour.

Music promotes the free development of the personality. It provides a foundation of values and orientation in an often chaotic and superficial world.

Playing music trains important secondary abilities in a person-abilities, which are also of benefit in other life contexts, for example in professional life. These include concentration, stamina and motivation, creativity, communication and expression skills, social role behaviour and teamwork.

Musical education helps people to accept the cultural differences which exist in our common world; it enhances integration and the preservation of peace - a process of life long learning.

European music culture with its diversity of form and style is a great common heritage, worthy of being preserved and developed. Music needs to be experienced and understood, deeply felt and grasped in its manifold dimensions. No technical devices will ever be able to substitute live music as a genuine expression of human vitality. Playing music or listening to live music denotes human encounter, mutual understanding, and communication.

The development of a cultural identity was granted the status of a human right by UNESCO in 1989. In 1999, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child calls upon us to respect and promote the right of a child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and to encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for creative and artistic activity.

Adapted from the 'Music Makes People' Presentation by the European Music School Union, 1993.