"I like it."

"I don't like it."

Just how central these pronouncements are in developing a sense of musical structure was again affirmed yesterday when a student began her playing of a Mozart sonata movement not at its beginning, but at the place which she likes best. It put everything else in a meaningful perspective with shades of perceptible response in every note she played.

I am deeply convinced that the art of composition consists of strategically locating such moments so that the player discovers them as if surprised by their vividness.

A composer whose work I had recently reviewed commented on my having identified her obsession, which is harmony--not a particularly fashionable contemporary obsession. I say double bravo to her that her structures make that audible to me, the listener.