I am fascinated by listening. Yesterday I ran into a former student on the street. We talked animatedly about listening and how out of style it is. It causes her a great deal of anguish as she cares a lot about how music actually sounds. (She is a cellist so she is intimately involved with sounds.)

As sound has haunted me since childhood I view it as an activity that has an inward as well as outward aspect. It is a pity that so much music instruction directs the ear only outward. It is also a pity that so much of that direction is pre-determined by visual cues.

The notation is not the sound.