Today I am all caught up in the implications of a brief exchange with a musician about tunings of keyboard instruments before the era of equal temperament - put by Ross Duffin (How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care) as 1916. This musician, who has perfect pitch, confessed that he can't really tell the difference between one temperament and another.

Do these minuscule differences matter?

It has long seemed to me that the piano is a kind of translating instrument: its pitch can be made compatible with all kinds of other pitches simply by respecting the specific ways in which instruments and voices tune among themselves and not getting in their way. It is ironic that so much early instrumental instruction is based on having children match piano pitch, when it should be the other way around: young piano students should be made sensitive to string and vocal intonation.

Recently I heard an a capella choir that was entirely out of tune with itself. The notes were all there and they were probably correct but, having been matched to piano pitch, they were entirely unconvincing.

This blog is definitely contributing to making the world smaller. Before attending to my post this morning I received an email from a follower in Sweden who was deterred by cold weather from attending a concert the preceding evening. Feeling relatively secure in her company I confess that I, too, was deterred from attending the concert I had planned to attend by a combination of the cold and a cold.

Instead I wrote a brief history of music in the 20th century as reflected in the life of a pianist who had lived through 2/3 of it. It has occurred to me that my musical life has paralleled many aspects of the century's musical trajectories. It began with fooling around on the piano, no formal instruction, no notation, no model of how piano-playing should look or sound. From there it went to lessons with a Wagnerite. After a few decades surviving that fad came the plunge into the originality-crazed modernism-at-all-costs movements of the late 50's.

Saved by a love of the sound of the piano and by continuing involvement with vocal tuning (I am a dedicated amateur a capella singer), I realized the limitations of such modernism. At about that time many musicians became fascinated with music of earlier periods--having been trained as an organist Baroque music was familiar terrain for me. But here was a new approach to string and wind playing and to singing that affected the whole musical scene.

Composers and players alike began asserting their love of sound. It was happening not just uptown but also downtown, in the clubs where improvisers playing all kinds of "classical" instruments were fooling around, as I had done as a small child, but with chops.

It feels like a triumph of individuality over trends, of grounded exploration over regimentation. At least in music things seem to have opened up more than just a bit.

I have already begun to pay attention, if not literally to listen, to the concert I am going to hear this evening. It features a group about which I know nothing except that I have had some contact with its conductor. A piece will be premiered by a composer about whom I know nothing. So why will I go, despite the fact that it is very cold outside, that the event takes place in an inconvenient location, a venue I do not particularly enjoy?

Curiosity. What will the new music be like? What kind of vibes will the performers project? Will it grab me or leave me (literally) cold?

Curiosity is a good basis for listening to all music. Yesterday an almost-ten-year-old, expecting to like a piece by Beethoven--a piece of her own selection, found it uninteresting. A few years ago another child of the same age had pronounced the piece "boring." This led to a question: Would Beethoven intentionally have written a boring piece? My conclusion is a most definite yes. Beethoven and Clementi are two composers that wrote boring music, surely aware of what they were doing. They even used specific descriptive words--German (a la Tedesco), or Swiss--to signal parodies of what would have been for them the equivalent of hillbilly music.

The name Beethoven inspires all kinds of anticipatory emotions, sometimes satisfied, sometimes not. If not, how come? To ask the question requires an objectivity that seems to come more naturally to children than to adults.

Attentiveness and irresistible may seem to be unrelated words, though when it comes to performance they are almost synonymous. An attentive performer makes the music irresistible.

One of the greatest compliments I have ever received was when, just after store opening on the morning after a concert, I met an audience member purchasing the score of the Mozart sonata I had played the preceding evening.

(Now that purchasing a Mozart sonata means purchasing a CD of a Mozart sonata, I had to insert "the score of" to make clear that her intention was to play the sonata herself--to not let me have all the fun.)

Reflecting on attentiveness evokes the image of someone eating a juicy apple. To me as a young child that was the epitome of irresistible. I recall being mystified that similar absorption was so little in evidence when I heard people play music. One important exception was my first teacher whose hands conveyed the great joy she took in playing. Interesting that I don't recall her face, just the hands.

As the new year begins I look forward to an important retrospective concert on January 13 honoring Ursula Mamlok, a dear friend, still vigorously composing at the age of 80+. Her music reflects her life: the struggle to find and assert an identity in a highly competitive field; and the love of music of the past and of particular composers and performers whose lives and work have touched her deeply. She is unabashedly joyous in her celebration of life and love. Thinking about how trite those words have become, let me rephrase: in her celebration of both the public and private aspects of music.

A younger musician once put it succinctly: If she were a man she would be famous.

When and where does a composition begin? The announcement of a mixed media new music performance just arrived in my inbox. It will feature grand piano, electronics, double bass, a drum set and some other things. The performance takes place a week from now; I have already begun to hear it.

In response to my question as to whether there is a composition that they have trouble starting, one thoughtful player responded that he had never noticed. A younger player in the same room immediately cited a Mozart Sonata in F.

The corresponding question is when the work ends. In some cases it never does.