Music Memorization: A Practiced Skill

Although musicians have been memorizing music for as long as music has been in existence, nineteenth century composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, seen in the image to the right, was the first performer to present an entire recital by memory. It is now considered standard practice for a musician to memorize his or her music and perform it without the aid of music. No matter how talented a musician, memorizing music is a challenge. Many people have theories on what is best way to go about memorizing a song, and every theory varies slightly. For this reason, I decided to search the blogosphere this week and seek out what different people say on the matter of music memorization. Within Blogger, I found a post by Elaine Fine, composer, violist, violinist, CD review writer for the American Record Guide, and writer for the Instrumentalist. In her post, Musical Memory: true confessions, Ms. Fine speaks out about her own weaknesses when it comes to memorizing music. Therefore, I responded with my own personal weaknesses and some insights into why we each had these weaknesses. Along with that, I found another blog that caught my interest at musicteachershelper.com. The blog post, Memorizing vs. Learning was written by Ed Pearlman, fiddler and fiddle teacher. It talks about memorizing by way of ear training and the benefits of learning an instrument by ear rather than by reading music. I do not agree with his stance on this issue so I therefore decided to refute his argument. My comments can be found below or on the original blog posts themselves.


Music Memory: true confessions
My comment:
I have always found the concept of memorizing music to be an interesting one. As a classically trained pianist and vocalist, I have had to do my fair share of memorizing in my musical career. Similarly to you, I have always had problems memorizing the “hard parts” of Beethoven Sonatas. For example, I had almost the entire length of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique memorized. However, the fast section of the first movement always caused me problems, and even though I rehearsed it countless times, it ended up being the section that I stumbled over when performing the memorized piece in my recital. In contrast, memorizing and performing my vocal pieces has never been a problem unless I entered into the performance with insufficient preparation. The reason for this, I believe, is because of my aural and visual memory.

When learning a vocal piece, my brain makes a strong connection between the notes and the words because the music and the text usually match in emotion and overall feeling. Whether it is the actual physical shape of the music or just the musicality of the piece, there is usually some correlation between the words and the music. This causes my brain to form a strong visual and aural relationship with what I am singing. On the contrary, when learning a lengthy sonata, the brain is processing so much that it is difficult for it to create a visual or aural connection to the notes in the tricky parts. I believe these connections are more difficult to form for the obvious reasons; the actual notes on the page look scrambled and the brain usually hears difficult sections as a whole rather than note by note. Therefore, when trying to perform a difficult section from memory, the brain has a hard time remembering the individual notes.

First page of Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique

Memorizing vs. Learning
My comment:
I find your distinction between memorizing a piece and actually learning a piece to be an interesting one. You say “musicians who rely on written music, and then memorize it, have taken only a first step toward learning it.” While this statement is obviously valid, I do not believe that a musician cannot memorize and master a piece of music without the ability to learn by ear. As you said, a true mastery of aural skills is important, however, there are many different elements that go into memorization besides aural memory.

Visual and conceptual memories are both very important for a musician to be able to memorize a piece of music and to command the performance of that piece. Without seeing the notes on a page, a musician can gain only a limited amount of knowledge about the piece. He can hear it and interpret it to his liking, but the actual structure of the piece and how the composer imagined it will be lost to him. Also, being able to visualize the notes on a page allows the brain to remember the shape and sequence of the notes. This contributes to the memorization process. A musician must also have good conceptual memory to be able to memorize a piece. He must really be aware of what he is memorizing in order to retain the music. This includes musical text, phrasing, notes, harmony, etc. While the musician can hear some of these aspects when learning by ear, some are not as obvious and must be seen in print in order to grasp them.

Because the brain uses many different tools in the memorization process, I believe that it hinders a musician to learn a piece by ear only. The ability to play or sing by ear is a great talent, but the ability to read, interpret, and understand written texts and music is essential to any good musical training.