We Believe In Music

Every March when we celebrate Music In Our Schools Month, we find ourselves newly inspired to wax poetic, melodic, and harmonic about our favorite shared topic – music! Nobody has to convince any of us of the value and importance of music, do they? But we do have to (frequently) defend the role of music in education. As long as that is an unfortunate fact, we will continue to bring you songs to teach and inspire, and hopefully give you a little gentle ammunition to keep your music program alive and ticking.

The song "We Believe In Music" is just such an offering. It's bold and assertive in its message and its style. It's also a lot of fun to sing and listen to. Use it for your school's celebration of MIOSM, or for any performance, recital, concert, competition, etc., that touches on the noteworthiness (pardon the pun...) of music. There's also not a thing wrong with using it in your music class solely for the enjoyment of it. However you use it, there are a few things we want to share with you.

First of all, we do include a part 2, which is optional. Its entrance is also optional and variable, depending on how it works best for you. Reference the music to see what we mean. If using part 2 is not realistic for you, rest assured that the performance will not suffer, as we have doubled this line in the orchestra on the Performance/ Accompaniment recording. (Which, by the way, is really quite something.) If you do have part 2 singers, it's a great reinforcement. We can also suggest asking older students, even parents or teachers to join in to cover this part if you'd like to include it but don't have the personnel in your choir or class. For that matter, invite them to sing part 1 as well. Like we said, it's fun to sing, especially with that nice, big ending!

Other things we'd like to tell you about are the free rehearsal extras we provide for you on our web site. There you will find an isolated audio track for part 2, as well as part 1 (top notes) from measure 45 to the end, and part 1 (bottom notes) from measure 45 to the end. So you can share how neat the part-singing will be, we have also created a snippet that includes the vocals and piano from measure 9 to the end the second time through. For details on these extras, check out the chart in the box on page 67.