What Do I Enjoy Listening To?

I would rather listen to a motivated student struggle with musical elements than go through the motions of listening to players whose contact with musical elements vanished in their pursuit of technique.

What are the elements?  Every aspect of music that is felt is elemental.

• Rhythm:  There are so many levels at which rhythm is manifest that it can never be entirely routine.
• Tone relatedness: There are so many ways to relate one tone to another that, again, this defies routinization
• Touch: How many fingers you have and how you position them on the keys or on the strings makes all the difference.
• Breath:  Applies to and enhances all of the above, over and beyond its direct application to singing and to winds.

Issues of style and form take second place to all of the above.