Unit 2　The universal language

　　音乐，是人们生活中不可缺少的一部分。什么是音乐？你喜欢什么样的音乐？

　　What is music?

　　Suppose you hit a wooden table with your hand. It makes a sound. Now suppose you hit a ball. It makes a sound. The second sound is called a tone. A tone is a single musical sound. Music is the art of organizing tones into meaningful patterns of sound. We might call it the language of tones. Sometimes the language of music speaks to us in tones sounding after one another in melody. Or the tones could be sounding together in harmony.

　　When tones hit with one another, it is not in harmony. But this hit is often full of meaning. What we call melody is given meaning by its rising or falling or moving straight ahead. It is also given meaning by its rhythm of beats and phrasing, its speed and how loud or soft it is at any moment. All of this sounds very technical. But it doesn't have to be understood or thought about for us to enjoy music. What music means to us often can not be put into words. We can feel that the music expresses joy or sorrow, pleasure, tenderness, love, anger-all kinds of things and feelings that words alone could never do.

Music can also be enjoyed just for its beauty, and not for what it is saying. We can get pleasure from even a single tone of voice, violin, horn, or some other instruments. We may love a beautiful melody for many years of our lives and always enjoy hearing it.