Memorization (when you hate it)

twocats I’ve got a long reply; hopefully it’s useful. When I was a kid, I didn’t find memorization ‘difficult,’ per se, but I did find memorization problematic. The pieces that I was asked to memorize, I felt like by the time I got to the point that I needed to memorize them, I could play much of them from memory. But I didn’t have fantastic security in my memorization. To this day, I have nightmares of bad memory lapses during performances, and I was always more comfortable with the score.

Fast forward to resuming piano as an adult, it was very pleasant to realize that the technological advances of tablets and page turning devices really meant that I could use the score and not have to worry about clunky page turns, or multiple sheets that could have issues on the music stand, and so performance with the sheet music in front of me was not a big deal. In general, I haven’t put effort into memorizing things, and I feel this in many ways gives me more freedom, as I don’t have the mental anxiety of worrying about a memory lapse.

I did memorize the last piece that I submitted for a PT recital, but this was the exception. I ended up deciding to memorize it because I realized it had kind of memorized itself. The piece had a number of technical challenges for me, but I think musically it was more straightforward than a lot of things I have worked on recently. I think this was the reason I absorbed it. Even so, I think the biggest issue with the performance was ultimately an issue related to memory. Do I think memorizing it made me feel more free in my playing? Not really. But it wasn’t a big deal to memorize it, although the memorization was also imperfect.

This takes me to my current project, which is another 20th century piece. It’s got a few spots that I’ve found particularly troublesome to learn. There’s one particular spot that’s just 6 measures, but I spent several weeks on it, trying different practice techniques, and it was giving me no end of trouble to learn. I don’t think this was for particularly technical reasons, but the passage is on the way to being atonal, if not fully there, and I just felt like I was spending a lot of time on it without much progress. My teacher had suggested a few things and I was still struggling. At my last lesson, he suggested that I work on memorizing it, and he gave me some suggestions for how to work on memorization. And I’ve implemented this, and the passage is finally coming together.

He had some very concrete recommendations for approaching memorization. 1. Work on small chunks — maybe a few measures. 2. Start with the music, then try to play from memory, then go back to the music and read through the phrase. Continue this (alternating between memory and the music) until every note in the small section is memorized. Then expand the section or work on the next section, but always alternate between reading the sheet music and memorization (I think this will actually help to not have the problem of feeling that you can’t continue to work both from the sheet music and from memory, which others have described). 3. There are several aspects to memory, and each is important. They include a. Visual memory — both the visual memory of the notes on the score and the visual memory of the appearance of the phrase on the keyboard (what does it look like your hands are doing?) b. Kinetic memory — how are you moving between notes/chords? C. Aural memory - how the phrase sounds; my notes from the lesson say “hear the ‘song’ of the phrase,” d. Conceptual memory - what is the structure of the music? Chord progression, etc. my lesson notes are, “ it is Impossible to memorize without understanding a phrase” and “Transitions can be perilous; it is important to understand these.” And finally e. Technical memory. Lesson notes: “technical failures often causes memory slips.” Make sure you are technically secure. As you memorize a section, you need to pay attention to each of these things and memorize each of these aspects.

The recommendation was also that if you are planning to work on memorizing a piece in its entirety, it is beneficial to do so from the beginning so that you incorporate all aspects of memorization before the purely kinetic memory sets it (and you will be over-reliant on ‘muscle memory’). He also recommended memorizing hands together as much as possible.

Anyways, I’m not really planning on attempting to memorize a whole piece, but working on specific tricky passages in this way, I did actually find that I made more progress than anything else I had been doing. And while it is somewhat time-consuming, I think if I were to approach an entire piece this way, it would be an approach that would help me simultaneously learn and memorize the piece in a way that felt secure.

I agree with pianoloverus. I hate memorizing sheet music, and the only practical reason to do so is if a piano randomly appears and I am without my documents.

Here's a nice article that makes the point that I'm too lazy to make myself.

The growing taste for watching soloists play from memory has actually narrowed the breadth of the repertoire. Vladimir Horowitz, for example, played a huge number of works at home from the score, but only performed a small repertoire from memory in public. Today many soloists won't commit themselves to more than a handful of works each season, no doubt partly because of the burden of memorisation. In the past few years, I've successfully memorised several solo recital programmes, each lasting about two hours. Had I allowed myself to use music, I could have performed the programmes much earlier, and with equal interpretative power. It was the sheer effort of memorising that added months to the process.

Since every single one of my pianoworld/pianotell recitals has been performed without sheet music, maybe I should say a little more.

• most of my recitals have been jazz, which means memorizing a lead sheet, which is almost always not too much effort.
• Modern Major General was simple enough to understand as a soprano line over chords. So basically the same as a lead sheet. In general, that kind of analysis doesn't work for the sheet music I play.
  *Sleigh Ride in 7/8: okay, I admit I thought it would look nicer and more performative without the music. But the effort was great. I had to do 40 takes because I kept messing up the end. That was 2018 me, and 2025 me disagrees with his decision.

For for many pianists, including professionals, I think the fear of memory slips more than outweighs any other supposed advantages of playing from memory. If it was not considered a semi requirement for professionals to play recitals from memory, I think many of them, even if they had memorized the music, Would choose to have a tablet with the score on the music desk for the sake of security And there are the other disadvantages of playing from memory in particular the inordinate amount of time it takes that could be used to learn more repertoire.

Animisha When recording the piece, there are already so many things to think about, and adding to that the stress that I would not remember correctly, did not do my performance any good.

I think many people would have the same experience you had. It's possible that going through the lengthy process memorizing a piece very securely (which still can break down in performance) gives one more understanding or " The piece becomes part of you" whatever that means or whatever else those in favor of memorization claim, but the stress of playing from memory could easily outweigh those theoretical advantages.

Ignoring for the moment the added stress of playing from memory, it's possible or even reasonable that all the extra work needed to memorize a piece would give one greater understanding of it. But throwing back stress into the equation plus the huge amount of extra time needed to memorize I don't think it's worth it except maybe for a small number of pieces.

twocats I don't think you reached the stage where the piece became a part of you! First, it has to be completely solid. And then the memorization has to be completely solid. I think my friend means that you have to be able to lose yourself in the music, and having your eyes open and tracking the music doesn't let you do that.

1. If one has learned a piece well but not fully memorized it, then at that stage one is usually not doing what I would call tracking the musical score. Before playing from memory became popular or even required, do you think keyboard players were not capable of losing themselves in the music(whatever that means) or had some expressive limitations? Do you think orchestral musicians or chamber music players of today lose something in their performances because they are playing with the score?
2. If one is playing from memory then one's eyes are usually still open but focused mostly on the keyboard.

If someone has put in all the time usually needed to solidly memorize a piece AND Is has no fear of a memory lapse (rare), than I wouldn't be surprised if all that extra time with a piece improved their performance. But is it really worth it except possibly just occasionally considering all the downsides of memorization?

I too am always tracking the score whether it's a brand new piece I'm just starting to learn or the piece is fully polished.

twocats I don't think people are limited in their expressiveness if playing by the score

I agree with this.

At the same time, I think that for those of us who are "readers," sometimes memorizing could be beneficial just as a way to experience internalizing a piece in a different way.

So to @pianoloverus 's question:

is it really worth it except possibly just occasionally considering all the downsides of memorization?

I can only speak for myself of course, but "just occasionally" is exactly what I was thinking about and why this thread caught my attention.