Music

The North Caldwell School District provides various musical experiences for students in grades K-6.   All students receive vocal music instruction for one forty minute period per week.  Students in grades 4-6 are also welcome to participate in the Gould School Chorus which meets twice a week before school to rehearse.

Students in grades three through six are encouraged to participate in the North Caldwell Instrumental Music Program.  Third graders are eligible to participate in the third grade string program by playing the violin, viola, or cello.   Students in grades four through six may remain with a string instrument or choose from the following band instruments:  flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, trombone, or percussion.  Instrumental music students will attend a small group lesson once a week on a rotating schedule.  Musicians who have been playing their instruments for one year or more also participate in band or orchestra.  These ensembles meet once a week before school to rehearse together.

Why Music?

MUSIC IS A SCIENCE : It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. 

MUSIC IS MATHEMATICAL : It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions. 

MUSIC IS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE : Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French. The notation is a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. 

MUSIC IS HISTORY : Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation. 

MUSIC IS PHYSICAL EDUCATION : It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, and arms, as well as lip, cheek and facial muscles. It requires an extraordinary control of the back, stomach, chest and diaphragmatic muscles which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets. 

MUSIC IS ART : It allows a human being to take these dry, technically boring, but difficult techniques and use them to create and express emotion! That is one thing science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling and emotion. 

MUSIC IS TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS 
 Not because you are expected to major in music. 
Not because you are expected to play or sing your whole life. 
Not so you can relax. 
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 be closer to an infinite beyond this world. 
So you will have something to cling to. 
So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good— 
In short, MORE LIFE 

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live? 

THAT IS WHY MUSIC IS TAUGHT 

— Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser

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