Mastery. There are different levels of mastery, to be sure. There are virtuosi who can play anything at any speed without visible or audible effort. Not all of them have mastery. I have heard some who have no control over speed, for example. Because they can play anything their muscles run away, out of control.

Mastery--in the sense of full possession of one's own hand and one's own ear--is fully within the grasp of every musical person, even young children. My goal as a teacher is to acquaint each student with their own personal version of it. Nothing less.

The principle order of the day is a note of gratitude to the young friends who joined me to sing 4 and 5 part a cappella music: by Morley and Weelkes, Palestrina and Monteverdi, plus some wonderful works by Hugo Wolf, completely new to all of us. What a delight to enjoy puzzling out great works in such good company.

Was it perfect? No, it was better than perfect.

Occasionally I get a complaint from a parent--usually a parent who hated practicing, but never mind: "Isn't it time for my child to be studying Hanon?"

Leaving out the part about viewing hatred as a necessary part of growing up, let's just consider Hanon. I wish I had just a nickel for every pianist I hear whose mastery of the five-finger formula has produced a sewing-machine approach to bunches of keys in a row.

The time would be better spent practicing typing.

It is a beautiful thing to behold a thorough-going professional pianist and teacher recognize the instrumental intimacy of Schumann's Album for the Young, a work which I regard as a kind of pianistic Bible.

Even the "simplest" pieces require exquisite rapport with the hand and with the sound. And all of the works are exposed to the max.

Why is it called for the Young? This morning I guessed that when it was written, in mid-19th century, a work had to be long to be taken seriously. Otherwise it was written off or, as in the case of Dvorak, simply neglected.

Has anything changed in that regard?

I couldn't agree more: rhythm is central to music. But what rhythm? Rhythm permeates every aspect of our being--not just physical movement. Language, fantasy, the rhythm of our mind's aliveness--inexpressible outside of music, painting, poetry, dance. I don't buy this equation of rhythm with body movement leaving out all the rest.

Comparing the young people of yesterday's post with myself at their age is revealing. I can't recall a time when I didn't play--it was the most natural thing in the world. Though most people would undoubtedly say that I did it very well, I knew that critical elements of technique eluded me. I could not figure out why.

Because I really wanted to play solving that problem became the central pursuit of my musical life. I knew that if I figured out how to play the piano I would have figured out how to live.

Neither of yesterday's young people is a natural piano player. Neither is obsessed with the instrument and I don't expect them to pretend that they are. Our mutual understanding on this point and my conviction that there is more to it than the mechanics of playing frees them to enjoy each other and to dig the music.

They are both well past the age when most kids quit. Showing up promptly at 8:30 every Saturday morning is a sign of how important this is to them. Yet I know that neither would make it into the school where I taught young people until the school's policy became dependent on competition for admissions and advancement.

The point is that uniform emphasis on the physical aspects of playing discourages some really intelligent and passionate kids from studying serious--not the same as humorless--music.

"Oh no! This is evil!" This was the reaction of two teenagers sightreading the final variation of Mozart's Theme and Variations for piano four-hands. After pages of interchanged triplets and thirty-seconds suddenly out of nowhere sixteenths! The nerve.

They couldn't get over how all this trickery emerged from such a "dinky-sounding" theme.

Hard? Sure. But better than hard is provoking, and best of all is laughter-provoking.