Why Must Pianists Play from Memory?

[knight66]

What if they all jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge? Would you do that too?


(My goodness, I have become my Mother.)     My apologies, Mike.

Not too clear what the underlying point is here....my own point, to those who regard it as a second rate sort of behaviour, is that most musicians from conductors, all orchestral players, most chamber music players....including pianists in that context, accompanists, singers when in choir or soloists in oratorio use the music. If the music is not getting in the way for that lot, why should it for the pianists and violinists in a solo context. Is someone really telling me that a great Schubert quartet is being inhibited by the players who almost ALWAYS use the music?

Mike

[Symphonien]

In the nineteenth century, it also saved the travelling musician the inconvenience of having to carry large quantities of sheet music with them. Mendelssohn in England has been mentioned. His sister took a long holiday in Rome where Gounod heard her playing many works by Bach, all from memory.
This is the main reason I regret not learning to memorise. If I meet a lonely piano on my travels I can only extemporise. I restrict myself to those awkward passages that are just over the page. I find my mind too elastic and full of wrong ideas.

Yes, this is another reason why I memorise because this situation has happened to me before: If you go out somewhere and there's a piano and everyone says "play something!" since they know you're a pianist what are you supposed to play if you don't have anything in your memory? Tell them, "Sorry, but I'll just have to go back home and get my sheet music and then return"?

[knight66]

There is a difference between committing several pieces to memory for the sort of purpose you suggest and being peer-pressured into committing all the music you ever play as a full time professional into your memory because of a convention.

Mike

[George]

It might be psychological, but I've always found that the music stand seems to block the sound. Also, when I know a piece well, I find the music just distracts me, so doubleminus points to reading from a score for me.

But reading from the score is what the majority of professional musicians do.

Mike

What if they all jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge? Would you do that too?


(My goodness, I have become my Mother.)     My apologies, Mike.

Not too clear what the underlying point is here....

I was simply agreeing with the Mad Hatter.

Just because the "majority of professional musicians" perform with the score, doesn't mean that it is the optimum way to perform.

For the Mad Hatter's reasons, Symphonien's reason and others mentioned earlier, I am in favor of memorizing the score, or rather being well-rehearsed enough so that the score is uneccesary when it comes time to perform. 

[Ten thumbs]

I definitely believe that memorising improves ones understanding of the music. If anyone has any suggestion as to how an old dog like me can learn new tricks, I will be interested to hear them.

[jochanaan]

Ten thumbs, I'm not sure I can oblige you, since what works for one musician might not work at all for another.

But one of the main blocks to playing from memory is the fear that you won't be able to.  Let the fear go, and often you find there wasn't any need for it at all.  On the other hand, overconfidence is also a big block.

And, as with anything else, practice makes perfect--yet in this case, the only "practice" you can get is by performing from memory.  The more you perform, the better you get.

Once I was performing in a chamber recital, and I got to the hall (a small one in a local library) and discovered I'd left my music at home! I thought for a bit, and felt I could play everything anyway, except for one small piece--the simplest, which we hadn't rehearsed much since it didn't need it.  Even though at rehearsals I'd always had the part in front of me, I played the whole concert, except for that one piece, from memory. That experience taught me to trust my powers and my judgment.  (Amazing what you can do when you simply HAVE to. )

[m_gigena]

I definitely believe that memorising improves ones understanding of the music.

That applies to me too. I definitely feel more comfortable when playing in public if I know the whole score, as I don't have to deviate attention in reading. (I suppose this is because I'm not a pro, and I tend to be moderately nervous in concerts or auditions).

Memorizing the works, bar by bar, is also a must if the piece is particularly an etude. I feel I can only dominate it, and therefore get full advantage of the techniques involved, if I can play it from memory. This may imply a certain degree of inefficient sight-reading...

[Ten thumbs]

Thank you for your thoughts. I believe my main mistake is in analysing the music so that instead of knowing what come next I start to think about what might come next. I know I can do it because during my life I have memorised three pieces, namely:
Debussy - Claire de Lune
Ibert - Le petit âne blanc
Busoni - Prelude Op 37 no8
You are right of course, the only way to succeed is to try.

[Joe_Campbell]

Once I was performing in a chamber recital, and I got to the hall (a small one in a local library) and discovered I'd left my music at home! I thought for a bit, and felt I could play everything anyway, except for one small piece--the simplest, which we hadn't rehearsed much since it didn't need it.  Even though at rehearsals I'd always had the part in front of me, I played the whole concert, except for that one piece, from memory. That experience taught me to trust my powers and my judgment.  (Amazing what you can do when you simply HAVE to. )

So you just stopped playing for that part? Hopefully it wasn't a small ensemble.

[Ten thumbs]

There does seem to be a borderline where the keyboard changes from being an accompaniment to becoming part of a duet with the other soloist. Here, the pianist may well have the music whereas the other  performer stands and plays without. Where does convention stand here?

[jochanaan]

So you just stopped playing for that part? Hopefully it wasn't a small ensemble.

No, we just didn't play that one piece.  Everything else went well.

[Scott]

Jochanaan's story about forgetting his music reminded me of my own performance disaster. I was performing a Bach fugue on the organ and for some reason one of my hard contact lenses popped out and fell into the pedal board. From that point on the fugue  had no entries from the pedal!

[zamyrabyrd]

...But one of the main blocks to playing from memory is the fear that you won't be able to.  Let the fear go, and often you find there wasn't any need for it at all.  On the other hand, overconfidence is also a big block.

And, as with anything else, practice makes perfect--yet in this case, the only "practice" you can get is by performing from memory.  The more you perform, the better you get... That experience taught me to trust my powers and my judgment.  (Amazing what you can do when you simply HAVE to. )

Yes, indeed!!  I found that I have been getting either too scared or lazy to play without the score. Over the years this has become a habit so I even put the closed score on the piano as a security blanket (just in case!!). But your words gave me some hope, even at my age...

ZB

[knight66]

In one competition I was singing two of the Wagner Wesendonk Lieder. I always have had problems getting pieces fully committed to memory, but inevitably there are usually one or two sticking places. I got through the difficult bits, then suddenly thought...I have no idea of the next line, so I made one up including the word 'Umfangen'. I saw my wife's head snap up to look intently at me; as she had helped me memorise the piece and she knew there was no such word in the song.

I found the proper next line and got second place, despite the slip-up. Ever after my memory lapses have been called 'One of your umfangen moments'.

Mike

[MishaK]

Prokofiev has a few interesting things to say about this subject:

when a piece has been sufficiently learned with the music, one must try to remember it away from the piano, imagining the sound of the music in parallel with the way it is written, that is to say recalling the music through the ears at the same time as remembering how it looks to the eyes. This must be done slowly and meticulously, reconstructing in imagination every detail of every bar. This is the first stage. Stage two consists of recalling all the music aurally while training the visual side to recall not the score but the keyboard and the individual keys which are employed to produce the sound of the music in question. [...] The more one gradually succeeds in absorbing into memory the music, the more one can be sure that the piece is irrevocably stored in the memory, since when it is reproduced all three sorts of memory are combined: musical, visual and digital, each of them having first been exercised separately and only later integrated. [...] A practical advantage is that one can practice anywhere at any time: walking along the street, sitting in the tram, waiting in a queue, anywhere indeeed where one would be bored without this activity to engage the mind.

From Prokofiev's diary on November 4, 1913, as quoted in Orlando Figes, "Prokofiev Makes his Moves", New York Review of Books, May 10, 2007, p.42.

[Maciek]

Well, if he used a computer to store the music (digital memory 0:)) no wonder he could brag about remembering it away from the piano...

[Ten thumbs]

I think the real point is that people become so inflexible in such matters. If a pianist prefers to have the music, why should it matter? Certainly when recording it is entirely irrelevant. Some composers worked their pieces out to completion at the keyboard before committing a note to paper, others threw scrap after scrap into the bin and their manuscripts are covered with alterations. However, whatever the method it scarcely matters to us, the listeners.

[tokmik]

It is a thing I could never understand either. I have not learned a single piece by heart since leaving music school. Of course, I'm an amateur, so I had no need for that but I also felt it would be a waste of time/energy.

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[Frumaster]

The choice is  easy for me.  I cannot fluently read sheet music at a rate that allows me to play solely from it.  I practically have to memorize it.  I do not have a problem forgetting parts because muscle memory takes over once I just think about a piece.  It may be limiting to my repetoire in the future, but currently there is not enough piano music that I am both willing and able to play. 

For professionals, I do usually do like to see the score in front of them, even if they just occasionally glance at it.  I just think it is good practice...similar to wearing appropriate attire, having good posture, etc.

[jlaurson]

The "Problem" of score/no-score is almost entirely a psychological one.

The symbolic value of playing from memory indicates complete mastery.

That's not actually true, but it's a reasonable assumption and so far, so good.

But from that has developed a faulty inference that _not_ playing from memory means _not_ having complete mastery.

What audiences mind is not the use of the score, per se, but the association with the use of a score... which is, quite frankly, a second rate performance.

This is reinforced by the fact that most of the performances that do use a score actually _are_ second rate, since everyone who doesn't have to use a score won't... and since the first rate performers have--grudingly or not--learned to learn/play things by heart.

It's a social dynamic that's difficult to break, not unlike the "no clapping between movements" rule. If we knew that everyone clapping after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto were music critics/connoisseurs who, aware of there being three movements and aware of conventions, wanted to express their particular approval of that movement, we'd be perfectly happy with it and maybe even join in.

Since clapping after the first movement of the Tchaik PC, no matter how much the music screams for applause, is a sign of ignorance, noobism, we look upon them with disdain and hush them into the ground.

Same with the score/no score. We expect (and often get) mediocrity--and the only way to break out of that is through being made conscious of the irrelevance of performing with or without score, as long as the interpretation is sufficiently good.

What would help? If Maurizio Pollini performed with a score. If Murray Perahia performed with a score. If M.A.Hamelin performed with a score... players that no one would ever doubt not having the absolutely highest technical (and in the first two cases also the expressive) capabilities.

Short of that...


Meanwhile, when I see that Christian Thielemann--a conductor who has conditioned us to expecting memorization and connect them with extraordinary performances--brings the score to conduct, I fear the worst.