The subject of the morning was the Little Fugue in Schumann's Album for the Young. It starts in A - not a simple key on the piano: too many sharps and so off-balance! Suddenly its primary stabilizing tone, E, turns to an E# and we are in dangerous territory where nothing is reliable.

This prompted speculation on the term "fugue" which, according to the dictionary, means chase. Who is chasing what? I had the sensation, listening today, that here Schumann is teasing the player into all kinds of embarrassing tonal and instrumental situations.

Nothing theoretical about it.

As I walked to the subway this morning I was singing to myself a familiar passage from a piano sonata that I have played many, many times. Suddenly I heard it in a new way: instead of four notes repeating I heard six notes with the final two preparing the next idea.

The need to vary experience, not to repeat myself or to parrot back someone else's version of whatever it is--all these things I recall vividly from my earliest memories of learning. Repetition became entrapment within helpless boredom.

All children--even those with severe developmental challenges--respond to variation in music. We work together at keeping the elements in motion; the alternative makes minds and bodies go numb.

Walking down the subway stairs I almost said aloud: "This means so much to me!"

A young friend of mine once had a temp job which paid $7 an hour. While at this job he spotted and solved a systems problem that was costing his employer, a major international bank, millions of dollars. I remember telling him: "People don't solve problems like that for $7 an hour."

Among other musical occupations, I have been teaching children for many years, determined to find a way to teach so that their music is integrated with all of their intellectual and emotional maturation. It is by far the hardest thing I do. Though the problems I address do not have gigantic dollar price tags, they are far more serious in that they involve the deepest experiences of totally alive young people, no two of whom are alike.

Yet giving piano lessons to children is an activity our cultural milieu esteems as comparable to a temp job. Why? Perhaps because many adults associate their own piano lessons with such disappointment, frustration, sometimes even with such pain that they cannot imagine their child having a positive experience.

To be continued.

After more than 30 years performing and coaching chamber music I find I learn more about the art from my young students. They have been trained to keep a responsive, lively and alert rhythm at all times -- literally, at every instant. Thus they respond effortlessly to one another's whims, errors, momentary insights. The result? They can't repeat themselves, they don't get bored, and it is always interesting to hear them surprise one another.

I am convinced that human interaction is written into the best ensemble music, vocal and instrumental.

Metronomic beats (the existence and desirability of which are highly questionable -- not just by me) are effective as a means or an excuse to avoid positive interaction with another person. But they are definitely not conducive either to good interpersonal relations or to real musical insight.

Today I listened in astonishment as two nine-year-olds working on a duet played around with speed--getting faster, getting slower, but always together. How old were you when you learned to do that?

Did you ever learn how to do that?

I think it's safe to say that anyone reading this blog agrees with me that the piano is a remarkable invention. Why?

Might it have something to do with sound?

If so then why is it so often played as if it were a machine--the kind of machine we wish we could turn off, like the jackhammer that occasionally digs up the neighboring street at 6 a.m....

Yesterday, determined to get one of my young students to relish the humor of a certain well-known Clementi Sonatina in C, I suggested she play only the quarter notes: leaving out everything else, play only the quarter notes. It was, according to her, like playing a different piece.

In the evening I heard a recent piano work by John Adams, the effect of which was very similar to that of playing only those quarter notes.

Try it with any familiar Classical work. Let me know what happens.