My first reaction at the beginning of a festive concert honoring Pauline Oliveros was delight at her inclusion of real life sounds in the definition of music. I couldn't agree more.

Then confusion began with an early electronic piece played with the projection of a photo of the antique gizmo she had used to make the tape. Not all the music on the concert was confusing: much of it was simply beautiful--well composed, beautifully played, sung and in one case danced to. What confuses me is that nobody laughs despite the obvious humor of much of her electronic music.

People are no less sanctimonious about the avant-garde than about 18th century music. Same disease; new wallpaper.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performed last night two Beethoven symphonies, Nos. 2 and 3, with period instruments. It was incredible to hear tones so infused with color just by virtue of the acoustics of the instruments. The vulnerability of every instrumental voice went from the extreme wit of the Second Symphony to the naked sadness of the Funeral March in the Third without histrionics, without heavy-handed "interpretation." I felt I was hearing these works for the first time--certainly I felt as if I understood them for the first time.

I don't think I'll ever again go hear these works played with modern instruments.

To give a concrete example of the difference: The French horns are natural horns that produce natural overtones of their fundamental; all other tones require manipulation that give a distinct edge to the sound. The chromatic harmonies that sound so lush in modern orchestras sound truly other-worldly. The strings take their cues from these colorful tone events and the dialogue between winds and strings is off and running.

Go hear them if you can.

You might wonder why I care so much about dumbing down and regimentation. If you live with a young child you learn what intensity is. Nobody smells with greater acuity than a young child: walking in the door they can tell whether there are onions in the soup. The same acuity applies to sight and to hearing.

Methods based on dumbing down and regimentation so infuriated me as a child that I told my mother it was a waste of money to continue lessons with the offending teacher. Not every child has the advantage of being taken seriously. Not every child is aware of an alternative.

The great pianist Busoni said that technical exercises should be doled out as carefully as toxic medicines. Every hand is a unique organ of action and response. They may all have the same number of fingers but there the resemblance definitely stops. I devote a lot of energy to taking each child seriously, which means I assume that each needs to possess his or her own hands to express a musical self waiting to be discovered and developed. Just because pianos share certain attributes does not mean they should be taught as instruments of regimentation.

My neighbor's child has begun taking piano lessons. I hear the evidence when I wait for the elevator, evidence of regimented time doing regimented things--making sounds that are the equivalent of stick figures. OK, stick figures have their place.

But the ear is too fragile, too personal, too precious to be dumbed down.

Espousing this approach feels sometimes like taking on an entire culture. I'm game.

I am fascinated by listening. Yesterday I ran into a former student on the street. We talked animatedly about listening and how out of style it is. It causes her a great deal of anguish as she cares a lot about how music actually sounds. (She is a cellist so she is intimately involved with sounds.)

As sound has haunted me since childhood I view it as an activity that has an inward as well as outward aspect. It is a pity that so much music instruction directs the ear only outward. It is also a pity that so much of that direction is pre-determined by visual cues.

The notation is not the sound.

Yesterday I held the first of my Acoustical Kaleidoscope sessions in New York City. It proved a fascinating enterprise as the audience participated in many ways: volunteering for improvisation exercises, commenting, questioning. There could be little doubt but that the piano's sound is incredibly complex, and that the way one listens to it (or does not listen to it) directly affects one's touch.

The more I play the deeper I find the connection between the sensation at the tips of my fingers and my awareness of the minutest vibrations. I don't want to disturb them.

Reading music is not a simple skill by any means. Reading notation should ideally be taught entirely differently to singers than to instrumentalists. When instruments are concerned alternative notations should be introduced, like fingering charts and tabulatures so that the mechanical interface between sound and physical response is objectified.

Since the invention of the piano these distinctions have pretty much disappeared. People who play every instrument expect to read as if in terms of a keyboard. Why doesn't that work?

I am not a scientist, but rather an observant artist/teacher. I see that the ear works fast, very fast; and that the body responds slowly, very slowly. When the notation of sound is confused with physical instructions the perception of sound is slowed.

When children are taught to listen first their physical responses are dictated by what they hear. They don't produce sound, they respond to it. It takes longer to achieve this but the result is mastery, apparent already to the young learner. The love that accompanies this kind of learning is lifelong.