Dots and Dashes

Before I started studying voice, I considered sheet music a foreign language. It was so confusing - all those lines and dots and curvy parts and what not, and then to make it even more confusing, someone put some Italian words on it in italics. I'd glance at music and see this jumble. I'd often wonder at how a musician can translate it all into music when it just made my eyes go all wonky.

So yesterday I saw the sheet music for Batti Batti sitting on the dining room table and the page of notes on the staff was comforting. I saw it and I felt happy, I felt... I don't know, I can't explain it - it felt familiar. So for someone who actually can read music at a glance, what must it be like? Is it like glancing at a page in a book? Do they hear the music in their head? Is the sight of sheet music comforting?

When I pick up sheet music and struggle to read it, it's like entering another world. I wish I had learned as a child - I wonder if, like everything else, it's easier for a child to learn to read music than for an adult.

Off I go to practice reading music.