This morning I was reminded of the many times children have answered a musical question by singing "I don't know" on the pitch which is the answer to the question.

What reminded me was a young man who does not do that; he simply puts his finger on the answer, directly onto the piano. He is unfailingly right. The questions are about how a piece or a passage organizes itself--specifically around which tone--not always obvious.

Yesterday a ten-year-old showed me the most amazing thing: when she is fascinated by a sound she will work at it until she can do it, even though it is seemingly beyond her capacity. In other words, the sound not only motivates her, it also organizes her hands and her mind. She will work on the elements of the sound one at a time, then combine them in various ways. In this case, as often happens on the piano, it is a matter of doing not two but three things at the same time. I kept asking whether it was too hard. "No, no." Amazing.

The same child works on her own at playing two against three, for the same reason. In each piece the sound is irresistible.

The collection is called Album for the Young, by Lowell Lieberman. I thoroughly recommend it for players of all ages.

It occurs to me that I risk generalizing about "music students" when what I really know about are piano students. The main difference is that the student's ear involvement translates directly into tone production on practically every other instrument whereas, on the piano, there are many confusing obstacles between the ear and the output.

Hands all by themselves are formidably complex. Add to that the very distinct and very confusing qualitative differences between registers on the piano--it is not one instrument, but many. Some people find it impossible to believe that an E in one register has anything to do with an E in another register.

Musical training all too often seems to require suppressing the gut reactions I have been contemplating lately. This is strange because, as it turns out, the students who are labeled "gifted" are those who manage to preserve some of that reaction, though customarily so buried by the time they are young adults that they no longer know how to access these reactions consciously.

As for those who consider themselves (or who have been labeled) less gifted this means that they don't believe in the validity of such responses.

Either event is a waste.

One of the blog followers in Sweden (greetings!) wanted to know what a "gut" reaction was. Interesting question.

It is the reaction you have before you know you are having a reaction. According to way I understand the ear it is often what makes us "miss" notes. Our ear leads us to a choice of note that doesn't happen to agree with the composer's choice. This implies an element of conflict. This conflict is the beginning of meaningful interpretation.

Musicians tend to be trained out of having gut reactions because they are dangerous.

Children and amateurs are vulnerable to them. That's why I love working with them--I learn so much about how the ear works.

There stood the Clementi exercise, looking like clockwork: scales up, scales down, parallel motion, contrary motion.

Here sat an attentive 16-year-old with a cultivated ear, feeling her way through the scales one at a time, first one hand then the other, commenting on how beautiful each was, or how odd.

It was, to my mind, an ideal lesson in technique: you get your hand to model the sounds you hear as the scale unfold--quite unlike repeating formulas of tone and of fingering.

In the course of this past week I have had in-depth conversations with four colleagues, none of them personal friends, on the subject of temperament--not the diva-tantrum variety, but the tuning variety, as in equal temperament. These included a musicologist, professional keyboard player, singer, and composer. Each expressed malaise with equal temperament. Each had devised a way of dealing with it -- some by opting out of it altogether. These latter choose a diet of early music tuned to some kind of mean tone or just intonation--the way I used to tune my harpsichord in the days when I played harpsichord.

I love the sound of the piano though I am deeply sensitive to the differences in tuning. That's why I keep up my a cappella singing--teaching sight singing by teaching tuning and singing with advanced musicians just for the fun of it.

I do believe one can have it both ways. But it definitely takes thought and discipline.