Memorization (when you hate it)

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.

twocats but why would I look down if I don't have to? I don't see myself building that into my practice just to achieve not getting lost, because I could just do what I've been doing and track the score and not get lost.

Well I assume you must have to look down sometimes when you play from the score. And especially so when sight reading a piece. Even the best pianists do that quite a bit unless possibly if they are playing something that's very easy. They look at their hands because it makes playing the music much easier. And it would give you the option I mentioned earlier of memorizing a piece but still having the score on the music desk so you don't have to worry about memory slips. I believe you said you couldn't use that option because you couldn't look back and forth between the score and the keyboard. In other words being able to look back and forth between this score and the keyboard gives you an option between memorization (and playing without the score) and tracking the score all the time. I have never seen or heard of a pianist playing music at the level you play who does not regularly use the technique of looking back and forth between score and the keyboard when playing from the score.

Do you keep your eyes glued to the score when playing Chopin's first ballade?