Yesterday being Christmas I had occasion to enjoy two things about a familiar carol, Joy to the World by Handel.

First: I will always cherish the one time in my life when the organist correctly observed the dotted quarter note -- not half note -- on the word "king." It not only answered the question as to why that note value never appeared in the tune as "everybody" sings it, but it also most splendidly picked up the entire melody.

In response to what must have been threats over losing his employment this error in judgment was never repeated, except in my head every time I sing the carol.

Second: The singing was followed by an improvisation on the tune using an invented scale. A daring young assistant organist (not the same one of Enjoyment #1) rendered a trumpeting chromatic take on the carol's descending major scale. He used a scale so inventive that, though it would be difficult to reconstruct it note-for-note, no one who heard it can possibly forget its exuberance.

I wonder what kind of official feedback he received.

The period instrument movement has done us a service by elevating articulation to its rightful place as a primary conveyor of musical sense. When listening to music of the past we tend to smear it all together in one run-on phrase, imparting to it a sing-song quality that is hard to find compelling. Perhaps in response to that habit far too much modern music recreates the run-on quality. The slight alterations that disturb otherwise endless repetitions of four note figures are perceived by some as meaningful but I fail to take them in out of a life-long preference for musical punctuation.

Two examples show how I came to be aware of that preference. The first was when, as a teenager, I pronounced Brahms a meaningless composer. I knew his music from a Peters edition in which all (I would venture to guess that's not an exaggeration) of Brahms' slur marks were extended by one note to "resolve" over the bar line or on the next beat. How ecstatic I was to find the Authentic Edition in my College Library, at that time the cheapest available, printed by Kalmus.

The other example is indirectly musical. The poetry of Emily Dickinson, read in a conventional edition, lies flat upon the page. Just a glance at a facsimile page of one of her handwritten, hand-sewn books alters one's reading forever.

What we see affects the way we hear. The way we hear is closely connected to what we imagine as possible or potential.

Enjoy this season of lots and lots of familiar music.

Today I have been pondering "factual" and "actual," words used by Josef Albers to describe scientifically identifiable colors as opposed to colors as experienced by people. In his great study on color Albers refers repeatedly to the similarity between color perception and tone perception.

I think we have worked ourselves into a tight corner of listening in which the distinction is lost. We mistake what we hear for factual when it is usually actual--i.e., subject to inevitable distortions that we bring to our perception.

An example of this occurred today when a fifteen-year-old, just beginning to learn extended musical forms, identified the return of the second theme of a sonata allegro movement as not sounding right because "it's in the wrong key." Every theoretical description of sonata allegro form describes this recurrence of the theme as in the right key. Yet this young person experienced it clearly as the wrong key.

Most of us learn sonata allegro structure as factual when it is more of the time actual. The relationship of one tonality to another is affected by many things: instrumentation, register, symmetry or asymmetry of the tonalities involved, and so on.

I find the piece considerably altered by entertaining the idea that the dominant key might indeed be the right key. (Mozart Sonata in G Major, K. 283.)

A blog-follower in Sweden asked whether "notch" of yesterday's post had some meaning other than the openings in a belt. I meant a marker, like the notch you might use to mark a child's growth. What is interesting is that the word the conductor heard and the word I actually said were probably different words altogether.

In speech, as in music, we hear what we want or expect to hear, often at the expense of what is actually there to be heard.

Last night in my singing class people took turns leading the group through a song new to all of us. It is a notation of a song from the American southern mountains--the sort of notation that can't actually be read because the music exists within oral tradition.

As the first person lead the singing my first reaction was, "That's not right!" As she continued I began to feel how her reading differed from my own and by the time she finished I realized she had sung a different song from the one I read. Hers was thoughtful, introspective; it conveyed the energy of secret longing. As others lead in turn the song was transformed into something closer to my own version of it. In groups I prefer the rousing, "all together now" singing that goes for the long phrase.

Interestingly, the quieter version brought out subtle elements of the song's structure. Mine favored the consonant, hers the dissonant.

Which is right? We will never know. That they are different is the lesson of the day.

But my intended "notch" was not a "knock."

Yesterday, after a fine performance by a wonderful community orchestra in Brooklyn, I used the word "notch" in congratulating the conductor on the group's steady improvement over the years. Knowing that I am a professional he understood me to have used the word to indicate my awareness of flaws in the performance.

I have noticed that one of the most difficult things for musicians to hear is praise. There is no such thing as a perfect performance: we all know that. Because we are so aware of how short we fall of our ideal we assume that everyone in the audience hears the glitches.

What would happen if music study included a broader exploration of auditory response than simply pin-pointing right and wrong notes?

Listening, whether to conversation or to music, is among life's more difficult skills. "Ear Training," a required course for musicians-in-school, is more about identifying than about listening. Real listening calls for the ability to shed definitions and hear objectively--though I admit the possibility that objective listening may be an oxymoron.

I have always said that if I were to found a music school listening would be the central discipline, not practicing or competing, or analysis based on visual perception of the printed score. Students would develop a vocabulary to express their responses to all kinds of musical sounds and situations. The pursuit of excellence would be defined by the desire to satisfy one's own ear. I have found that difficult in the extreme.

When I hear students play, whether young or advanced, I am listening for the quality of their engagement with the music. If they are responding to the sounds I have no resistance to their playing, even if it is otherwise flawed.

I recently heard a fine student orchestra perform two rarely programmed symphonies, neither of which I had heard before. One was a youthful symphony by a composer writing within traditional idioms but using recognizable American sounds. The playing was convincing as well as technically fine.

Then followed an intricate, unfamiliar large-scale symphony. I couldn't help but notice the detachment of the majority of string players. (I couldn't see the winds and brass from where I was sitting, but as their parts are much more exposed I doubt they would have conveyed similar cool.) The music is profoundly disquieting, which may explain why the work is not more often programmed. The performance was technically excellent but deeply troubling.

What is achieved by giving excellent young players such difficult material without giving them the means to absorb it at a meaningful level?