As I listened to a quite fine community orchestra play the very demanding slow movement of Dvorak's rarely-played Sixth Symphony I was struck by how different the motivation must be to play an orchestral instrument than to play the piano.

One of the main differences is the loneliness of the pianist contrasted with the constant emphasis on ensemble skills for the other musicians. I have seen it happen over and over again that the pianist is expected to master ensemble skills the same way the other instrumentalists are, even though burdened with at least four times as many notes. In other words, pianists are usually thrown into the pot too soon and without the proper support to make the experience meaningful.

I recall vividly my first experiences playing chamber music: The score was set in front of me and I felt overwhelmed. It was like plunging into the Atlantic and being unable to come up for air until running aground at Southampton --and I don't mean Southampton N.Y.

My recent article in Chamber Music Magazine was entitled by the editor "Experiments of a Chamber Music Coach." My first reaction was puzzlement. Now I realize that that is how my work appears to others, particularly to other teachers. I have, in fact, been conducting a lifelong experiment in teaching and not just teaching chamber music.

I put the ear first. The ear is the motivator, the organizing force, and the source of satisfaction for the player at every level. Yesterday the proof of that came through more clearly than it usually does.

The student is a young woman whose younger brother is blessed with a gift of musical facility the outward expression of which is severely limited by physical constraints. It is nevertheless facility which she does not possess. What she does possess is an ear, not a musical ear as usually defined by the ability to imitate pitch and rhythm, but a responsive, emotionally informed ear readily affirmed by an astonishingly precise vocabulary.

Wanting to produce her own music, she has produced some very seemingly primitive music unlike anything anyone has ever produced: it is truly her own. Wanting to expand her possibilities I have suggested she learn some of Bartok's folk song settings in his brilliant For Children based on Hungarian Folksongs. She chose for its title one about a young girl.

Turns out it is not the happy piece she expected. Yesterday, after several weeks of puzzling out the unlikely harmonies we worked on combining their mournful colors with a rhythm that had to move on, as if relentlessly. The tension, the drama were all there: internal, transparent to her and to me.

I couldn't help but feel that, had it been the other way around, with the rhythm coming first the intensity of the sounds would not have penetrated.

Ironically I know that many great pianists advise their advanced students to do what she began by doing: take all the time in the world over each sound so that you digest it thoroughly before moving on. When this is integral to the learning process the stamp of the music is profound and indelible because so deeply felt.

I wasted years trying to do it the other way -- i.e., beat first, against my nature. The result: impatience, boredom.

The trouble with the printed page is that it is easily reproduced--visually reproduced. The trouble with reading, whether language or music, is that no two people comprehend what they are reading in quite the same way.

Children are as capable of insightful reading as adults, often even more so. The same is true for amateurs vis a vis professionals. The absence of pretense to regulation reading makes these two populations valuable to me. Why not to everyone?

Why is the music establishment so threatened by non-conformity?

Surely Mozart, Beethoven or Bach, not to mention Chopin and Schumann and a few others, would not have lasted long in a conventional music school. (Maybe that should read: "should not have lasted ....")

I find that when singularity meets singularity the delight is immense, the fascination endless. But the singularity of the listener needs to be reinforced no less than that of the creative artist.

When does one start to talk about elegance to a child?

A ten-year-old wearing an exquisitely designed striped knit sweater was my excuse this morning. Showing her the finesse with which the stripes were measured in proportion to the collar and edgings made vivid to her the difference between a humdrum fingering and one that made an ornament feel -- and sound -- as if caressed by her hand.

We must all be sure to keep live sound actively present in the lives of children and of each other: sing, tell stories, give little brass bells or Tibetan finger cymbals as Christmas presents, take children to student concerts and sit in the front row.

As the culture gets further and further removed from real sound in all its lively complexity the pedagogical establishment has less and less reason to notice how inadequate music notation is to evoke much less transcribe actual reverberating tone.

We are all paying a high price for today's accommodation to new technologies.

Yesterday I had a long chat with a distinguished Professor of Psychology (a woman) whose specialty is visual attention. I thought we would be talking about my work. We did that to some extent, but what we really talked about what the passion involved with music study.

It turns out that, despite the obligatory twelve years of piano lessons, she cannot read music--never could. This mystifies her to this day. "Isn't it like reading words?"

Well, no it isn't. Tone does not behave like anything else; it has its own intrinsic logic that defies both visual representation and verbal metaphor.

Despite (because of?) all her training and expertise she could not wrap her mind around that possibility. She could, however, express her "agony" (her word) about not being able to play the piano even when, widowed and alone, she decided to give it another try, this time without a nagging mother and competitive siblings to complicate things.

I described to her the secret I have finally discovered after decades of puzzling it out, that the grand staff corresponds to the layout of the hands in both closed and open positions. This she could grasp. "Ah! If you embody it the notation takes on concrete meaning!"

We left it that she should get a piano.
"The best I could do in my limited space is get a keyboard."
"That will never do; a keyboard will never enter your dream life."
"I have no space for a piano."
"Move!"

Last night a warm-hearted group of musicians gathered to read informally two Bach cantatas for the Advent season: No. 1 (Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern) and No. 140 (Wachet auf!)

Without an understanding of the theology of the season this music is simply difficult. The theology of Advent has to do with the unexpected: something is going to happen, we know not when exactly. Thus the rhythmic conundrums, the long rests, the sudden bursts of energy. The difficulty is still there, but it takes on a human feel which altogether transforms the experience of singing and playing.