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.

In my studio there is a special standard: "Better than perfect."* What makes some playing rate that description is a quality of devotion not usually associated with children, except for those with special prodigious gifts. I find that, if given the benefit of the doubt, most children respond to the magic of vibrations with precisely that kind of attentive care. They treat sound as a living thing, respectfully and with all their wit and wits about them.

It's really a shame that a teacher's insistence on perfection can so readily cloud the vision of so many kids.

*See post of June 3, 2009

Continuing: The issue is to notice when deviation becomes distortion.

The other day I was recalling hearing Myra Hess play three Mozart piano concertos one afternoon in Chicago. I was about twelve. All I remember is that she was revered by my teacher, that she played with the music, and that her scales were unacceptable. Years later a violinist colleague recalled hearing Fritz Kreisler play in Chicago at about the same time in her life, remembering specifically how sloppy his playing was. We agreed that we would give our eye-teeth to hear such bad playing again.

Traditionally teachers go to great pains to make children conform to steady beats while many psychologists and musical thinkers (Jeanne Bamberger, among them) are coming to the thoroughly researched conclusion that there is no such thing.

Is it true that musical sound takes on a life of its own in the mind of anyone or everyone who hears it?

How else account for the different versions of "The Saint James Infirm'ry" by so many music greats? How else account for the unmistakable touch of Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin or Glenn Gould's Bach? All question of taste aside there is a lot of room for play here--literally.

If that is so, why aren't we prepared to deal with a similar range of play in relation to our own playing, or that of our friends? Why are we (perhaps I mean specifically we piano teachers) so intent on all young learners sounding the same?

Why is deviation regarded as threatening in one part of town while warmly praised in another?

Listening attentively to my young students' playing has been quite a challenge -- one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn. It has brought about a significant change in how I think about music.

What is music? The question is occupying philosophers and music theorists now that "music" is increasingly defined as recordings. The discussions, which might seem arcane in the abstract, become urgent when viewed in the light of human experience. I take a broad view of what music is. That is, I find it has less and less to do with pre-recorded versions of the printed score and more and more to do with what individuals make of specific sounds.

Perhaps that's why I feel that my students would be as at home playing and listening to avant-garde as to more traditional music.