Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner The controversial area of memorizing in performance

I extracted opinions from Seymour Bernstein among others.

http://arioso7.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/the-haydn-sonata-in-c-unpinned-and-matters-of-memorization/

Interesting, I like to memorise and always have for some reason. This might be why my sight reading is not so good... But I do feel I can get lost in the music more. Which I like

You know, if you went to a play, and half of the actors who did not / could not memorize their lines walked around the stage with their faces buried in the script, well, that would annoy the heck out of ME, anyway.
I don't see how this is any different. I know there are some fine instrumentalists and conductors who are not blessed with good memories who will disagree that this is a performance deficiency, but to me it's no different than needing a script for your lines.
That said -- there are interesting tendencies that evolve with each of the two types. I am an example of a pianists with a great memory; I can read through a piece once and I don't need it again. BUT -- I am a terrible sight-reader, BECAUSE my memory is so good. The best sight-readers I know have poor memories. I once had a girlfriend who could play anything I gave her at sight and at speed. Once, after she sight-read a fugue from the WTC II at a nice clip, I asked her if she knew what a "fugue" was. She said she didn't know. She had a terrible memory and could not improvise to save her life, but wow, what a reader!
Of course the very best, have great memories yet have persisted in their studies to gain and maintain great sight-reading skills.
Maybe next lifetime...

I don't think the comparison to acting is particularly strong. The actors are supposed to be imitating real life where people don't speak from scripts and their emotional reactions and physical movements are far more important than in a piano recital. A better comparison might be listening to actors on the radio where I'd guess they almost always use scripts.

And then there is the obvious examples of orchestral performances, chamber music, or pianists playing contemporary music, where the score is almost always used. Also the historical fact that until a certain point in time pianists always used the score, and it was considered and insult to the composer not to do so.

I think memorization is a complicated issue and should be considered quite different for amateurs vs. professionals. I think amateurs should certainly be allowed/encouraged to use the score because the time it takes to memorize could be put to far better use in most cases. And I'd guess many amateurs would perform far better with the score because the anxiety over memory problems gets eliminated.

For professionals, the issue of memorization is far more complicated because it's usually a given that they are expected to perform from memory.

Not to mention the fact that actors also have prompters to give them lines if they forget any. I don't think that can be done with piano as easily (how would they fit a prompter *and* a piano in that little box??).

I would love to add your quote to my blog, as I am interested in player feedback..

another thought-provoking, valuable set of insights.
Thanks for sharing. Certainly as you say, in the chamber music realm, using music is customary.

your post prompted my memory of Christopher O'Reilly turning pages with an iPad on Public TV.

I think that once pianists became 'stars', as originated by Liszt: solo concerts, piano sideways on to the audience so that they could see not just his noble profile but also his flying hands and his expressive (and noble) face......the die was cast. A star can't share the limelight with a lowly page-turner, nor have any attention directed away from him and his playing (as would occur if he kept looking at the score).

Even solo violinists and cellists (playing solo Bach etc) and singers have got in on the act. A Lieder recital is more like a soloist (the singer) with piano accompaniment than a chamber concert, so whereas a violinist playing the Franck Sonata would use the score as well as his partner, the singer wouldn't - even when singing Wolf, where the piano part is often as (if not more) important than the singer's.

"I would love to add your quote to my blog, as I am interested in player feedback.."

Of course.
GB

I don't see how one can sight read a piece with some difficulty and then have it memorized unless if one is talking about photographic memory. Presumably one hasn't sight read all the notes, rhythms, etc. correctly the first time if one is a poor sight reader, so one would be memorizing errors. I also think it's a big mistake to not use the score until one has memorized every marking in the score in addition to the notes.

I think that in general all pianistic skills(technique, musicianship, sight reading, memorizing, etc.) tend to move mostly in parallel. They are all related. Most very good pianists are very at all of them and most beginners or less talented pianists are not so good in all these areas. Of course, one can always find exceptions to the above, e.g. a pianist with great technique but poor sight reading skill or poor musicianship. But I think those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

I have this problem as well. I read through a score once, or even just hear a piece played from start to finish once or twice, and I'm inclined never to look at the score again.

When I started taking lessons again five months ago, I explicitly asked my teacher never to play a piece for me before I had worked through it myself, because if she did, I would never learn to sight-read. She's been pretty good about sticking to that rule, and yet, my sight-reading still hasn't improved much. I still find myself looking at the score once, and then moving on from there without it.

Do you have any ideas about how to avoid this trap? Because I literally can't seem to do it -- look at the score and play at the same time, I mean. I always loose my place, and so it becomes simply easier for me to ignore the score, even before I can actually play through a piece.

How do you actually learn a piece, if you ignore the score after one read-through, unless you have a photographic memory?

@ bennevis: I don't know. I guess "I read it once" doesn't really adequately explain what I do.

It's more like, I read the first four bars once (or the first three, or the first two, or sometimes maybe the first eight, depending on what makes the most sense in the context of the phrasing of the piece), and then I play them, and once I know what they sound like, I don't need to even remember which specific notes were in them, because I can hear those two or three or four or eight bars in my mind.

Then I move on to the next few bars in the same way, until I reach the end.

The trouble is, because I easily remember melodies, but not necessarily specific notes (my musical hearing is not absolute), sometimes I hear a piece on the radio, or play through the score once and then forget about it for a while, and when I try to play it on the piano later, it comes out in the wrong key.

Also, it sometimes leads to quirky mistakes. Recently I was learning one of the Burgmüller opus 100 pieces (n° 5), which ends its melody in the left hand on the first repetition of the first theme, and in the right hand on the second repetition of same. Until my teacher pointed it out to me, I never realized that I was playing the ending of the second repetition in the wrong hand, one octave too low.

Maybe what you should do is to start learning pieces where the accompaniment is just as important as, or integrated into, the melody so that you can't just play half by ear, half by memory which is what you seem to be doing. Like Schumann's Arabeske, Op.18 for example, or Rachmaninoff's Prelude in D, Op.23/4, or Brahms's Intermezzo in A, Op.118/2, all of which are somewhat above the level of the pieces you're playing, but are immediately appealing, and most importantly get you to learn to read scores and sight-read properly. Bach's polyphonic music (two- and three-part Inventions etc) will also do the trick.

Otherwise, you will find it difficult to progress beyond your current level.

I think I know what you're getting at, bennevis, and I also think that my teacher has already caught on to the same drift. She gave me 'Impertinence' by Handel to study a while ago. It's a simple piece, but it does have two melodic lines (left and right hand) that are pretty much independent of each other.

I learned that the same way I learn anything else, though. I have no trouble holding two distinct melodic lines in my memory at the same time. I just have trouble immediately translating what I see on the page into a key press on the piano.

But maybe if I try one of the pieces you suggested, I will be forced to read from the page because the distinct melodic lines are too complicated to remember (even with the occasional mistake) after one try. I will definitely keep your suggestions in mind. Thanks!

There are books you can buy with lots of sight reading examples. You only play them once or twice, and then move on. If you are an advanced player, then you buy an inexpensive compilation of intermediate pieces and use that. This is separate work from learning your repertoire.

Thanks...

For me, I prefer watching pianists play from memory. When one plays from a score it makes them seem unprepared and isn't as exciting.

I don't really care if a pianist uses the score or not as long as he/she plays well.