Details, details. As important as it is to get the general idea of a piece of music it is the details that stick in one's craw. They certainly bothered me as a youngster, particularly those pesky chromatic alterations Mozart inserted in all the wrong places. I disliked them to the point of "correcting" them. No one stopped me, so what difference could it possibly make?

I notice when a student trips over details because it shows that the student is reacting to their specificity. This often means that I have to make the effort to go into the probable cause for these improbable musical events. I have benefited greatly from this effort and so has Rachmaninoff, the composer du jour.

Today I remember the remark of a young girl who had played a wrong note: "But the note didn't want to go up!" Labelled by everyone but me a poor reader she did not last long in my tutelage: her parents were determined that she remain a poor reader. I feel that she was really ahead of the game in that she showed comprehension. If that isn't the point of reading, what is?

I recall also moments in which I heard distinctly certain tonal events that surprised me by making it impossible for me simply to play the notes in front of me. When I have gone back to find the passages they have vanished. It is as though I read theoretically and listen acoustically and the two simply do not line up.

Intensity is something that cannot be pasted onto music, either in composition or in performance. Phony baloney is not hard to spot. (Real baloney--Liberace, for instance--is altogether different: my sophisticated piano teacher from Prague admired his pianism and could laugh more easily than I could when it turned into schlock.)

Many library copies of chamber works at Mannes where I have taught for over 30 years, used to be marked with pencil: "More! More!" What did those coaches want if not pasted on intensity? I would have marked: "Less! Less!" which is to say, do less and listen harder. The tones themselves, if composed with real intensity (a fair enough assumption when the composer is Beethoven or Mozart) inform all the passion required.

Usually people don't think of Rachmaninoff as an ironic composer, but the Waltz my students are playing, piano four hands, is definitely ironic. Purposeful wrong notes, hiccuping rhythms, it can't be serious. Maybe the trouble is that we tend to take music seriously just because it is written down. Then it comes as such a shock when someone brings it to life and we realize that it is amusing.

Among the most powerful images we carry around with us are those we learn early on, when first beginning to study music. Among these are quarter notes, associated with beats, and the musical staff with five alphabet-named lines. All of these images affect the way we process written music and very often they distract from our perception of musical sounds and rhythms.

Since about 1963 people have been seriously studying the effect of writing on thought: what a huge difference an alphabet makes! It's about time we were more aware of the effect of notation on music perception.

As important as reading music is--and I believe it is very important--it must refer primarily to what is heard, not what is seen.

Never underestimate the power of an image. I am thinking a lot these days about the image of the major scale: Unfortunately it is imprinted on our brains both visually (as a ladder, primarily for ascending) and in sound (as an auditory symbol of utter stability). The fact is that the scale is, in a definition I read somewhere long ago and unfortunately did not write down the attribution, a combination of melodic fragments.

My work with Tonal Refraction permits musicians to depict the relationships between scale tones as they hear them, not according to the "correct" visual imprint. The results are surprising and have released seemingly intractable blocks to reading and to physical coordination. For me it has provided insight into the nature of musical themes, many of which express just such repositionings of the tones of the scale: Brahms Piano Trio in C, Op. 87, for instance, or many piano sonatas from all periods.

Many people hear the 6th degree of the scale as lower than the tonic. This re-formulation of the scale is frequently encountered in classical music.

Some serious and even interesting people have begun asking "What is music?" It becomes an urgent question these days when so much that passes for music bombards us: on "hold," in the elevator, in stores, not to mention the venues in which musicians dutifully plod through the classics.

I think often of Leonard Bernstein's wonderful song: I Hate Music but I Love to Sing!