Taking a hint from Mozart in G major I went to play Schumann's Kinderszenen, a cycle I have always found troubling, in the way that I find many Schumann cycles troubling--some of the pieces have ambiguous tonality and some are difficult to begin and/or end.

What do I find? It is all about relationships within the family of G major. Did Schumann have reactions to G major when he was a child? Do those reactions set the scene for the pieces in this cycle? Interesting to speculate.

My reason for recalling childhood reactions to Mozart has to do with how much more difficult it is to articulate troubled responses than to pretend that everything is okay. How many children are given permission to express negative reactions to things that are supposed to be "great" or "beautiful?"

So now I'm thinking about clear-headed thinking concerning Mozart. This is how I learned Mozart: My first exposure was the easy sonata in C, K. 545. It was in sheet music, so I was younger than 12. I found it incredibly frustrating: the tempo in the first movement was impossible to maintain; the scales, particularly those in F, were difficult beyond belief.

At about 12 I was assigned the G major, K. 283, this time in Kalmus volume of the collected sonatas, wisely ordered with a special Gambel-hinged binding. (It has not yet fallen apart.)

The sound of the G major troubled me so I rarely practiced it. Instead I wandered through the book playing passages here and there, some of which I adored and returned to again and again. Others I detested royally and would turn the page in protest. Among the things I objected to were gratuitous chromatics: why did he persistently use them in all the wrong places?

In this way I learned that Mozart uses tones specifically, not generically. Nothing in music theory prepared me to legitimatize these reactions. It is only in maturity that I recognize their power and how much insight they impart to the work of this remarkable composer.

Beauty is not the point--or, if it is, it is only insofar as it contrasts with other qualities of sound: the bitter, the unwanted, the intrusive--even the hateful.

My students, even the really young ones, learn that they have a feel for different tonalities on the piano. We work with that level of identification with sound; from it comes a sense of comprehension in reading Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin.

The other night I saw a film by a Russian art-film maker, with whose work I was unfamiliar. Not knowing what to expect, I was immediately shocked when the music played during the opening credits was Bach organ works. Why Bach in a late-20th-century film? This was the tip-off. The whole experience was about loss of identity in a century of violence: domestic, national, racial, global, planetary.

Did I enjoy it? Certainly not. Did I get it? Apparently. Did I want to swallow it? That's a different question.

Listening fascinates me. Hoping to glean insight into it from another point of view I began reading The Listener's Art. I find it has very little to do with what I call listening and a lot to do with the kind of literalized response to music which assumes that awareness of structure is a good thing.

It seems to me that structure contains its own message which you get the instant you recognize a phrase that you heard previously in the piece or that is quoted from another source. Structure is as structure does, one might say.

Next week I am going to hear a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major by Piotr Anderszewski, whose work I find, with few exceptions, instructive. I am preparing as I might prepare to meet W.H.Auden for tea. A few things you need to know:

- I do not go chasing Mozart concerto's. I find them, for the most part, troubling, not just to play (they are not simple) but also to listen to. Despite their popularity and the fact that "everyone" plays them they often leave me puzzled.

- I recently bought the full scores of all the concerto's, determined to figure out why I am so puzzled by them.

- You cannot believe my disappointment that he is to play in G major.

That's where the story starts.

Why am I disappointed?

After finally purchasing a ticket -- I had been delaying making the commitment - I began playing from the score. A flood of memories came over me.

G major is an easy key, isn't it? Perhaps to play; not to hear. It is one of the tonalities that is skewed on the piano because of the relative strength of black key pitch compared to white keys. That pesky F# makes the third note of the scale a highly sensitive tone, thus skewing all the relationships using B.

As a child I was troubled to an unbelievable extent by the sound of Mozart's only piano sonata in G major. As a tonality it fares much better - and completely differently - when accompanied by strings. Interesting that the early piano / violin sonatas are designated as being for the piano accompanied by a violin. The strings temper the resonances within the key because they do not have the same mechanical / acoustical values so specific to the piano alone.

I was reluctant to encounter, again, my feeling of complete ignorance in the face of such powerful impressions as those in this most exposed key.

It turns out to be filled with references to that early G major sonata, as well as to other great works in G major and minor.

Here is another instance in the long list of pieces that require affirmation of their actual sound. In the case of Mozart's oeuvre, most of them are among the "easy" pieces.

In one of my small a cappella singing groups we have passed a real milestone: the singers themselves recognize the beauty of their sound very specifically in how focused it is and how good it feels. It is a matter of shared attentiveness that produces the desired result and that observes so keenly both the inner and outer success of their efforts.

This aspect of self-evaluation is missing in so much music training in which the teacher is usually the one who decides whether or not the performance is good. But the student is the one who has to know on his or her own terms.

It very often happens in a piano lesson that I will accept a student's playing as good enough but the student, noting spots that need fixing, will promptly fix them. I find this spectacular when the student is ten years old.