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Hey folks!

Hope everyone is doing fine this fine Monday.

I recently did a series of performances with score, and was struck with the following idea:

In my 8 years of study at College, almost all of the focus was put on performing without the score. This included all Junior, Senior, and Doctoral performances. I find in retrospect that there was much too little focus on performing with the score. (Excluding group and chamber performances). We were not taught things like dealing with the added factor of having a page turner to your left (and no page turner during rehearsal)... things like being able to focus on the score and not your hands during fast and demanding passages. I would venture to guess that 80-90% of college piano performances were without score, and in general, teaching to play with score was neglected.

For me personally, playing without score comes natural. My memory is pretty good, and my reading is only average.

Thoughts?

Playing from the score is becoming more acceptable in recent years, whether with page turners, DIY or iPad.

But thanks to Francis and Clara who started the rot nearly two centuries ago, audiences are still largely conditioned to expect solo concert pianists to perform from memory, like a Pavlovian conditioning.

We solo pianists should rail against this imposition, and flex our muscles, and demand our scores back where they belong - on the music rests.

Though saying that, it's become natural for me in the past decade to play and perform from memory, though I never ever did that before............

This is an interesting question raised. I assumed that having a score memorized is always superior to not having it memorized. For those times in history when performance with the score was expected, I also assumed the performer could have just as well performed without the score, that it was merely something of a courtesy to have the score present.

I think both of your assumptions are doubtful.

The problems with playing from memory are two fold as I see them: the inordinate amount of time many/most people have to spend to be reasonably confident of avoiding memory slips and the anxiety many performers, even professionals, have about having memory slips no matter how much they've prepared. Some people certainly do feel they can only perform their best when playing from memory and some memorize far more easily than others.

As far as the history of playing without the score goes, I do think I've read that as playing from memory started to become more prevalent, some pianists felt playing without the score was disrespectful to the composer since some listeners would think they were improvising. This seems strange to me because I think most recitals have written programs. So maybe I am mistaken about my first sentence in this paragraph. I am not at all certain pianists from the first half of the 19th century could have performed just as well without the score.

Yuja Wang used the score for the Bartók concertos. Maybe she's following the orchestral parts, which are notoriously tricky for the pianist in terms of synchronisation. Maybe she finds it helps with the piano part.

I saw Paul Lewis use an iPad for the Diabelli Variations. Maybe it was just to keep track of the variations. I don't know if he even changed pages between variations.

Both pianists have phenomenal memories and are in their prime.

Mitsuko Uchida sometimes uses the score for the Schönberg concerto. Angela Hewitt used the score for the Art of Fugue, at least in her first performances.


If some of the greatest pianists in the world use the score when it helps them, I assume they play better because of it. Shouldn't the only thing that matters be how the music is played? If a work presents particular memory difficulties, the other options are not to play the work, or to play it and risk memory lapses. I can't imagine how either of these is ever a better option than using the music.

Agree 100%.

And especially for most amateurs who are 99% of pianists. I'd just add that besides the reasons above that even if a work doesn't present particular memory difficulties, memorizing isn't worth the effort and time unless one can perform it better from memory. For many pianists any freedom they might feel by not using the score is far overshadowed by the time spent memorizing and anxiety about memory lapses.

I think many amateurs become traumatized by their annual playing of just one piece in their teacher's recital, and all that could be avoided if they could play with the score.

I don't think that playing without a score is superior to playing with it. That is, when I consider how other people play the piano.

For me, playing without a score is easier and results in better music than playing with it. Why? I find it easy to memorize a score; it just comes naturally with practice. And, once memorized, I find that I really get into the music and play with more freedom and emotion, without having to read a score at the same time.

So much so that my first step on opening my piano every day is to remove and set aside the music stand assembly*, unless I'm learning a new piece. Once I get to what I consider 5/10 on a new piece, I find that I've unconsciously memorized it and can then concentrate on refining it and adding expression and color.

This may correlate to the fact that I have a good ear for music but am poor at sight-reading, despite having had a dozen years of formal training and lots of exams and recitals as a child, many decades ago. While doing exams, I recall having kept the score at hand for comfort, but not really looking at it.

In short, whatever works for you is good by me!

(*as grands sound better without the music stand blocking sound from reaching the pianist's ears directly)

That's fine, but since you played exams with the score, even if you didn't use it much, I'm not sure you can say that you prefer playing without it. I assume you used it in exams because you were concerned about memory lapses. So it sounds like although you might prefer to play from memory, when push came to shove you chose to play with the score. My guess is that most of your recitals were either very short or just single pieces at a teacher's recital. Feeling confident about a short scoreless performance is much easier than an hour's worth of music. Have you played an hour of music from memory?

When you start playing the music without the score have you also memorized everything in the score that's not the notes and rhythm, i.e. the phrasing, dynamics, and tempo indication?

I don't want to get into a battle about this, or profess that my way is better. To each his or her own way, as I said in the first and last lines of my post above:


The exams were a long time ago, over four decades ago, when I was a teenager. I returned to the piano a few years ago, in retirement, and my comments reflect how I feel now. Perhaps older and wiser ... and more relaxed!

Yes, I routinely play an hour of music from memory. These are not professional-level pieces, say Grade 8 at best, but I didn't think this thread was restricted to such pianists. I do unconsciously memorize everything necessary to play a piece properly, as I'm learning it.

I don't think I'm unique in this, or even consider it to be better. It's just the way I am, just as I am pretty bad at sight-reading a piece I've never heard before. Have a good evening!

Did you do ABRSM exams? They can't be RCM, as that requires you to play from memory.

Were you living in the UK then?

I never played any exam piece from memory as a kid (until my performance diploma, which did require playing from memory). None of my fellow music students ever played their exam pieces - nor any piece - from memory: in fact, anyone who did would have been thought odd. The only one who did was a budding concert pianist, when performing in the lunchtime recitals. But of course he used the score when collaborating with the other two musicians in the trio he formed in our high school.

Incidentally, we were all good sight-readers and sight-singers - likely a consequence of us learning a lot of pieces from scores, and sight-reading a lot (not as practice for the ABRSM exams, but for fun).

These days, I perform from memory, because I don't have a page-turner, but it takes me ages to memorize any piece securely, unless the piece is straightforward enough to play almost entirely by ear (in which case, I'm likely not really playing it from memory at all, but by ear.......).

"bennevis": yes, to both your questions.

I find that I'm playing from memory more now than I did as a child. Perhaps I've become even odder as I've aged; my friends may very well agree ... Ha!

Very interesting conversation.

I guess my main idea is not whether playing without score is "Better" than playing without (as I tend to shy away from dualities)

But rather, why there is so little emphasis and training focused on playing with the music in a college setting.

At school, I got rigorous training on how to memorize and play by memory, and next to no training on playing with the score. We did things like the occasional accompaniment or chamber playing, but there was never any time set aside to train pianists how to play with a score expertly

I think the assumption is that playing with the music is easier for everyone, and it doesn't take any training. For people who have always played from memory this isn't necessarily the case. I can't play well using the music. It's a skill I need to work on.

Maybe it's because one automatically gets practice playing with the music when one is practicing/learning a piece. One gradually learns how to sometimes look at the keyboard without losing one's place in the score. The only additional thing one has to get used to the presence and movements of the page turner.

OTOH, I think your question is a very good and interesting one that I don't remember seeing on PW. There are probably some things about playing with the score that could be taught and consciously practiced.

Perhaps another reason is because, at the present time, most professionals are expected to play from memory.

OP I guess it's just a matter of not having enough opportunity for ensemble playing. Pianists can go through a large number of pieces in ensemble playing. You have to be ready to play in a short time something that you may never play again after a month. That will get you really good at reading scores. But there are always scheduling problems for ensemble, not only get people together at the same time but also reserve a room. I think colleges want to do more, if they can.

I heard one of the piano teachers remark how good Arthur Rubinstein was at page turning. So I watched some videos of him in a trio with Heifetz. I also watched Richter accompany Fischer-Dieskau. Whoa!! These guys can play at fast tempo, turn their own pages, and not miss a note! The page turn is so fast, like "shoop!!" So I actually tried to practice the page turn as a skill. Hahaha. I gave up.

It's not as simple as that. Not for me anyway.

I don't think some pianists can turn pages significantly faster than others. Anyone can do it quickly. I think they have greater pianistic skill so that the page turn doesn't interfere with the performance as much as it might with a less skilled pianist. I also think they know the music well enough so they can turn the page when it's easy to do so...a little earlier or later than a page turner would do it.

I carefully mark exactly where to turn the page if it's problematic and which hand to use. If I have to turn early and don't want to memorize the measures after the page turn, I print those measures out very tiny and paste them on the next page.

Assuming one doesn't try to quickly memorize and play solo music without the score, why would ensemble playing give one any more practice playing with the music than solo playing?

Hahaha your post gave me a smile. no no I wasn't talking about practicing page turning itself. My hand can do that. I was practicing turning pages while playing.

?? That's what I was talking about also.

I’m so glad nobody makes me perform from memory anymore. Of course, I still sometimes choose to perform solo music from memory.