I gradually began to know that the world of the composer's "word of life" is the superior world of music. One is first drawn to music, feeling it is beautiful. Then, gradually, one matures to acquire the ability to feel the world of the heart of music. If you want to foster this ability, choose a masterpiece you find beautiful, whether by Bach, or by Beethoven, and repeatedly listen to it, fifty times, a hundred times. I woke to music when seventeen by Schubert's Ave Maria. A flower patch of one colour from a distance begins to reveal beautiful flowers as you approach it step by step; the colour of the leaves come into the eye; as you approach further, a pleasant fragrance, too, can be felt. In the same way, the composer's heart, personality, character, and the emotion he committed to the music begin to be clearly felt as you listen more. You begin to feel the entirety of the composer. In other words, life starts to communicate with life. You will be in touch with people with a great and beautiful heart. In talent education families, small children listen to records every day and repeatedly practise the same pieces. They soon start to play Bach and other composers. Even if the parents have so far been uninterested in music, they unconsciously acquire the ability to appreciate music, and the entire family may enjoy being able to feel music close to their life. I see a growth of a beautiful and high sensitivity in it. This is namely, the education of sensitive human beings. In the world of music, while contact with the life of great men like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven is accumulated, the education of beautiful sensitivity is carried out unconsciously. What a wonderful world of human contact music is. In music, Bach and Mozart are still alive and talking to us. "Sound breathes life / Without form it lives," I often repeat. 20 What Music Appeals-Life's Communication with Life Talent Education Journal Nº 6 (Summer, 1980) has created. I have come to think that not to know music is a great loss. We are born as human beings and brought up in a society of cultures; how can it not be a loss to live without knowing the world of that great culture? Among the cultures that mankind has developed, the most universal are "spoken language" and "written language." People all over the world benefit from them. Another world which has developed in parallel with language is music. It is the world of communication between life and life. Some say, "I don't understand music well." Unhappy until they can translate music into spoken and written language, they feel they don't understand "what it means." They don't at all think that the world which is not comprehended by appealing to the intellect as in the case of spoken or written language, is indeed music. So, I ask them, "Do you feel it is beautiful?" They answer, "I feel it is beautiful." I then answer, "That's it. When you feel so, you have entered the world in which you can feel music, i.e., the artist behind music. If, on hearing a piece of music, I am asked if I understand it, I too will answer, 'No, I don't.' However, if the question is if I feel it, yes, I feel it well, I feel the composer's humanity, heart, sensitivity, emotion." Dr. Shinichi Suzuki Music, I think, is one of the outstanding cultures mankind
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