Music and Memory

[Pulcinella]

Well, bloomin' wittering mess between not much music. Was this a joke?

Not as much as what's following!
Do we really need to hear Mars and The ubiquitous lark, rather than just learn what was so special about the particular versions that top the memory/favourites list.

[Barbirollians]

Music and Memory

My thoughts entirely. Today's Record Review has collapsed into the Breakfast format.

Apologies to Pulcinella for committing the hostly son of editing his post instead of quoting it.

Frankly , had they played the Hugh Bean instead of the Tazza I would have been more than happy . Any excuse to hear part of Sir Adrian's last recording of the Planets or the SCO/Mackerras is a good one .

Now we have Igor Levitt in the Diabelli Variations live - hardly like Breakfast .

[LeMartinPecheur]

Frankly , had they played the Hugh Bean instead of the Tazza I would have been more than happy . Any excuse to hear part of Sir Adrian's last recording of the Planets or the SCO/Mackerras is a good one .

On the Lark, I was a bit surprised that that Nigel Kennedy wasn't mentioned as a fave - the top choices were Bean and Little, with Benedetti apparently a strong finisher in 3rd.

Surprised too that the SCO/Mackerras Jupiter was a clear top choice. Not because I disagree that it's excellent, I don't, but because there are so many other versions. Might have expected an older recording like DG Bohm to be up there in this survey of 'formative memory' discs. But Loveday did say that under-30s made up a quarter of the survey, so that may have slanted its conclusions away from the views of boarders here Odd too that Karajan seemed to be in 2nd place

The 'formative' Mahler 5 was VPO/Bernstein. I'd guessed the Barbirolli, but that probably just shows my age (b.1954).

The Messiah picks were The 16 and the Pinnock. Rather expected C Davis, Mackerras or Hogwood to be mentioned, but hey!

Now we have Igor Levitt in the Diabelli Variations live - hardly like Breakfast .

[DracoM]

Yes, but Mr Levitt is playing LIVE, and it's not a review but a 'guest spot'. It's In Tune but at 10.30 or whatever. Hence, this even forfeits the right to be on a 'memory / music' prog as billed.
Just don't get what on earth the Beeb expects to get out of this melange!

[gradus]

I thought that the academic talking about her research was interesting. Perhaps the musical excerpts from 'favourites' could have been shortened but on the whole I enjoyed it. Unfortunately I only heard a small part of the discussion about the Diabelli but what I heard reminded me of Mitsuko Uchida's illustrated lecture of a couple of years back, given after a performance of the work.

[Richard Tarleton]

Now we have Igor Levitt in the Diabelli Variations live - hardly like Breakfast .

I found this performance full of annoying idiosyncrasies. His var 14, Grave e maestoso, seemed to take forever, I just wished he'd get on with it. I'm sure he was enjoying it. Recorded versions here range from 3.54 to 5.17, he seemed to take about 10.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Music and Memory

Music and Memory is the latest Radio 3 saturation topic - one I find more interesting.

My memory has never been good, mainly due to inattentiveness, but for music it has generally been good, though performing from memory has always been an issue. In 2008, I took the rash step of deciding to enter myself for an ABRSM singing exam. Grade 5 was the intended target, but after looking through the syllabus, I decided to be gung-ho and go for Grade 8. That involved learning a Brahms song and an opera aria, both in German - a language I never learnt.

With this (plus two other syllabus items and an unaccompanied folk song) to tax my feeble memory, I selected a small card with all the song words written on it, carrying it with me at all times. I walked up and down Filey's deserted 4 mile beach, time and again, trying to learn the pesky words. Why couldn't I do this, when the notes, dynamics and places to breathe were so easy to remember? In the end, it all went off rather well, with the examiner complimenting me on bringing out the meaning of the German words, even though I had little idea of what they meant.

[pastoralguy]

The great Soviet violinist David Oistrakh reckoned that he had about 20 hours of music memorised that he could play at a moments notice. I can manage about 10 minutes!

Oddly enough, I've noticed violin soloists using music recently including Viktoria Mullova playing the Brahms concerto in New York and Nicola Benedetti playing the Elgar and DSCH concerti in Edinburgh. I have no problem with soloists using the music and would rather have that than a memory lapse. (A friend tells me of the great Pierre Fournier having TWO memory lapses at the same spot in the Elgar concerto in the 1960's resulting in someone having to provide the music and a stand so he could continue).

I suppose that if one can do it then one doesn't think about it and if, like me, you can't, then just use the notes! God knows how that Aurora Orchestra cope playing live from memory at the Proms. I'd be a gibbering wreck! It the easy bits that go wrong, in my experience , since the hard bits have been worked at until it's not possible for them to go wrong!

And goodness knows how actors in rep. cope! My idea of hell.

[Richard Barrett]

goodness knows how actors in rep. cope! My idea of hell.

Mind you, they don't need to be note perfect in the way that musicians do - if a line goes awry they have ways of getting back on track with a bit of ad-libbing.

But I find this a very interesting subject - the interaction between music and memory while listening is something I find endlessly fascinating - recurrence, variation, different rates of change and so on; music which carries within it the memory of other musics as opposed to music which doesn't (and for whom?); the effect of timescale on how the listening memory works; what does "memorable" mean (and for whom?), and so on.

[LeMartinPecheur]

But I find this a very interesting subject - the interaction between music and memory while listening is something I find endlessly fascinating - recurrence, variation, different rates of change and so on; music which carries within it the memory of other musics as opposed to music which doesn't (and for whom?); the effect of timescale on how the listening memory works; what does "memorable" mean (and for whom?), and so on.

RB: own up, you're being paid to plug the whole R3 Music & Memory weekend!

And a good thing too if you are

[Richard Barrett]

RB: own up, you're being paid to plug the whole R3 Music & Memory weekend!

Sadly it's quite a few years since I was paid by the BBC to do anything. I will be listening though!

[kea]

One thing I always think of when I think about memory in music (as a listener) is the first episode of one of my favourite individual movements in Beethoven, the Adagio ma non troppo of Op. 74. The main theme takes up most of the movement—24 bars long and heard three times in full, but each time reinterpreted in terms of instrumental sonority and plenitude—and the second episode of the A B A' C A'' form is largely based on the main theme as well and initially sounds like a varied repeat of its second half. The first episode however is a new and very beautiful theme in the tonic minor, no part of which is ever heard again, except for the surprising and potentially very moving recurrence of its first four bars at the start of the coda after it seems as though the movement is actually over. This episode, its dramatic modulation to Cb major, its melodic ideas, and its soft off-beat pulses stick in the memory long after the entire quartet is over even though only those four bars are ever repeated. A lot of that has to do with the way Beethoven uses its various elements individually: the tonic minor as a presence throughout the movement including 6 bars of the main theme in the minor at the end of the second episode just before the main theme returns for the last time, the off-beat cello pulses throughout that final return, and—once the four-bar fragment of the episode has returned—the continued presence of Ab minor as a spectre almost to the end of the movement with very prominent Fbs and Cbs disrupting and destabilising the coda's attempts at a final cadence.

Another example that always comes to mind is the abortive "sonata form" in the first movement of Dvořák's Violin Concerto, which breaks down after the recapitulation of the "first theme" with the soloist leading a transition to the second movement. Until this transition the movement was a perfectly normal sonata form with a perfectly serviceable second theme in C major that almost any other composer would have repeated, or at least alluded to in some way, or at least wanted to reuse because frankly it's quite lovely. Dvořák does not. We still remember that theme quite well amongst the numerous other melodies throughout the work. I think part of that is because of tonal harmony—C major is the dominant of F major, the key of the slow movement, and therefore the slow movement "feels" like it resolves the unresolved C major of the exposition—and part of it is orchestration: the slow movement's opening theme is similarly scored for violin and lower strings. There are no direct correspondences between the two themes, but both make extensive use of scale fragments and tend to settle on long dominant pedals rather than properly resolving, and the more agitated middle section of the adagio sounds like an inversion of the first movement's main theme. Emotionally, we end up with the effect of one long movement in two tempi and two keys, based on one pair of ideas, but when you look at the music on the score the ideas in the second movement seem to bear no relation to those in the first. It's hard to point to any specific musical features that create that emotional effect. All I can say for sure is that the finale is definitely separate and, if seen as a counterweight to one long and diffuse movement, its length (817 bars?) and concentration of material do not seem extravagant.

[Ein Heldenleben]

So far Ive found the Music and Memory weekend slightly disappointing. I suspect that's because much of the science behind it is either fairly obvious or has already emerged on other outlets. It appears , amazingly, that those who have had musical training , for example, are better at remembering sequences of notes . Also some of the audience experiments have struck me as a tiny bit dumbed down - E.g the Aurora concert on Friday night . However one highlight was yesterday's extraordinary live performance of the Diabelli Variations by Igor Levit . It was preceded by an excellent interview with him by Sarah Walker . For those who missed it - definitely worth catching up with on I-player.

[Bryn]

... one highlight was yesterday's extraordinary live performance of the Diabelli Variations by Igor Levit . It was preceded by an excellent interview with him by Sarah Walker . For those who missed it - definitely worth catching up with on I-player.

Unfortunately, at the moment the iPlayer file ends somewhat before that of the performance. This will probably be resolved tomorrow. For now the end is at the start of the following programme, Music Matters. There is an overlap. If you are eager to hear the complete programme now, PM me.

[Barbirollians]

Did they tell us about all of the musical memory favourites discs - I don't recall hearing which Beethoven 5 though I assume it was VPO/Kleiber