How We Remember Music or in My Case Don't

[rauschwerk]

Am I a real musician? I teach piano (which I studied from am early age) and earn modest sums from singing and playing in public, sometimes from memory.

To me, however, a real musician is someone like Charles Rosen who in his teens could sight read a Chopin Nocturne, then close the book and play it from memory. That is how he learnt the repertoire. I never developed such a skill and am not sure if I could have. However, I could after quite a few hearings play a substantial orchestral movement such as the slow movement of Dvorak 9 without having seen a score (absolute pitch helped here).

As for recognition, I have always had the ability to recognise a good many pieces almost at once, though this is often taking longer now I am older. Last night in the car I recognised the slow movement of Beethoven's A minor quartet within, I suppose, half a minute. Again, my absolute pitch helped me to recognise the Lydian mode.

My memory skills have served me well in performance and I have never had a serious lapse, though I have never found a way to memorise atonal music (Schoenberg Op. 19, McCabe Bagatelles).

[rauschwerk]

But on pop CDs if I dare return to there my look ahead includes the next track and if I hear the trackx on the radio and it ends and the next track doesn't come I almost feel cheated!

I know that feeling! After Here, there and everywhere I expect Yellow Submarine (and am very pleased if it doesn't happen).

[Don Petter]

Thanks S_A and Vile Consort - I must say I am very envious! Another quirk of the way I remember music and listen to it is if we come back to say Bruckner 7 when I start listening I know what is coming but not for more than say 30 seconds to a minute and definitely not in the next movement. But on pop CDs if I dare return to there my look ahead includes the next track and if I hear the trackx on the radio and it ends and the next track doesn't come I almost feel cheated!

My musical memory, not just with Bruckner, is much the same as yours here, but isn't the pop example just the same as the classical? I can usually visualise the 30 seconds or so ahead, and only when the movement comes within that time of its end do I think of the start of the next.

This seems the same as your pop premonition - or do you hear the start of the next track as soon as the preceding one starts? (In which case the whole CD might condense sequentially in your mind into one horrific three minute experience. )

[vinteuil]

... do you hear the start of the next track as soon as the preceding one starts? ...

... yes indeed - and what is really odd is that one 'hears' the next section as it were instantaneously - the brain somehow able to snap up something that usually requires duration in one single moment. I suppose this on a small scale is what composers experience when thay say that they can 'hear' an entire work in their head (and then just have the chore of writing down all them dots... ). What miracles we humans are...

[Don Petter]

I think that gaps in the musical memory can have a beneficial effect. There are those ‘innocent ear’ moments when you turn on the radio, perhaps in the car, and hear something frustratingly familiar to which you can’t put a name. You think what wonderful music it is, only to hear at the end that of course it was only old B’s third whatsit – something you would not have bothered to switch on for, or listened to with any true attention if you had.

Do others share this effect?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

.. this is a fascinating thread .... given such different processes say between S_A and Lat or ANton ... it is clear that we all have very different approaches to the getting music into our heads and using it once there ... i wonder in consequence if we should actually use the word 'memory' with all its connotations of a 'store' or a 'bank' ... Milt Jackson had an eidetic 'memory, i.e. he could see the page or the image in vivid detail ... and never had to read a John Lewis score after looking at it ... perhaps like Charles Rosen ... what i remember most is what i have read ... rather than experienced [indeed sometimes i feel as if i have no very useful memory at all ... nonsense of course i am very unlike the clinical amnesias but experience and events are blurred and a bit like Lat i don't so much remember as sentences come out of my mouth ...and tell me what happened ... or what i think or feel .... but i have to hear the music to relive it ... certainly as far as the soundtrack maudlin stuff goes .. i think i remember inner states rather than events or objects ... one way of being a dysfunctional introvert with strong addictive tendencies ... i have a distinct sense of listening to the radio in 1947/8 and realising that music existed ... of being in the room and the feel of it but not the sound of the music ... so i 'know' and can hum all the old theme tunes more or less and the Trumpet Voluntary which thrilled my four year old self .... must be a factor in liking jazz ... music in the now with a sense of unfolding but not repeating ... what i can assemble [not music] in my head and inspect are arguments or propositions surrounded by reference associations ... these often surprise me since a lot of my mental effort is firmly in the unaware mode so i am often having to adapt myself to what it seems i think ... come back phenomenology all is forgiven ...

[Serial_Apologist]

I think that gaps in the musical memory can have a beneficial effect. There are those ‘innocent ear’ moments when you turn on the radio, perhaps in the car, and hear something frustratingly familiar to which you can’t put a name. You think what wonderful music it is, only to hear at the end that of course it was only old B’s third whatsit – something you would not have bothered to switch on for, or listened to with any true attention if you had.

Do others share this effect?

In my case Don I have to say that I only have to hear the tiniest fragment of music I am pretty familiar with to identify the work and its composer, usually within a matter of seconds.

[Serial_Apologist]

.what i can assemble [not music] in my head and inspect are arguments or propositions surrounded by reference associations ... these often surprise me since a lot of my mental effort is firmly in the unaware mode so i am often having to adapt myself to what it seems i think ... come back phenomenology all is forgiven ...

This must explain the rapidity with which in an instant you are able to come up with suitable documents/youtube clips etc to illuminate discussion on these boreds, Calum. I have to say I envy you that ability. The number of occasions when friends are about to depart after an evening's food, wine and stimulating discussion, and I just cannot lay my hands on that clinching quote from a reputable source which evades me - which damn book was that in? what was that recording? - only to discover what and where it was (of course!) after they've gone. But there again, you might envy my capacity for memorising whole pieces of music or recordings that I love; in the end, even should I be burgled, it remains "all up here"!

S-A

[vinteuil]

I think that gaps in the musical memory can have a beneficial effect. There are those ‘innocent ear’ moments when you turn on the radio, perhaps in the car, and hear something frustratingly familiar to which you can’t put a name. You think what wonderful music it is, only to hear at the end that of course it was only old B’s third whatsit – something you would not have bothered to switch on for, or listened to with any true attention if you had.

Do others share this effect?

Yes, Don, I recognize this - pertick'ly with works which may be very 'well-known' but which for various reasons one might not have listened to in recent years. I have had this with Schubert, Brahms, - and yes, even Beethoven...

But I wd stress that it is a good feeling, and most instructive...

[Serial_Apologist]

It's nice to listen to music one hasn't heard for many years, and discover it anew. I think in my case such renewed appreciation comes at least partly through all the interim musical experience gained. Beethoven for instance had just about worn out his ability to touch me by the time I was 15, it was boring old music for me, but it has been through listening to more recent music indebted to his that I have been able to return to hear in in a new light, as it were. You wold never have got me reading Jane Austen back then, for instance; for what could I possibly have in common with these spoilt aspirational types from the early 19th century? Maybe this is part of the ageing process that I seem to be more and more fascinated by being able to identify with people from entirely different ages; i.e. what do we all have in common, of whatever age in history, or for that matter race and culture?

Sorry - slight digression there...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

S_A this thread is a prime example of how we differ as individuals and the perils of using terminology to describe it ... what is memory in one is not the same at all as memory in another ... just the recall and output of material in mysteriously different and quite likely truly idiosyncratic ways [i am saying this despite having read or studied all the cognitive stuff on memorising nonsense syllables and short v long term and memory and brain damage etc at some time or another in my career] ... and i would love to run through a symphony in my head as you do .... but not at the expense of how i think! since i discover music anew each time i hear it i suspect that paradoxically i am far less exploratory and like more familiar pleasures .... so eg have never been jaded with Beethoven, but find that i have to work much harder at new works .... except in jazz where with any luck at all there is always a surprise ...


there was an elegance of expression in music and language in earlier centuries which we now only realise when we are older is a joy not an obstacle ....

[Don Petter]

In my case Don I have to say that I only have to hear the tiniest fragment of music I am pretty familiar with to identify the work and its composer, usually within a matter of seconds.

I could have added that, in general, after years of classical music being a central part of my life, I too can get them right most of the time (much to the impression, sometimes annoyance, of SWMBO). The effect I was describing was more akin to that, well known to those of my age, when one temporarily 'goes blank' on the name of some familiar person.

[3rd Viennese School]

When I put on the Radio 3 performance on 3, normally half way through (I make a point of not looking up what they are playing!) I try and guess what they are playing. Normally get it in a few second if Ive hear the work. Took longer on Monday and I thought I know this! Wierd high woodwind, wierd clucking rhythmns, some sort of Mahlerish thing. After a few more seconds than normal it came to me- Mahler 4!
Well, it is in my bottom 2 of Mahler symphonies!
If I dont know it I try and guess the composer. Easy with someone distinctive like shubert or shoshtakovich but not with someone I dont get on with as much like Richard Strauss who gets played a lot these days!

As for recalling a piece you just remember the easiest bit of it first, like the main tune for instance, or the ending. In time you will recognise the bits inbetween and eventually roughly recall the whole thing! It's easier if the work is more contrasted.

3VS

[antongould]

It seems from reading these wonderful responses that, possibly, unless you are much more open minded than a now old curmudgeon like I am you have to "catch them (relatively) early" if "proper" listening to classical music is to be taught, and I doubt if taught is the right word.
This makes the opinions being expressed on the Amahl thread all the more worrying!?

[MrGongGong]

It seems from reading these wonderful responses that, possibly, unless you are much more open minded than a now old curmudgeon like I am you have to "catch them (relatively) early" if "proper" listening to classical music is to be taught, and I doubt if taught is the right word.
This makes the opinions being expressed on the Amahl thread all the more worrying!?

"proper" listening ?


Sometimes people need "listening strategies" , something that has been written about a fair bit in relation to electroacoustic music. But most of the time all you need is for the music to be heard in the right context with an open ear
sadly "open ears" are as much absent from the lovers of classical music as they are from people who only listen to chart music

there is no "proper" way to listen to music

I recently recorded a (rather well known to many on here !) string quartet with a group of Btec music technology students. Their teacher had played them (in the old style that many on the other thread remember so fondly !) some string quartets at school in preparation and predictably they hated them, found them boring and "old peoples music"etc etc (he phoned me up the night before in a rather worried state)

actually they were entirely right.............. out of the proximity and context of the live experience the music (even played by experts ) comes across as dull , the ability to "transport" music from one context to another is a skill that takes many years to aquire.

however, in the process of recording (and the quartet were playing a Haydn quartet which in my world is hardly likely to get me up on my feet !!) they were completely mesmerised and captivated........purely down to context

(sorry to repeat this endlessly and maybe this should be on the other thread ?)

you don't need to "teach" people to listen to music, you just need to get the context right and then provide the right kinds of experiences (which can include teaching about the finer points of serial technique or chromatic voice leading or orchestration etc etc)