77. Music Is the Key to the Development of All Mankind
Without an understanding of music, each of our lives is twice as poor as it should be. All we need to do is roll up our sleeves and put music education back on its feet.
Each time that I speak about literacy, I must clarify that I’m talking about music literacy. For some reason, the word “literacy” doesn’t apply to music, and is used exclusively for language grammar. For the past few centuries, people have been focusing exclusively on literary literacy, and have dismissed music literacy as unnecessary. In reality, this is the highest injustice to the music language, and leaves a huge hole in our culture. Backfiring, musical illiteracy “beheads” the universal education of mankind.
Plato didn’t accidentally name music as the most important subject, which should be studied earlier than all of the rest. At the core, music is universal. It is the most effective means of strengthening the balance between abstract (notes) and concrete (perception), between logic (grammar) and feeling (intonation), between time (pulse and rhythm) and space (pitch). Learning music, a child receives a store of the highest knowledge and abilities, key to the development of all learned fields. Musically literate children can master all other school subjects without issue. If we give the music language to the children, we will undoubtedly solve a mass of other problems! All that’s left for us to do is to wish for this to happen.