Listening Through

?People have been writing about music for centuries, finding melodies for words, and words for melodies, or writing about what the music makes them feel. I yearned for something different -- I wanted to know what would happen if I listened through the music, that is, approach the music with an empty mind and let it start talking in me.

Practically speaking, I began writing the instant the music began and stopped abruptly when the music ended. That suggested to me the movements within a concerto or symphony, so I turned to the concertos of Mozart for piano.

My own musical taste draws me to late romanticism - Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss - and I didn't want my own taste to get in the way. So I turned to the brilliant complexity and rich emotional variegation of Mozart. So one January I kept at it...