Where is everyone?

[Hornspieler]

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my (strictly amateur) playing career had started earlier, or not had a gap of some years in the middle. As it is, my brain seems to have a current hard disc capacity of about 15-20 pieces which I know by heart, to the point where if I learn a new one (a longer and longer process these days) something drops off the other end. I also seem to have a size limit - bear in mind this is the classical guitar - a piece of 3 pages, or 100 bars or so, seems to be the limit. Though as I love early music and Dowland in particular, this is not a huge problem. And I can sit down and play 9-10 pieces to an audience (we're talking village halls here - joint gigs) from memory.

Playing from memory.

How do all these soloists manage to play such a huge repertoire of works by different composers from memory?

Well here are a few ways that you can try for yourself:

1. Take a work that you wish to learn by heart and copy it out onto a fresh sheet (sheets) of manuscript paper. The more diligently you copy it, the more completely those notes will find a place in your memory cells.

2. When learning to play a work, test your "photographic" memory. Believe it or not, everyone has some degree of photographic memory - otherwise, how would we recognise other people when we encounter them? So always practise a piece with the manuscript in front of you. Your brain will subconsciously take in everything - even the little tears, fly dirts and blots on the paper.
So when you stand up in front of an audience to perform a work, you are not only playing from memory, you are reading. from the copy that is in your memory. This is a skill which is subconsciously acquired by all performers.

It certainly worked for me, performing the Mozart concertos (1,3 and 4), Strauss No 1 and the two Haydn concertos as well as a couple of occasions when an orchestral part was missing but I had played it from the manuscript at previous concerts (RVW Wasps Overture is one example that I remember).

Try these things for yourselves - you may be surprised.

HS

[mercia]

something I've sometimes wondered - at a rehearsal for a concerto that the soloist is playing from memory, and the conductor says "can we go from a bar after letter C" - does the soloist instinctively know where that is? or does he/she have the score to hand?

[hedgehog]

something I've sometimes wondered - at a rehearsal for a concerto that the soloist is playing from memory, and the conductor says "can we go from a bar after letter C" - does the soloist instinctively know where that is? or does he/she have the score to hand?

Hornspieler or others will correct me if I'm wrong mercia, but I think in rehearsals the soloist will rehearse from a score since they already know the piece by heart.

On memory though, I myself can easily 'play through' an entire work (including 20thC and beyond) in my head, but be damned if I can get it out on a piano or any other instrument I've played in anyway approaching a 'performance'. I can sight sing at ease, but when playing an instrument then with difficulty, so I have always believed it has been some kind of motor neuron deficiency rather than a lack of basic musicality ( hey ho we all like to deceive ourselves ). This has been the bane of my life however and probably led to me trying to compose music rather than perform it (add to the mix extreme stage fright probably due to anxiety about whether I could remember the notes).

[Hornspieler]

something I've sometimes wondered - at a rehearsal for a concerto that the soloist is playing from memory, and the conductor says "can we go from a bar after letter C" - does the soloist instinctively know where that is? or does he/she have the score to hand?

Sometimes, the conductor may lean towards the soloist with the full score in his hand and indicate to the soloist where he wants to start from. Remember, that the solo part does not neccesarily have the alphabetic lettering that is in the full orchestral score.

In my message #121, the trick of learning something by writing it out was something that I learned at school when our English Master required us to learn a poem (eg. "La Belle Dame sans Merci") and recite it to the class on the following day.

It's very similar to the discipline of being ordered to write a hundred lines for a misdemeanour.

By the time you have written "...the truly wise will only prize good manners, sense and learning" a hundred times
the message will have got through - or should have done!

HS

[amateur51]

Examplifying HS's point, here we have Jorge Bolet and Paavo Berglund rehearsing. Bolet clearly had a very special type of memory, the like of which I cannot really comprehend, it's quite miraculous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=633pgaoZPTQ

[kea]

Also: the soloist may not actually show up until the dress rehearsal, or in extreme cases, the "sound check" an hour or so prior to the performance—their lines previously being supplied by the conductor humming/singing (usually off key). >.>

If they learned the piece from an edition with those rehearsal letters in they'll probably know where letter C is, if not they may have a score or get some assistance from the conductor. Or just instinctively guess based on their knowledge of where the orchestra comes in (rehearsal letters are usually placed at key points such as the entry of a particular instrument or the start of a theme)

otherwise, how would we recognise other people when we encounter them?

I don't actually to the point of being unable to recognise close family members when I meet them unexpectedly, or myself in photographs/mirrors

(so how it is that I have most of the instrumental music of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bartók, etc more or less committed to memory, despite not having played more than a small fraction of it, I'm not quite sure!)

[hedgehog]

With due respect Hornspieler, I never had a diffulcty with rembering entire poems, I did my exams that way preferring todo an anaysis "on the spot" rather than regurgitating some teacher's notes. I really do believe it is a facility and talent that musicians have but is not necessarily an indication of talent.

I struggled through classes on score reading by diligently borrowing every string Quartet of Haydn and Mozart and going through them at home on the knowledge that the exam would probably entail "sight reading" a minuet and trio from aforementioned composer's SQ's (and I was right). I'm not trying to denigrate the performer's talent n saying this - to the comtrary - I really do believe it's not just a memory skill but a certain kind of highly tuned athleticism involved in music making.

[kea]

I struggled through classes on score reading by diligently borrowing every string Quartet of Haydn and Mozart and going through them at home on the knowledge that the exam would probably entail "sight reading" a minuet and trio from aforementioned composer's SQ's (and I was right). I'm not trying to denigrate the performer's talent n saying this - to the comtrary - I really do believe it's not just a memory skill but a certain kind of highly tuned athleticism involved in music making ( however sinceit seems anything I say is generally ignored as being stupid, maybe it's true, I'm a cretin and should just creep away as an unworthy of this place).

No you're right, playing an instrument is very close to playing a sport, and in fact has potential to incur many of the same injuries. A couple of hours spent with Kreisleriana (despite being one of Schumann's easier piano works) exhausts me about as much as my gym regimen of 45-60 min cardio, and I was advised that practicing Chopin's Etude Op. 10 no. 11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG1Mv892-lE) without taking plenty of breaks to reset the hand position from those ungodly wide stretches could cause permanent damage.* That's why most professional musicians started training in childhood, when the brain and body are more malleable; unless one naturally has that kind of physical talent it's much more difficult to get a start on it later in life.

* I can now do most of it, but the parts around 1:33 and 1:54 still murder me

[Roslynmuse]

With due respect Hornspieler, I never had a diffulcty with rembering entire poems, I did my exams that way preferring todo an anaysis "on the spot" rather than regurgitating some teacher's notes. I really do believe it is a facility and talent that musicians have but is not necessarily an indication of talent.

I struggled through classes on score reading by diligently borrowing every string Quartet of Haydn and Mozart and going through them at home on the knowledge that the exam would probably entail "sight reading" a minuet and trio from aforementioned composer's SQ's (and I was right). I'm not trying to denigrate the performer's talent n saying this - to the comtrary - I really do believe it's not just a memory skill but a certain kind of highly tuned athleticism involved in music making ( however sinceit seems anything I say is generally ignored as being stupid, maybe it's true, I'm a cretin and should just creep away as an unworthy of this place).

I agree with a lot of this. In my experience of teaching, most students either shine at reading or memorising but rarely both. The ability to memorise and the ability to sight-read are not, in themselves, indicators of musicianship, just useful skills. Interestingly, there is an ongoing debate within the profession about the necessity for playing from memory; there are a number of pianists (to take the example which - along with singers and some (but not all) string players - are the people who are most likely to appear on stage sans score) who now play even standard concerto rep with a score. Some audiences find this heretical! There is an element of self-perpetuation within the profession, for reasons that were mysterious to me until I went to a recital when the pianist used a score for Gaspard de la nuit and a well-respected piano teacher said to me afterwards 'how does he do it? I wouldn't be able to read all those notes at that speed!' Of course one isn't really READING them, just using them as an aide-memoire. But that comment implied that there is the deciphering stage and the committed to memory stage with everything in between painstakingly RE-deciphering until the notes have completely got into the system (and muscle memory too). I have to say I'd rather hear someone play marvellously with a score than flakily without. That's not to say that one shouldn't try to develop the memory muscle in practice, or indeed the reading muscle.

[Hornspieler]

Since I posted my message #121, the replies have been very interesting and I cannot disagree with anything that has been posted, but I can only reiterate what it was that aided my musical memory and my final words were "Try it for yourselves"

Perhaps it will work for you.

HS

[PJPJ]

Examplifying HS's point, here we have Jorge Bolet and Paavo Berglund rehearsing. Bolet clearly had a very special type of memory, the like of which I cannot really comprehend, it's quite miraculous


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=633pgaoZPTQ

[salymap]

I attended many rehearsals years ago [as a music librarian/ listener] and some pianists such as Clifford Curzon never played/rehearsed without music.

Others, such as Artur Rubinstein could have done with the music perhaps.

[johnb]

It seems to me that there are (at least) two distinct forms of memory involved in playing an instrument. The first is what is loosely called "muscle memory" where practising a piece over any over embeds the movements in our subconscious and they then get 'replayed' - in the same way that when we drive a car our hand and foot movements happen without conscious thought. This is the type of memory that is by far the easiest to acquire and the type that (I guess) most amateurs rely on. It is also the most fallible and dangerous type of memory as it relies on previous movements to 'trigger' what happens next - so if you stumble you are often completely b*ggered.

The other type of memory is actually *knowing* the score. I've seen advice that people should develop the ability to be able to write out the score from memory (which seems an almost super-human feat to me). This is probably the type of memory that HS is referring to.

Please shoot me down if I am talking nonsense.

[Richard Tarleton]

Since I posted my message #121, the replies have been very interesting and I cannot disagree with anything that has been posted, but I can only reiterate what it was that aided my musical memory and my final words were "Try it for yourselves"

Perhaps it will work for you.

HS

Thank you for #121 from me HS (I've been out all morning).

[Hornspieler]

I attended many rehearsals years ago [as a music librarian/ listener] and some pianists such as Clifford Curzon never played/rehearsed without music.

Others, such as Artur Rubinstein could have done with the music perhaps.

Good to see you posting again, Sally

(And you're quite right about Rubinstein. I thought it often sounded as if he was wearing boxing gloves)

HS