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Between the Notes: Essays on Living With Music

A collection of essays drawn from articles originally published on The Cross-Eyed Pianist and A Piano Teacher Writes… between 2010 and 2026.

What does it mean to live with music?

For musicians, music-making extends far beyond the notes on the page. It is found in the solitude of the practice room, in curiosity and frustration, in our relationships with teachers and repertoire, in the rituals surrounding performance, and in the lifelong process of learning, exploring and returning to the music we love.

In Between the Notes: Essays on Living with Music, pianist, writer and former piano teacher Frances M Wilson (AKA The Cross-Eyed Pianist) brings together a collection of essays exploring the inner life of the musician.

Drawing on more than fifteen years of writing about music and music-making, these essays consider practice and performance, interpretation and artistic autonomy, perfectionism and failure, the pleasures and challenges of amateur musicianship, and the intensely personal relationships we develop with particular pieces of music.

This is not a book about how to play the piano. Instead, it asks broader questions: Why do we make music? What does practising teach us beyond technical accomplishment? How do we develop an interpretation that feels genuinely our own? What does it mean to perform for others? And why does music become such an enduring part of our identity?

Written with warmth, curiosity and the perspective of a lifelong musician, Between the Notes celebrates music-making not simply as something we do, but as something we live with.

Frances Wilson…one of the best writers blogging about classical music

Rhonda Rizzo, writer & pianist

an important voice in the piano world

Peter Donohoe CBE, concert pianist

For professional and amateur musicians, teachers and students, and anyone curious about the life that exists between and beyond the notes.

Written with warmth, curiosity and the perspective of a lifelong musician, Between the Notes celebrates music-making not simply as something we do, but as something we live with.

Available in paperback and eBook.

BUY THE BOOK

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“I can’t play this.”

It is a familiar response to difficulty. A passage refuses to yield, a technical challenge seems beyond us, or we open the score of a piece we long to play and conclude that it is simply too difficult. But add one small word and the meaning changes completely:

“I can’t play this yet.”

That single word transforms a statement of limitation into one of possibility. It acknowledges where we are now without assuming that this is where we will always be.

Learning to play a musical instrument is full of such moments. At the beginning, almost everything seems difficult. Coordinating two hands, reading several notes simultaneously, controlling dynamics, pedalling, producing different articulations – skills which an experienced musician barely thinks about once had to be acquired consciously and painstakingly. Progress can make us forget this. Something which now feels entirely natural may once have seemed impossible.

This is why “yet” can be such a useful word in teaching. A student who says “I can’t do it” has already reached a conclusion. The difficulty has become fixed and personal: I am someone who cannot do this. Add “yet”, and the difficulty becomes temporary. There is something to investigate and learn. This is not simply positive thinking. Telling a student that they can achieve anything if only they try hard enough is neither particularly useful nor necessarily true. Musicians have different physical characteristics, aptitudes, available time and circumstances, and these inevitably affect what is possible. Nor does repeatedly practising something badly make it more achievable. Effort without thought is rarely productive. The value of “yet” lies instead in resisting premature conclusions about our abilities.

Faced with a difficult passage, the useful question is not simply Can I do this? but What is preventing me from doing this at the moment? Perhaps the fingering is awkward. Perhaps the movement is inefficient or unnecessarily tense. Perhaps the passage has not been properly understood harmonically or rhythmically. Perhaps it needs to be dismantled, slowed down, practised in smaller sections or approached in an entirely different way.

Or perhaps we simply need more time.

Musical learning is rarely linear. We may practise something diligently for several days with little apparent improvement and then, after leaving it alone, return to discover that it has somehow become easier. Skills develop incrementally, often beneath the level of conscious awareness. The brain and body continue to assimilate what we have been practising even when we are away from the instrument. This makes patience an essential part of musicianship. It can be particularly difficult for adult learners, who are accustomed to being competent in most areas of their lives. Sitting at a piano and discovering that the fingers will not do something which appears perfectly straightforward can be intensely frustrating. The mind understands; the body has not yet caught up.

Children, too, readily compare themselves with others. Another student plays more advanced repertoire or progresses more quickly, and ability begins to seem like something one either possesses or does not. But comparison tells us remarkably little about our own capacity to learn. We begin from different places and progress at different rates. What matters is not whether someone else can do something now, but whether we are developing the knowledge and skills which may allow us to do it later.

The principle remains relevant however experienced we become. Advanced musicians continually encounter new kinds of difficulty. A composer whose musical language once seemed impenetrable gradually becomes comprehensible; a technical challenge which would have been unthinkable ten years earlier becomes manageable; repertoire we once regarded as permanently beyond us moves within reach.

One of the pleasures of playing over many years is occasionally returning to music we abandoned in the past and discovering that we are now able to understand or play things which defeated us before. The music has not become easier: we have changed. This is also why repertoire should sometimes stretch us. There is little satisfaction in remaining indefinitely with what we already know we can do. The right challenge encourages us to acquire new skills, listen differently and enlarge our musical understanding.

But there is an important distinction between challenge and struggle for its own sake. Not every piece will eventually suit every pianist, and there are times when setting something aside is the intelligent decision. “Not yet” may mean next year, in ten years, or perhaps never – and none of these represents failure.

What matters is that we remain open to the possibility of change.

Teachers have an important role here. Rather than simply supplying solutions, they can help students learn how to investigate difficulties for themselves: to experiment, ask questions, recognise progress and understand that mistakes are information rather than evidence of inadequacy. Gradually the student begins to replace “I can’t” with “How might I?”. That change in language reflects a deeper change in attitude.

The same curiosity can sustain us throughout a lifetime of music-making. However much experience we accumulate, there will always be something we cannot yet play, do or understand. That is not a deficiency but one of the reasons music remains endlessly absorbing. To be a musician is to remain, in some sense, a learner.

And perhaps the real power of “yet” is not that it promises eventual mastery. It simply leaves the door open.

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Guest post by Jennifer Griffin Gaul

My mom used to tell a story about me. She said that she would lie in the bathtub at night and listen to me practice piano.

I find this story strange because I honestly have very, very few recollections of practicing. I know I played because I remember the irritation I would feel at competing with the blare of the TV, or my angry older brother yelling at me to stop making a racket. But then there was the idea of “practice”, which was a bit of a fuzzy concept for me. Was it playing things over and over again until I could play it perfectly? Or was it something else altogether? I didn’t really know and there was no one at home who understood it either.

I didn’t start piano until I was 9 years old. We didn’t own a piano and my parents only
experience with music lessons was my brother’s aborted attempts at trumpet, which
left them unenthusiastic about investing in lessons for me. The subject of piano only
came up because they received a call from my best friend’s mother. Mrs. Kim had
called to say that I seemed to spend a lot of time around her piano and she thought
they should have me start lessons. My father balked at the idea of purchasing a piano
for an 8-year-old so I was given a plastic recorder and signed up for recorder lessons. I played recorder for a year and when it became clear that I loved music, they figured
out a way to get a small spinet piano.

I adored my first piano teacher, Mr. Erikson. He was a tall, gangly, bearded man with a
raspy voice. He started me off and we worked together until I was nearly 16 years old.
Every week when my lesson rolled around I’d feel a flurry of emotions. Anticipation was usually the biggest one. Sometimes a bit of shame for not doing the music worksheets he would assign. And also for not “practicing”. I didn’t like to let him down and I knew that practicing was important. I just wasn’t sure how to do it. But I also didn’t want to ask him what it meant because it seemed like I should understand it already.

Something magical always happened in those lessons with Mr. Erikson. Our work
together would absorb me completely. The lesson would flash by as I immersed myself in each new intricacy of music-making and sound. I progressed steadily. I must of practiced, right? How do you progress without it? And yet why didn’t I understand
what it was?

My musical life stumbled after a tearful parting from Mr. Erikson when he moved to
California. Limited for competent piano teachers in my small town in Rhode Island I
had begun lessons with a music professor at the local university. That relationship was life-changing. My weekly lessons became agony. There was no flow or understanding during lessons. Just a series of orders of what I was supposed to do. I was unable to focus because I was so frightened of this teacher. My ability to immerse myself in the music and grow and learn evaporated. Each week became worse as I was berated over and over again with my musical (and perhaps personal) deficiencies.

By this point, I had been accepted into the university at age 16 to pursue a Bachelor of
Music. He was the teacher I needed to work with in order to get my degree. He was
annoyed with me for this early acceptance, which he had been against. He said I
wasn’t mature enough. He was also annoyed with me for being accepted into the
Young Artist Piano Program at Tanglewood over the summer before I started at
university. He had told me I would be wasting the time of the audition committee if I
applied and would never be accepted. I auditioned anyway and spent a month
studying with Robert Taub, surrounded by amazing young musicians who were far
better than I was. They practiced! I was starting to get the concept.

And I DO remember practicing for him. I practiced a lot! But I just couldn’t seem to
progress. I couldn’t connect with the music. And each time I sat down to practice,
determined to show him what I could accomplish, I would just become more
discouraged. I ran scales. I did technique exercises. I worked on the assigned music.
Joylessly and with trepidation, driven by a sense of his seemingly endless disapproval.
It all came to a head during a lesson when I was mucking up the Mozart Sonata he had
assigned. By this point every time I played for him my hands would shake, my eyes
would have trouble focusing and my brain would go blank. In a fit of irritation he told
me that I had no capacity for hard work and I was just someone who liked music but
would never be a musician. He then told me to play it again for him. I couldn’t because
I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the music. He sighed and said “This proves what
I’ve said. Go home.”

I was devastated. My teacher Mr. Erikson came back for a visit that fall. I played for him and he just stared when I finished. “What happened?” he said weakly. Not only could I not play fluidly or with any musicality, I had developed so much tension that I was losing the feeling in my arms and hands. All that practice had done significant damage.

Before he returned to California, Mr. Erikson helped me to make some changes. I
altered my program from a Bachelor of Music to a Bachelor of Arts in music because
that allowed me to drop piano lessons.He had a long consultation with a friend who
had a D.M.A. from Eastman School of Music and set me up with this new teacher. I
began commuting to Boston every Saturday for lessons. I had to relearn how to play
again. Gradually I began to heal. Gradually I started to play again (or was it practice?). I adored my lessons with my new teacher. The sense of ultra focus and immersion
during lessons returned and I made enough progress to be accepted into University of Texas at Austin’s music program where I earned a Master of Music in piano.

So how does this impact my own teaching and the advice I give to parents and
students about the importance of practice?

In my opinion, at every level students need help understanding what they’re trying to
achieve when they practice. That understanding needs to be age appropriate. And it all springs from the quality of the teacher/student engagement during lessons. Working together in a way that feels collaborative, exploratory and uncovers each student’s connection to the music sets students up for better success on their own. Lessons that include regular, honest, and non-judgmental conversations between a teacher and a student about what (if anything) the student achieved in the week. We all know lesson time is precious because there just isn’t enough of it. But it is time well spent for students. Learning to self-reflect. Learning how to engage with sound. Learning to recognize how technique is tied to the sound produced. Learning to immerse themselves in a process that, when it goes well, can make an incredible difference.

Many years ago, I heard a friend joke that “you don’t need to practice if you just play
every day.” And I realized I finally had my answer to how I had made my progress.

Jennifer Griffin GaulJennifer Griffin Gaul is a US-based pianist and educator. She holds a Master of Music in piano pedagogy and performance from the University of Texas at Austin.

Find out more

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I first heard this work live over 10 years ago at a concert given by the American pianist and noted Mozart specialist Robert Levin, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Played on a fortepiano, whose relatively modest voice spoke so elegantly in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, from the opening measures I was completely hooked. The next day, I purchased the music and started to learn it. It took at last three attempts to learn it “properly” – it’s one of those pieces which benefits from being put aside for a few months and then revisited, not once, but time and again to reveal its details and many layers of meaning and emotion. It’s a piece that keeps surprising both listener and performer.

Composed in the spring of 1787, after Mozart returned from Prague, it has been suggested that its composition was in response to the news that one of the composer’s closest friends, Count August von Hatzfeld, had died, and may therefore be a rare example of a personal event in Mozart’s life prompting a composition. The piece is introspective and private, freighted with melancholy and sadness, with a thoughtful, measured elegance throughout. It is touching and beautiful, simple and perfect; but its deceptive transparency offers no place to hide. It requires great clarity and preciseness in order to express its overriding melancholy, and its poignant charm.

The Rondo theme is a pensive melody which looks forward to Chopin – and has even been mistaken for Chopin by a naive listener when I’ve played it. A rising theme, yet it hardly seems to move forward, and with each weary semitone step, there is a dying fall, almost sigh or a painful intake of breath, emphasised by the quaver rests. The dissonance, created by the first ornament (which reappears regularly throughout the piece) further enhances the sense of tragedy.

Each reappearance of the theme is treated slightly differently, further emphasising its pathos and poignancy. The C major phrase is somewhat less painful, but, tinged with poignancy, it is hardly hopeful.

The first subsidiary theme (‘B’), beginning at bar 31, harks back to J S Bach in its use of counterpoint and chromaticism, while the texture is suggestive of string quartets with its different voices. As the new theme pours forth, the mood is now more hopeful and consoling, with a lovely LH cello line which is very different to the haunted bass of the opening melody. There’s an almost operatic grandeur through these measures, immediately dispelled when the music lurches unexpectedly into D-flat major at bar 46. The music then creeps chromatically, recalling the opening theme, and, after an episode marked by plaintive descending and ascending chromatic figures, the earlier ‘B’ material returns, building to a climax in bar 59, marked by the octave figures in the LH. A greater, more full-toned climax at bar 63 is carried through to bar 69 with a grand, energetic arpeggiated figure in the RH. From bars 69-75, the long chromatic notes hark back, once again, to the chromaticism at the beginning of the piece, while from bars 74-80, the music seems hang in suspense in the dominant, in anticipation of the rondo theme, which returns at bar 81.

The second statement of the theme is stripped of its C major sentence, and is even more haunting, with its sobbing, breathless syncopations in bars 86-87, a kind of written rubato, which needs no additional increase or decrease in tempo in the bass line (prefiguring Chopin). The quaver rest in bar 88 can be lengthened in readiness for the A major section (“C”).

Now, we are in more familiar, comfortable territory, for here is Mozart at his most charming and elegant, before a brief shift into B minor, with dissonance created by the ornaments. A more hopeful D major passage (I read somewhere once that Mozart declared D major “the happiest key”) begins at bar 101, reprising some of the material from the A major interlude. At bar 116, the chromaticism in the bass again recalls the opening motif, leading into further chromatic surges and grinding diminished seventh harmonies. The thematic material of the opening is never really forgotten, thus further reminding us of the prevailing sense of sorrow.

At bar 129 the rondo theme returns in its original form, but with more elaborate ornamentation this time, tortured rather than decorative. There’s a real sense of desolation at bar 155, while the repeated A’s and chromaticism in bars 155-157, evoke almost a wailing, grief-laden lamentation.

The Coda, beginning at bar 163, heartbreakingly recapitulates all the elements that have gone before and all the motifs return in a grim, Bachian setting. It is highly emotional, mixing tragedy and frustration, with a final, whispered statement of the opening theme in the closing measures.

More a Fantasia than a strict Rondo in the organisation of its thematic material, the K511 offers many technical challenges, and, as stated earlier, requires absolute clarity in its delivery. Overly fussy playing will only obscure the deeply emotional nature of this work – and this, to me, is the real heart of it. Conveying that sense of melancholy, sadness and grief is the hardest part, while always maintaining honesty and fidelity to the score. For those of us whose early pianistic encounters were with the early works of Mozart, the pieces with the lowest ‘K’ numbers, all smiling childlike innocence and playfulness, the Rondo K511 represents a work of great maturity and profound expression.

The piece contains all the subtleties of Mozart’s music in microcosm: its chiaroscuro, its many moods, some fleeting, passing in the space of a single bar, its storms and its sunshine. Leonard Bernstein said “Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation“, a quotation which perfectly sums up the enduring fascination and appeal of the K511.

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