Cultivating precision is a good idea. I would go so far as to say it is probably one of my primary goals as a musician and as a teacher. But what is precision when it comes to the life of the ear?
Or of the eye, for that matter? Or of the general sensibility?
Ear training often assumes a delimiting of the faculty of hearing, working with definitions a priori rather than with sensations. Tone is incredibly complex. Why not grant that children -- even infants -- are more caught up in its magic than many MuzApped adults will allow themselves to be.
I was always impatient in theory class because it seemed to me that I was being told how to hear, rather than encouraged to hear and make sense of whatever that encompassed. As a result of that training my growth was incredibly stunted for a long time, particularly on the piano, the sound of which is so remarkably complex as to defy electronic synthesis.
Now that I am going back over the repertoire that I first learned, alas, in adolescence, I am stunned at its subtlety and at how difficult it is to respond to it without the interference of narrow-minded pre-digested habits.
Last summer it was Bach Inventions. This fall it is Mozart Sonatas. Both huge undertakings.
