==SOUTH KOREA==

Music is said to be the universal language of mankind. There are different types of music such as classical, popular, dance or folk music. Music can uplift us, delight us, inspire us. Indeed, music is the speech of angels. Music is all around us, everyday of our lives. It is so familiar that we often take it for granted. We hum as we walk along, and sing a tune when we are happy. People whistle when they work. Hardly any of us can help tapping our feet when a band marches by in a parade.
Mothers sing lullabies to their babies, and children sing nursery rhymes. We have all been hearing and making music almost since we were born. Television and radio programs play music. Often we hear music without realizing it, as when we are watching a motion picture or a television show. Music can make an exciting story more exciting, a sad one sadder, a happy one gayer. We play games and dance to music, we sing and play instruments in school and at home, and we hear and sing music in church. We have special songs for Christmas and other holidays. Without music, life would be so dull that we could hardly imagine it. The world around us is full of musical sounds.
In the country, birds and brooks and rain all make their unique kind of music. So do the rolling waves at the seashore. Composers make music out of many different sounds we hear around us. They use bird songs and water and wind and many more of nature's sounds for their songs and symphonies and compositions for various instruments. Many composers have been inspired by the sounds of nature.
Antonio Vivaldi, who lived in Italy nearly three hundred years ago, wrote a composition for the orchestra called "The Four Seasons". In it we can hear nature's sounds for each of the different seasons. We can hear the cuckoo, and the rush of a sudden shower in the music devoted to spring. There are humming insects and the ripple of a cool stream, the song of birds, and the whisper of a summer breeze in the summer music. In the autumn section we hear the joyful sounds of harvest and hunting; and in the winter part there is a gay skating party, with the sounds of skaters falling down and of the ice breaking. All these sounds are made by instruments in the orchestra, of course, but they are close enough to the real sounds for us to recognize them. Yet the music does more than just imitate real sounds. It also gives us the feeling of each season. We also have feelings of our own that music calls up in us.