Today's topic is boredom. I know it well, having suffered from it for years and years. Yesterday I saw the makings of it in a young student and the opposite of it in a slightly older student.

The makings of boredom: When tone is crammed into rigid rhythmic units it loses its traction. It has no inherent reason for moving, whether up or down, or for repeating, or for not moving. Tension cannot exist when metronomic rhythm determines the next event. One young student needs desperately to be relieved of every sensation of tension. He is in a hurry to learn "how it goes" so that he can repeat it, fooling himself and others into believing that the music has been learned.

The slightly older student feels the imprint of tone in specific rhythmic contexts so intently that variation is almost painful to her. Incredible to me is the intensity of this phenomenon. Dealing with it requires substantive work.

As a young learner I more resembled the first case. Ultimately I distorted every detail of a composition: articulation, note values, and so on; in my rush to pretend I knew what I was doing I could only play fast and faster. Needless to say, I could not sustain interest in a composition until someone caught me at this little game and showed me what musical traction is.

Singing William Byrd's Mass for Three Voices together with two highly intelligent musical amateurs last night I became aware of how much professional musicians miss because the notes are, for them, so easy. For these people, in contrast, every linear push and pull required effort and yielded insight.

In the light of this detailed attention the work took on added significance; every tonal motion conveyed meaning directly linked to the text.

This is why I treasure the work I do with amateurs.

I have grown increasingly convinced that composers work with specific tonalities implanted in their consciousness by vocal colorations or instrumental timbres. Premature schooling in theoretical generalities leads us to believe that tonalities are interchangeable. Thus, it takes a little digging to get people to respond to my question about whether they have a favorite key.

But most of us do have a favorite key; the more active musician probably has several, just as the literary enthusiast undoubtedly has several favorite books; the answer may depend on when, where, and by whom the question is posed.

I recently heard a string quartet recital the most memorable event of which was the cellist's obvious fondness for the low D in the "Rosamund" string quartet by Schubert. Oh my! That a single tone could generate such excitement.

Forty-five years ago (cast your minds back) I heard Dvorak's Dumky played by Adolf Baller's piano trio. The cellist's repeated C quarter notes an octave up and down totally galvanized my attention: it clearly was holding up the whole world at the time; it inspires me to this day.

For many years I have taught rhythm not by counting but by two different but complementary methods: 1) as a function of bodily gesture as expressed in geometric figures drawn two-handed with colored pencils while singing several verses of a song in different tempi and with varying emotional intent; 2) as a function of ratios.

The ratio concept clarifies a lot about how rhythm actually feels: why, for example, two hands at the piano are so difficult to coordinate. It also explains why more than one person may be necessary to express the underlying energy of a piece of music.

In a Beethoven symphony it is not unusual to have a ratio of 1:128, the single unit being a tone sustained by the French horn in a tie over 4 bars in 4/4 time, the 128 parts corresponding to 32nd notes in, say, the flute. In between one might find
1:2, the 2 corresponding to a two-bar tie in the double basses; 1:4 the 4 being whole notes in the bassoon; 1:8 = half notes in the cello; 1:16 = quarter notes in the clarinets and oboes; 1:32 = eighth notes in the viola and second violin; 1:64 = sixteenths in the violins.

With all these layers of energy--all these different gears, so to speak, it is perfectly sensible that a symphony requires many people for adequate realization.

One difficulty posed by easy-access-flattened-out music reproduction is that it all sounds so simple, so easily reduced to 1 - 2 - 3 - 4.

For the past several months I have immersed myself in the study of Mozart from the standpoint of his instrumentation, on the theory that one of the outstanding characteristics of the piano from the very outset was its ability to imitate other instrumental colors: it could talk; it could sing; it could substitute for orchestral strings; it could be a bassoon, an oboe, a flute, a horn.

To my surprise, this important instrumental attribute does not come up in discussions of his music.

Pedagogical questions: Is it necessary to become like everyone else before you can become yourself?

Is it even possible to become like everyone else?

What's wrong with becoming yourself?

Hearing more and more generic singers, pianists, etc. raises these questions with some urgency.

In today's New York Times several arts critics weigh in on the topic of Lincoln Center's recent White Nights Festival, purportedly about the spiritual in music.

When I received the festival's slick, expensive flier I could see immediately that it was a marketing ploy. Isn't all music spiritual? Does the hype insure greater likelihood of a profound experience? Do expensive graphics and heavy paper equal anything more meaningful than money?

So what's the real problem? It's that we are so bombarded with glitz and noise that we (some generalized, non-existent we) do not trust ourselves to find something beautiful on its own terms, whether it be our child playing in the next room or a lesser-known performer in a club downtown.

Stick your neck out: The next time you hear something beautiful tell the player that you enjoyed it: Don't assume it's a frequently conveyed message. It is not.