This morning I was reading an essay by Alison Gopnik in the August 16 New York Times on the subject of how young children characteristically explore, as opposed to adults who exploit. Taking tone as the object of exploration young children should be encouraged to move freely within a range of sounds that correspond to the ringing of bells or the piano played with the pedal down. This is quite the opposite of the fashionable regimen of Mozart CDs.

Young children, once aroused by this vast mysterious richness, don't lose interest in sound. On the contrary, they hear and respond confidently to aspects of tone that the force-fed, young and old alike, miss.

The difficult words in my letter to the Times are: "in an environment of mutual awareness." That environment in music study is created by open-minded listening. This is not the kind of judgmental listening we know from years of being listened to critically, that is, of being constantly compared to someone else.

I mean the listening one brings to a concert of new music by unknown composers. Isn't every student of music potentially a source of the new, whether new music or fresh synthesis of old material?

Having heard too many cliche performances of Beethoven sonatas I do not how to find in them the breathtaking sounds that my student finds. He has been improvising on the piano since the age of seven. He knows the piano in ways I do not.

Our hackneyed ears are making us immune from contact with atypical players and also from the potentially mysterious elements of familiar music.

"Continuing" my letter to the Times: The learning that all children need is gross motor coordination, and trust in their perceptions. After receiving premature praise for fine motor skills it can be difficult for gifted children to deal with the reorganization that accompanies gross motor learning -- that is, having to learn at age nine or ten skills that are best learned effortlessly at age five or six. In the rush to get alphabets and numbers down many pre-school programs short change the essential gross motor bases of rhythm and balance.

Part of the "mutual awareness" aspect of my teaching is ensemble improvisation. I play something moody, mercurial, wildly lyrical, while they dance around playing various percussion instruments. Sometimes we do more organized gross motor percussion games. These activities are not met with resistance.

But the perception part is harder. Learning to rely on immediate perception rather than on memory is just plain hard. The smarter the child, the quicker the memory, and the easier it is to mask the need for that instant of confident response that is the sign of real autonomous thinking.

Literally in the news today is my letter to the editor of The New York Times, headed "The Gifted Child." I think you can get it on-line as well as in print. Let me know your thoughts!

Effective rhythmic control may have a lot to do with distinguishing between internal and external rhythms. My internal rhythm is fast--always has been; I can't help it. I first became aware of this as a child unable to bear slow movements. I had no interest in them; I couldn't wait for the tempo to become "normal."

Cultivating awareness of vibrations--the fastest thing on wheels, so to speak--has saved the day. I will never get my mental rhythm to go that fast. I am convinced that this is how children hear if encouraged to get involved in the sound of the piano's strings. This is how I can listen with real interest to students playing under tempo. I hear as they hear; I don't impose upon them the highly communicable rate of that other, more primitive beat, which registered for them and for me as impatience.

Are there sounds in Mozart that you actively dislike?

Today we already found a few in an Allegro spiritoso - remember that means "with wit." For the student it was a whole measure trill accompanied by a highly dissonant Alberti bass. For me it is a single unaccompanied quarter note: I simply don't believe in such sounds and wish they would evaporate.

As usual these turned out to be critical to the drama of the piece. He sometimes makes his point by being deliberately ugly. It's not too strong a word.

The "obedience mode" that one adult spoke of describing the state of mind required to study piano seems hard to shake. That obedience reflects the teacher's absolute authority.

I have learned from this blog that many of its readers are embarrassed when they disagree with a post. I know this from emails. What is wrong with open comment, disagreement even? Why not enjoy some discussion?

It is "strictly old school" to take as authoritative the teacher's every word .

All my work is dedicated to the proposition that everyone, every learner at every stage, is a center of dynamic intent to learn and thus worthy of my undivided attention. This is strictly not old school.