There is no real right way to listen to music, anymore than to engage in any other human activity. This is the problem with courses in Music Appreciation which often give the impression that music is made up of distinct themes and procedures (e.g., fugue and sonata form) and that a respectable listener should be able to track these things.

A high school student once confided to me that in order to pass his Music Appreciation course he had to differentiate two themes in a composition though it was clear to him that one was a variant of the "other."

I have a good friend who has the ability to identify sounds as they flit past, including a vivid awareness of harmonies and overtones. It is a skill I do not possess and do not envy. I much prefer letting my being be carried by music wherever it leads me--sometimes the most familiar music leading to the most unexpected experience.

If a piece of music does not hold my undivided attention either the composer or the performer has not done their job.

The more I teach, the more I play, the more I listen, the deeper my conviction that music unfolds one tone at a time and that if we are engaged in the first sound, whatever it is, we will follow wherever it leads.

When a piano piece is announced as in a certain key almost everyone who has ever played the piano will have an immediate reaction, whether conscious or not. For example, yesterday I asked a young student (16) which white key was most problematic on the piano. I was surprised at her reply: C.

C is for her uneventful, which causes her problems. I recall having the same reaction when I was her age. (One adult student has labeled that key "ploddy.")

The question, then, is why so much has been written in that key by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, not so much Schubert and even less Chopin.

Partly for this reason it is not always appropriate to indicate what key a piece is in: the Chopin Mazurkas and many cycles of Brahms Intermezzi, for example, float in and out of keys in thrilling sequence quite outside the logic of traditional theory.

We listeners should have the option of floating. Maybe that is what the key of C invites and what we find so difficult.

So much of European music works because it engages the listener/player in a push/pull conflict: "I want to hold this sound," the unspoken wish of the player, directly conflicts with the composer's indication that it be released and in a certain specified manner.

Last night I heard a recital of songs by various 19th and 20th century French and German composers. Conflict is at the heart of the accompanied song literature. If the pianist follows the singer there is no drama; they must resist one another. If "I want to move ahead" is the desire impelling the vocal line, the pianist must assert "I will not let you move without resistance."

If I pay money, even a lot of money, for a concert ticket and go home with a single sound that haunts me, wakes me in the night, and follows me around for days, I consider the concert a huge success.

The two young people playing Stravinsky yesterday made such a sound. They did it not once but twice--proof, I believe, that they really meant it. No one could have instructed them how to play that sound that way. It was the approach, the touch, the blend, the timing--every element of it was unforgettable. It woke me in the night and it is following me around today. And that was "just" a piano lesson.

How did they manage to do it? Each of them has been studying with me for years learning the aspects of music that "take too long," namely, sounds and the effect of sounds on the player and on the listener--me. When the sounds are the composition they move the player literally. They become the motivation behind the touch not as the result of any "interpretation" or "emotion," but because the sound is alive like an animal that invites physical contact of a very specific nature. Such responses are not abstractions and cannot be generalized much less verbalized. No wonder that when they occur they are unforgettable.

Today was one of those magic days when an experiment comes out better than any imaginable hypothesis.

Two young people have been learning together four-hand Stravinsky pieces which I do not know. It's fair to point out how much I enjoy teaching music I don't know. Sounds like an oxymoron. But in listening as the students learn I learn to hear as they hear. The questions that arise are deeply artistic and are clearly audible to me in the playing.

Today I asked them if they could imagine why I do not insist that they practice their separate parts at home. "If we did," said one, "we would form an idea of how our part goes without the other part. Then, when we played together, we would not listen to the other part." (The emphasis is mine.)

She articulated exactly what I try to tell people learning chamber music: don't practice your part because you will form an entirely false idea of the music and you will not enjoy the total sound made when all the players are together.

Many trained musicians are unaware of their sensitivity to tone at the vibration level until they experience something wrong. Yesterday a fine pianist expressed her dismay that the horn entrances in Brahms symphonies sound of tune. I should mention that this pianist is also an experienced a capella singer with an excellent sense of centering vocal pitch.

Every combination of unlike sounds involves some compromise of temperament: a vibration here or there makes a huge difference in orchestral music, as it should also in chamber music. Why aren't we more aware of this source of magic and potential trouble?

I believe that the image of discrete pitch embodied in the piano keyboard has locked us into an expectation belied by experience, leaving us mightily confused rather than intrigued. The horns are not out of tune: the temperament of horn intervals is not the same as that of strings. It's the same dilemma as in the Mozart piano concerto in which the piano sounded out of tune (a post in July, 2009 describes that event).

The happiest listener is one who not only tolerates the differences but relishes the tension between them.

Two things are of infinite interest to musicians: vibrations and rhythm. There is no end to fascination with either of these natural elements.

Vibrations we know cannot be repeated: like snowflakes they are individually constituted, new every time.

For rhythm imagine drawing a penciled line on a piece of wood and taking it to be cut. Does the cutter aim inside the line, right at its center, or outside?

How thick is the saw blade? How wide is the pencil mark? How much do you care?

Rhythm is an infinite number of cuts with an infinite choice of pencil widths and saw blades, each one of which you care deeply about. But there is only that one piece of wood.