Hard work, in short, is the key. But, when push comes to shove, can you entirely trust your memory? We look into the phenomenon of performers playing without a score – what are the benefits of playing music from memory, and should we all be doing it?
The great composers who played music from memory
The great composers certainly thought so. Susan Tomes recalls the story of Beethoven chastising his pupil Carl Czerny for playing from memory, saying it would make him casual about his markings on the score.
Ironically, one of the first artists to overturn centuries of performance practice by performing from memory at the piano was Liszt, who was often shown gazing skywards, as if seeking divine inspiration. In truth, he performed only a fraction of his repertoire from memory and all of his own pieces from music, in case audiences thought he was making it all up as he went along.
In the age of Wikipedia and smart phones, the whole idea of committing information to memory seems increasingly quaint (how many millennials have even had cause to memorise a phone number?). Where once the ability to recall information was prized as an indicator of learning, today we rely far more on ‘external' memory in the form of information stored digitally in the cloud. The skill is not so much remembering information as knowing where to find it. But in the classical music world, memorising music has long been part of the conversation.
But there are signs of a reaction against this collective memory loss. A number of recent bestsellers have highlighted the dangers which the information age can pose to our minds (including recent works by neuroscientists Ryuta Kawashima and Daniel Levitin); ‘brain training’ websites such as Lumosity and Memrise have proliferated; and there is an increasing body of scientific evidence indicating that keeping our memories active can help militate against dementia later in life.
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The benefits of learning music from memory
You can get a better, deeper perspective of the music
It's valuable to have the music in your head rather than at arms' length. Somehow taking the music into one's own body, as it were, increases that sense of identification with the mysterious substance of music. It reminds you that, whatever else music is, it isn't printed notes.
The Aurora Orchestra were the first professional orchestra in the modern era to perform a symphony entirely from memory. They achieved this feat in 2014, and have gone on to perform many other works from memory. But they're not just memorising their own parts, plus all the pencil markings they may have added: they're effectively memorising the whole score.
British orchestras are famously expert sight-readers – they have to be, given the premium placed on rehearsal time. But having to spend extra time learning the parts gives the players' unconscious minds more time to process what they take. What will come out at the end stands a chance of being a more 'inwardly-digested' performance, not solely reliant on the conductor's interpretative overview.
It helps create a better bond between musicians playing from memory
Then there's the effect on the orchestra as a group. There is, says one player (Michael Trainor), a new 'bond' between the players: 'It creates a whole new clarity on the stage.' The musicians are 'listening in a totally different way, hearing things they wouldn't have picked up on before. Each person knows it in such an intimate way.' Of course it can be scary, but nerves - if they're not totally paralysing - can add a new edge, alertness and vitality to a performance. 'Despite the nerves and pressure that we feel', says another (Jamie Campbell), 'I think we play better, and we play more freely.'
There's psychological evidence that when we're apprehensive about a task, we can change our feelings from fear to excitement simply by telling ourselves that we are excited. Several of the Aurora musicians appear to have made this discovery for themselves: 'It's the most exciting thing I've ever done', says Tamara Elias, quite categorically.
Musicians can move around when they're not in front of a music stand
And what happens physically when you take the music stand away? The effect, says violinist Elizabeth Cooney, is simply liberating. 'Without the music stand you're definitely more free to move around. You can communicate a bit easier amongst yourselves, but also to the audience. There's no barrier.' It's when you hear comments like that that you realise this could be the beginning of a revolution in orchestral music making. We all want to hear orchestras play with feeling and understanding. What better way than to invite them to play 'by heart'?
Advantages of using a score in concert
People might think you're improvising otherwise!
If they're performing their own music, many composer-performers tend to perform from a score, in case audiences think they're making it up! Stephen Hough performs his own compositions from the music, too. ‘It’s partly because it helps me to separate “me” the composer from “me” the performer,’ he explains. ‘I don’t want any sense (in my mind or the audience’s) that I’m improvising.’
In fact, Hough’s adherence to the score isn’t confined to his own music: ‘If, or when, I begin to play Bach in public, I would definitely use the score.’ As for other composers, he says, ‘there is an argument (not entirely watertight but important) that a concert is theatre and, however well an actor might read a role or a poem from a book or even an autocue, it’s not quite the same as doing it from memory.’
And there’s another problem with memory. The condition for a culture that demands that soloists learn their parts off by heart is that there must be a fixed historical repertoire written by other people for them to learn. And since the majority of them are now dead, there’s no real danger of anyone mistaking the performer for the composer. Our insistence on memory comes at the cost of new pieces becoming part of the repertoire, composed so quickly there’s no time to memorise them.
It's difficult for older artists to perform music from memory
As they grew older and lost confidence in their memory, Clifford Curzon and Sviatoslav Richter performed fewer concerts from memory.
John Gilhooly, director of Wigmore Hall, accepts older artists may feel more comfortable performing this way: ‘An older performer, perhaps a cellist playing the Bach cello suites (we named the Bach cello suites as some of the best pieces of cello music ever written), might ask if they can use the music, and that’s fine. And an older pianist performs here with his wife turning the music, but I’ve never seen him refer to it; it’s there as a crutch.’
Otherwise, Gilhooly is less tolerant of younger artists choosing to use the score: ‘The music stand can be a barrier between the audience and the performer, and the performer and the music. I get cross when I see a singer buried in the score. I don’t think performing from the music should become the norm and I don’t see any signs that is happening. People are paying a lot of money to hear an artist and they have certain expectations. But I also accept that an artist may be experiencing pressures that are making them feel vulnerable. You have to be understanding.’
Performer's perogative: you should choose!
Alexandra Dariescu agrees that audiences expect artists to perform from memory but is unsure where exactly that expectation comes from: ‘I think everyone should perform in whatever way they feel most comfortable and concentrate on what they want to communicate. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to memorise pieces so I could spend more time learning repertoire, but it’s about prioritising, and attitudes differ between performers.’
They certainly do. Pianist Kathryn Stott can memorise easily and securely but says she prefers to play from the music: ‘You have to know the music sufficiently well not to be glued to the score. When it doesn’t work is when it’s being used because the performer isn’t prepared.’ In any case, she reckons the public doesn’t care whether music is used or not. ‘I played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 the other night to 2,000 people and no one gave a monkey’s that I played it from the music. Times are changing and more performers are doing it because they know people come to hear the music, not see what your memory’s like.’
Although Susan Tomes performs recitals from memory she can understand why some of her fellow performers do not. ‘So many students and colleagues have told me about the worry and distress that memorising – and public lapses of memory – have caused them that I have come to feel that, although it is liberating for some, it is burdensome for others and probably causes more unhappiness than it’s worth.’
In any case, like Kathryn Stott, she fears the audience may not even notice when a performer plays from memory. ‘I gave a recital last year and my friend who came along was surprised when I told her I played it from memory. She hadn’t noticed – so why do we do it?’
