It is a dilemma: Listening is so central to music and so much the focus of what I do and teach; yet it is particularly difficult to identify the approach in a way that sounds as if it has meaning. Now that "music" no longer means music but marketable entities like CDs, what has listening come to mean?

My ten-year-old student likes to "tell stories" at the piano. This involves her picking a combination of four or five tones. Working only with those tones, though in different registers, she improvises a story.

Lately she has become fascinated with the complex tonal and rhythmic textures of Lowell Liebermann's Album for the Young (which I highly recommend). Her improvisation was of a completely new level of complexity, moving freely with different rhythms in each hand.

I showed her how to make the story even more exciting by transposing the initial set of tones. Since this is a piano improvisation she could do it by matching or reversing the disposition of white and black keys as well as the intervals. Immediately she went to town transposing, even inverting with a sly smile.

It is a privilege to watch a young musical mind at work.

The other evening I was reminded of how visual analysis has hampered our ability to hear the piano talk to us. Someone had to show me the bell effect of a repeated black key amid white keys. This effect, which occurs in a great deal of European music, is easily missed because the tone usually fits right in with the prevailing harmony. But there it is, plain as day, once the ear has been primed to pay attention to the coloristic differences between black and white keys.

The tolling bell evokes death. That simple sound is almost completely missing in our culture: too bad! It surely was a sound that made a community grieve together -- or celebrate together as the bells rang out to announce a joyous occasion.

People-oriented music: that's what I teach. The essential skill is listening. The music part is taking care that you play what others will want to listen to. The music part improves from the moment the child realizes that he or she is being heard, not judgmentally, but with acceptance and understanding. Of course my musical understanding is backed up with years of study--not just of music but also of the activity of listening, not as an extension of conceptual learning but as an activity in its own right.

I believe strongly that the ear is linked to an intelligence all its own. This remains true despite the bias of current Western culture to deaden it with too much sound, too loud sound, and sound too boring for words.

Riding home on the bus this morning I enjoyed a long talk with a neighbor whose son I taught many years ago. Addressing the exclusivity of much music training he remarked that anyone who has mastered an instrument has a lot about which to feel superior, i.e., exclusive.

The way I look at it, playing masterfully is the fulfillment of a personal need. The real job of the musician in our society is to open the field to more meaningful participation by more people; in other words, to address the needs of society. It could be argued that performance is a way of doing that. The effect that I observe from performance is that it too often reinforces the listener's sense of personal incapacity.

If I play well it is because doing so matters a lot to me. But that I have been instrumental (pun intended) in making music a fulfilling aspect of the lives of many others is my real achievement.

Some people regard that as confusing.

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.