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.

Define attentiveness. It may be easier to consider its opposites:
What we experience when we go into a chain drug store
Our reaction to the rhythms of overheard anonymous iPods

The most vivid example of attentiveness that I recall is a three-month-old listening for the first time to a small bell.

Consider that bell: Clearly the sound starts when the bell is struck. But when does it end? Does it ever end?

The possibility of endless vibration keeps us listening even to silence when the bell is no longer actually sounding.

There seems to be an oxymoron in yesterday's post: How can a percussionist's performance be moving? Isn't emotion in music associated with vibrato, rubato, and maybe some other -ato's, many of which have come to mean excuses for self-indulgent distortion?

The riveting part of any performance is attentiveness. A good percussionist has to be mindful of every vibration in the air so as not to disturb, but rather to enhance it. I wonder what would become of traditional music if the players of pitched instruments were less self-absorbed in their beautiful sound and more connected to the overall sound environment.

Some of the problem lies in laziness. Rather than attend to every note in a harmony as having potential for development (it often happens that a fine composer will specify different note values for each chord tone, as if to call attention to that potential) we homogenize easily-identifiable harmonies, making them conform to examples we already know. I know how to play a G major chord, so why should I bother paying attention to this one?

I know this flawed thinking all too well, having been guilty of it myself.

In today's New York Times there is a long article about the rise to prominence of percussionists. In it Allan Kozinn gives a summary overview of the orchestral scene over the past 200 years or so, describing how it has been dominated first by violinists and then by pianists. Now it seems percussionists have come forth from their position behind the pitched instruments to occupy the conductor's podium in symphony concerts and a great deal of the stage in chamber music concerts, hardly one of which takes place without a work that calls for vibraphone, marimba, tuned gongs and/or all manner of struck instruments.

I have long been a great fan of percussion instruments and use them routinely in my teaching. They arouse awareness of pitch as most broadly defined -- or rather undefined. Nothing stimulates awareness of overtones as does a bell, gong or chime. Out of that broad awareness comes consciousness of the minutest aspects of discrete pitch.

That the two are closely related is evident in the extraordinarily focused listening characteristic of good percussionists, resulting in exquisite ensemble musicianship--some of the most moving I have heard in recent months.