Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Is memorization emphasized the most with piano?

All these recent threads on memorization and sight reading made me think about this. Being a former band geek (drummer), everyone in the band always reads music and plays. Even the drummers in the back had sheet music (although we never had to read intervals...lol).

If you look at the orchestra, all the cellists, violinists, horn players, etc, also have sheet music in front of them, but the pianist playing the Chopin concerto, has no music (in most cases), and has memorized her performance.

I know memorization is important for pianists for the many reasons already discussed... but...what do you all think? Is it because pianists have to read from 2 staffs (as opposed to most other instruments), and it just makes it easier to give a great performance (whether it's solo or accompaniment) without the "distraction" of the score? Again, I'm generalizing, and do realize that some concert pianists play with the score.

Is memorization discussed as extensively in the Trombone or Tuba forum as it is here?

Didn't it used to be quite normal for pianists to perform with sheet music, until it became a sign of virtuosity to perform demanding works without it? Do correct me if I"m wrong (as I might well be) but I have a vague memory that it might have been Clara Schumann who started the playing w/out sheet music safety net tradition.

I think the distinction is that the ENSEMBLE players are using music, and the SOLOIST is not. If it was a violin concerto, the solo violinist would certainly have the music memorized.

I remember reading somewhere that we can thank Liszt for the tradition of pianists performing from memory . Before his time, music was usually used.

I just couldn't see how someone who packs a venue performing specific pieces hasn't played the piece a trillion times before.

They not only have the piece memorized, but it was probably already memorized hundreds of times previously played.

At some point, muscle memory is going to take over when something is performed with such high repetition. Even if you don't try to memorize a piece, with high enough repetition it is just going to happen.

Retaining this piece over time is a whole different story however. Especially if it drops off the played list for a while.

Bingo!!
Took the words right out of my proverbial mouth.

In fact, if you're a pianist playing with an ensemble, even if you can play it by memory, it's usually considered poor form to play without the score, if the others are using it, which they almost always are. Basically you can't be playing without the score. So you have to sit there with it in front of you for show.

Not entirely for show of course - you're tracking all the other parts too.

Interestingly, I've seen brass and wind concerto soloists use the score on a music stand, but not string soloists. Piano (concerto) soloists use the score occasionally if it's a modern, complex work, and also if they're also directing the ensemble as well as playing.

With pianists, it started with Clara Schumann and Liszt (they were not always on the best of terms - if I remember correctly Clara thought that Liszt had snubbed or insulted her husband Robert once and she never forgot it).

So there was an element of showmanship (or show-woman-ship) involved. But there is also the image of the performer communing with the instrument and the audience without the printed music getting in the way that is in many ways superior to the image of a performer staring at the score, and the distraction of turning the pages or having a page turner.

So I think it is a better experience for the audience.

Why don't more instrumentalists do it? Probably tradition. Pianists and solo violinists do it because they always have. To use the music would look strange and somehow inferior.

And then there's me - I plan to play in my teachers recital next week. I will be the only adult. I will also be the only one using music!

Sam

I was talking about even if you don't need it for that either.

I meant even if.
Even then, you still can't get up there without the score.

Very well said. That's exactly my view -- plus a little more. Arguably (and I think definitely) the player has more possibility to get deeply into the music and give a more heartfelt and/or spontaneous and/or exciting (and/or what-have-you) performance.

People sometimes counter with, but isn't that outweighed by the worry about having memory lapses, and by all the extra work you have to do memorizing the piece?
And I say absolutely it is -- they're right.
The other thing applies only or at least mainly for people who don't have to do huge extra work to memorize and who don't need to worry that much about it. If you do, IMO it ain't worth it. I'm a strong advocate for the possible benefits of playing by memory, but an even stronger advocate against the torture (yeah, I say torture) of making people play by memory when it serves little good purpose.

Sure, encourage everyone to try it, sort of. But don't necessarily make them perform that way.

Soloists practised their parts until perfection before performing. That could be months or years. Orchestra musicians have a few rehearsals before performing with the soloist. They don't have enough time to memorize it.

Soloists may perform the same concerto in a number of concerts. Orchestra musicians move on from a concert program to another in a week. There is no need for them to memorize.

Soloists choose whatever techniques, fingering, bowing he/she prefers. String instrumentalists play in sync, same bowing, fingering, dynamics etc. they need the sheet music with all the markings to help them remember.

Soloists rarely have to count how may bars of rests before recommrncing. For orchestra musicians, most of the time there are long period of rests in the different parts (eg 25 bars of rests, then play c arpeggios repeatedly for 8 bars, them a scale up and down, then repeated notes in staccato for 3 bar in triplets...). Also, when you don't have the melody, it's not easy to memorize the part).

I rest my case.

I would simply add that soloists who play with the orchestra without music for the performance, often DO USE THE MUSIC for rehearsals. The soloist presumably has the music itself memorized, but during the rehearsal, when the conductor says, "Lets take it from the pickups 1 beat before Measure 214 . . ." ; having the written music saves the soloist from interrupting with, "Sorry - would you please hum a few measures before starting so I know where we are?"

This is also a compelling reason for members of the orchestra, who might have their parts committed to memory, to be following along with the printed pages.

Ed

I find that memorization happens with practice, whether I want it to or not. And then even with the chart up, I get lazy and just play without following along on the page. Next, I have a memory lapse, and can't possibly find my place fast enough on the chart.

tangleweeds wrote:
"Didn't it used to be quite normal for pianists to perform with sheet music, until it became a sign of virtuosity to perform demanding works without it? Do correct me if I"m wrong (as I might well be) but I have a vague memory that it might have been Clara Schumann who started the playing w/out sheet music safety net tradition."


I've noticed that all - and I mean all - harpsichordists I have ever seen perform in public have always done so with all the music in front of them. This is regardless of type of venue, style of event, programme/composers, age/experience of performer, length of performance, difficulty of pieces, and whether playing solo (that's mostly what I've seen) or ensemble... Even when the musician is thought of as being the world's primary exponent of that composer/repertoire, or has made very highly thought of recordings of those pieces, they always have the sheet music, and use it.

Perhaps the Baroque - as played now - is different: there is a different relationship with the music itself (notions of authenticity in the text and going back to the most reliable sources) and a different idea of what a performer is.

Last week I saw Terence Charleston playing a couple of the simplest pieces with the music in front of him. (If you don't know Charleston, he is a professor at the Royal Academy with over 70 CDs to his name and extensive international performance over decades) However, those pieces were from little-known manuscripts in places like the Oxford Bodleian library, and telling the stories of those manuscripts was part of the performance. It often is with Baroque.

It was actually Liszt who started the whole tradition... he was also the first to face the piano sideways to enhance the audience's acoustic and visual experiences.

Memorizing piano music when you're performing as a soloist is expected these days... and it makes sense-- imagine a singer who doesn't have the lyrices memorized... he or she would have to hold a piece of paper onstage and the performance would just be awkward.

I'll just add my 5c in to this discussion.

When you're talking about orchestral work, a (non-professional) orchestra that I've played in might rehearse a given program for a couple of months before a concert. Thats perhaps 25 hours of rehearsal for 2 hours of music.

In a standard format program (overture/concerto/symphony) - we'll spend the majorityh of our rehearsal time on the symphony and within that there will be tougher sections that get a lot of work and easier sections that are glossed over a lot. We generally do little more than 'top and tail' the concerto in rehearsals as playing the orchestral parts without a soloist is often difficult and nonsensical.

I'm sure I've played some concerts where sections of the music I've been playing I've thought "Have we EVER played thie bit before?". There is certainly no way orchestral musicians are going to memorise 2 hours of music inlcuding many bits they may have played fewer than 10 times in total!

A soloist by comparison will (I imagine) work on a piece for a considerable length of time - play it with many different orchestras and spend huge numbers of hours doing personal practice and will know the work backwards and inside out.


As others have said though - its common when a soloist shows up in reheasal for them to have the score with them so that a conductors instructions make sense: "Lets go from 8 bars before J..." (Some soloists know their work well enough to know where all the rehearsal numbers/letter are - but even so having the score there is always useful just to clarify whats being talked about).

Yesterday I attended a rehearsal of the Beethoven Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano performed by the Eroica Trio with the Santa Rosa (Calif.) symphony orchestra. The pianist, Erika Nickrenz had the score and referred to it from time to time. She wasn't "reading" it, but checking it from time to time. They have played this many many times and have recorded it.