Music is one of humankind’s greatest creations.

What other invention spans the ages and the continents so beautifully? Ideas born in a 17^th-century brain can bring tears to 21^st-century eyes. The flying hands and bold improvisations of a troupe of village drummers can electrify people 10,000 miles away. Guided by a musical heart, a few artful scratches of a pen on paper can, in another time and place, whether by solo voice, jazz trio or chamber orchestra, unfold into sounds of enormous power and feeling.

Music always has been woven through all aspects of our lives and cultures – our history, our arts (both folk & fine), our storytelling, our craft, our commerce, our science and technology, our worship. The story of music is the story of humanity and all its activities, not of a specific time and place but of all times and all places.

There are many things that make us different from one another, or accentuate our differences. But music is a force that connects the globe, links the generations, and spans the millennia. All of us – from the life-long student of choral music to the garage band rocker, from the soul crooner to our most tone-deaf uncle – have a special place in our hearts for music. It’s a natural instinct. We all have particular songs or sounds that arouse powerful memories and emotions, or evoke a sense of place far-removed from the present. Music is hard wired, deep inside us all from birth. Music is a defining characteristic of humanity, so music unifies us as people.

A celebration of music is a celebration of this spirit, our common humanity and human experience itself.

-- Museum of Music Concept Paper, Aug. 2002