As you have probably gathered by now, I am totally fascinated at how astute the untrained ear can be. I teach singing to "non-singers" by getting them to be sensitive to tunable and untunable intervals. Yesterday a complete novice demonstrated, instinctively how musica ficta works -- the sharps and flats not printed in the score of Renaissance vocal music, but known to represent the way the notes were actually tuned in practice. Such things knock my socks off.

Perhaps flawless virtuosity is, after all, a trap. It does not preclude being a thoughtful artist of great stature but it may be confusing to both critics and audience.

I am stunned by the excitement I have heard audiences express for virtuoso performances of the most vapid music. I am even more stunned by the failure of the New York press to cover one of the most significant musical events of recent years even though (?) or because (?) presented by one of the foremost virtuoso pianists of our time, Piotr Anderszewski.

Just within the past two days I have had conversations with several people from various sectors of the musical world on the subject of generic music composition and performance. Then last night I heard an informal performance by an accomplished musician; during a 45 minute set there was one song that conveyed convincing personal involvement. While grateful for that song I wonder what happens to that singer the rest of the time?

I am fascinated by vulnerability in the voice and in instrumental playing convinced that it is what makes some music truly great as opposed to routine.

The deeply personal connection I feel to the music of Ursula Mamlok is rooted in my reaction to a splendid bit of counterpoint approaching a cadence in the slow movement of her Woodwind Quintet. The performance by The Quintet of the Americas took place about 40 years ago in a public symposium, an event which permitted me to stand up and express my awe at its beauty. As it happened Ursula was in the back of the room. She stood up, declared that to be her "favorite cadence" though colleagues told her that is she wrote like that she "would never have a career." We have been friends ever since.

I was disappointed by a recent performance of the work by a different quintet who verticalized the composition, treating the approach harmonically rather than contrapuntally. The effect was totally lost.

With the visit to New York of Ursula Mamlok, still going strong at 87, I am reminded once more of how deeply personal the gift of music is. I am so moved that she found a way to give voice to her strong personality. The musicians who respond to that voice have been unafraid to recognize its power, some of them long before she has achieved the recognition she now enjoys and so richly deserves.

It is paradoxical that putting one's whole self into music-making makes the result more universal. No matter how stylistically correct, by-the-book performance limits access to the initiated. However correct or incorrect I am engaged in the performance when I sense that the performer has her heart in it, right this minute.

This is what makes reading music so profoundly difficult. When do we become confident that we have reached that level of recognition through the medium of printed music? For me it has taken a lifetime, especially in regard to Mozart, the composer with whom I first felt rapport on a one-sound-at-a-time basis. Pretty direct.

Perhaps the emphasis on polite, middling responses comes from a simplistic notion of "music."