Many years ago Howard Gardner described our "multiple intelligences." I found his work deeply affirmative of the choice I had made early in my adult life to give precedence to my auditory mind. Formal education, it seemed to me, was organized primarily by visual and verbal experience. These were not the areas that mattered most to me. I made the choice to go with the ear--my own and that of others.

Now, many years later, I find that the formality of education begins already in pre-school with its over-emphasis on multiple choices (that is, tests) based on visual and verbal experience. In the meantime I have staked my entire life and career on the proposition that the auditory intelligence is one that binds people to one another in many powerful ways, not at all comparable to the visual or the verbal. This is not to put down the latter two; just to maintain that they are different.

How odd to realize that what I have felt all along to be most central to life is now considered "far out."

It strikes me as deeply ironic that we trust psychologists and psychiatrists to listen to us empathetically while we look to piano teachers to "rip us to shreds," as one adult put it.

Does empathetic listening require an advanced degree and a framed diploma?

What does empathetic listening have to do with music, anyway?

It's simple: In order for one's playing to sound and feel authentic--i.e., to sound and feel as if we really mean it--we have to trust our own ear. In order for that to happen someone has to affirm first, that we do hear; second, that what we hear makes sense in its own terms. It doesn't need to make someone else's sense.

Here's where the advanced degree, unfortunately, comes in. After years trying desperately to replicate their own teacher's playing, many piano teachers have lost touch with their own native musical sense. After years of having to get it "right," whatever that is, how can we be expected to change our expectations of our students?

Most of our students are decades younger than we are. They are not growing up in a world of consonant major triads. Their sound imaginations reflect their soundworld, not ours. Unrestricted improvisation is a great way to start the two-way listening that makes real mutual awareness, the basis of empathetic listening.

Today, contemplating Mozart's only piano sonata in G major with a longtime dedicated amateur student we hit on Mozart's trademark combination of the strong with the weak. Sound the stronger two notes of any triad, then add in an unlikely third note, transforming the expectation of strong into vulnerable. Put a full triad in root position on the downbeat opening a section: it will be strong, no? Well, not if it's in the wrong key and minor instead of the expected major.

Such elements are the stuff of high artistry. They are instinctively felt and reacted to by the musical amateur and by the child who feels free to manifest a reaction. The reaction usually show up in "wrong" notes--errors that reveal the activity of the inner musical sense at work.

What is a person to do when someone in the family is practicing and it is truly irksome?

Obvious suggestions: Close the door. Go for a walk.

Less good: Run the vacuum cleaner. Turn up the TV.

Better yet, instead of comparing the sound to a pre-fabricated version of the piece, try to imagine what your relative is trying to achieve and how it might relate to things you know about that person.

A relative of mine, in just that situation, asked me one of the most thoughtful questions I have ever been asked: "Do you think that sounds good?" The answer was: "No!" In reply I received an encouraging pat on the arm with the words, "Don't worry. It'll get better." The relative was my son at age seven; the instrument a tuned-in-the-factory cello that I was trying to get the hang of.

Two realities put his question in perspective. First, I knew it would not get better because it was much harder than I could have imagined to play the cello in tune after decades of living with the sound of the piano. Second, and more important, he knew me as a pianist who sounds good on the instrument I do know how to play. By asking the question he took care of himself and he made me conscious of how my listening relates to others.

It reminds me of the unforgettable opening line of the play "Harry Outside" by Corinne Jacker: "Isn't my practicing bothering anybody?"

No matter how primitive, no matter how "inept," music made by someone you know and/or love is preferable to the recorded version. It is better for the cultivation of you as an empathetic listener and better for the music maker because it represents encouragement. It is important to encourage the inept because those who are naturally gifted don't usually need encouragement. The less-ept are usually the ones who really want to be good at whatever it is. Their desire is palpable, though often not expressed until later in life if at all.

I am for the desire. It lasts longer.

Part of the problem of listening to recorded music all the time is that it inevitably has the sound limitations of the can inside of which it is played back. In getting used to that one loses a lot of auditory alertness. It is, in terms of tone, negative learning.

Tone -- real, acoustical tone in all its imperfect and unpredictable presence -- is endlessly fascinating. So many elements factor into it and into our perception of it.

Sit up close whenever you can. Go to hear students play so that it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get a front row seat. Students need an audience and you need to sensitize your antennae.

Music is a perfect image of life. Each measure, each beat, each part of each beat represents a fresh beginning. The same "you" who played that note wrong yesterday or two minutes ago no longer exists, but is replaced by a new "you" who will play that note differently because charged with new energy, new vitality.

No wonder musicians come into our own in our 60's and really get steaming in our 80's. No wonder many great artists are still performing at 100.

You could look it up.