音乐欣赏(Music Appreciation)

　　what is your favorite kind of music? do you like jazz, popular music, classical music, folk songs, blues, and so on? in high school i took one course called music appreciation which i greatly enjoyed.

　　this was not to learn how to play a specific instrument but to learn how to read and listen to music as an art form. we read the stories about the lives of many composers and the history of the musical instruments themselves. sometimes we listened to tapes at the language laboratory, or concerts. music is sometimes called a universal language.

　　a composer who cannot speak a single word of our language can make us feel joy and pride, exaltation and despair, peace and mystery through his music.