The piano practice rooms don't re-open for another 3 weeks, so it seemed a good idea to use some of the spare time that leaves to share with you some of the more memorable and perceptive things I've read over the last year or so. I hope you will add lots of interesting comments and supplementary information.

No. 1: Josef Hofmann on Memorization
From: Piano Playing 1909 Doubleday, Page and Co.

Start with a short piece. Analyze the form and manner of its texture. Play the piece a number of times very exactly with the music before you. Then stop playing for several hours and try to trace the course of ideas mentally in the piece. Try to hear the piece inwardly. If you have retained some parts fill the misssing places by repeated reading of the piece, away from the piano. When next you go to the piano - after several hours, remember - try to play the piece. Should you still get stuck at a certain place take the sheet music, but play only tht place (several times if necessary), and then begin the piece over again as a test, if you have better luck this time with those elusive places.

If you still fail, resume your silent reading of the piece away from the piano. Under no circumstances skip the unsafe place for the time being and proceed with the rest of the piece. By such forcing of the memory you lose the logical development of your piece, tangle up your memory, and injure its receptivity.

Another observation in connection with memorizing may find a place here. When we study a piece we - unconsciously - associate in our mind a multitude of things with it which bear not the slightest relation upon it. By these things I mean not only the action of the piano, light or heavy as it may be, but also the colour of its wood, the colour of the wallpaper, the discoloration of the ivory on some keys of the piano, the pictures on the walls, the angle at which the piano stands to the architectural lines of the room, in short, all sorts of things. And we remain utterly unconscious of having associated them with the piece we are studying - until we try to play the well-learned piece in a different place - in the house of a friend or, if we are inexperienced t enough to commit such a blunder, in the concert hall.

Then we find that our memory fails us most unexpectedly, and we blame our memory for its unreliableness. But the fact is rather that our memory was only too good, too exact, for the absence of or difference from our acccustomed surroundings disturbed our too precise memory. Hence, to make absolutely sure of our memory we should try our piece in a number of different places before relying upon our memory; this will dissociate the wonted environment from the piece in our memory.

Please keep these coming!

I'm off out so don't have anything to add yet other than

Does that mean 'I'm sorry, it's your wallpaper' is a valid reason for messing up in a lesson?

Ye-es...I've read that better memorisation obtains when you study the harmonies and the texture away from the piano and then try it out section by section. The trouble with that is that even supposing you don't get bogged down with the structural analysis and the key scheme (if you do it erroneously does it make it harder to memorise?!) it still won't stick if it has a chordal texture. Linear bits aren't too bad but the only thing I have successfully memorised so far is the first movement of the Brahms op 79 no 2 and that was by dint of repetition ad nauseum - necessary because some of the wide leaps are too risky to undertake with the eyes on the score. (I don't count a few short organ things like chants and canticles but even those are without the pedal.)

Having said that, i have just had to look back at the Debussy prelude 8 bk 1 I've spent half an hour on to check on the first 2 left hand chords and I can now see that it makes a perfect cadence. Surely the brain doesn't process that kind of thing quickly enough in the heat of performance if the motor memory goes? Perhaps it does.

I'm reading an examination of the learning process undergone by a concert pianist and studies of her taped practice. Only half way through it as yet but it seems the piece in question (the presto from the Italian Concerto) was divided into sections A, A1, A2, B, B1 etc and these were studied separately and then put together by overlapping.

Perhaps memorisation becomes a learned skill like everything else. Or perhaps I just don't practice enough.

Mel

p.s my teacher's wallpaper has never put me off - I can't even think what it looks like - but a different piano certainly does!

Very interesting. Years ago I was taught to memorise by learning to "hear" the piece in my head away from the piano and then playing "blind" when back at the piano until the piece was memorised. My (then) teacher also suggested having a small object as "memory aid"; it should be placed where it can readily be seen (didn't have to be the same spot though) and should be there anytime the piece was to be played (I used a teeny tiny teddy bear then, but I guess things that don't look out of place in a recital/exam room would be more advisable ). I couldn't recall what my teacher gave as reasons for such seemingly weird practice (to me at the time anyway), but it worked wonders and I have always thought the playing blind and object were for concentration and/or confidence sake. Now that you mentioned about memory being associated with surroundings as much as the piece itself, it kinda make sense.

Thank you, Mad Tom. Will be waiting for the next installment...

PS> Where did you get your grand piano smilie from??

Well, I had the opportunity to blame the wallpaper today...... Apparently it's one of those excuses that is unlikely to work twice.

By day I am a computer programmer. But anyone with a bit of patience can create their own smilie in a GIF editing program. Then you have to copy the graphic file to a folder on a web site that you have access to. Finaly, you put a reference to that web location in an IMG tag in your post.

I don't know a thing about programming but I'm impressed. On the other hand, it's not exactly a smilie!

No. 2: Gyorgy Sandor on Music, Motions and Emotions
From: On Piano Playing 1995 Simon and Schuster MacMillan

One cannot emphasize too strongly that music and technique are indivisible. The human organism is afffected by, and responds to, stress and soothing: one's breathing, pulse, metabolism will also accelerate or decrease according to emotions and musical experiences. This is inevitable, even desirable. And if the human organism is under stress for purely physical reasons (over-tense muscles, a depressed diaphragm or off-balance sitting), forced and unsatisfactory breathing results. This altered respiration affects musical phrasing and the shape of melodic lines, not only while playing under stress in public, but at all times. A malfunctioning apparatus affects phrasing, tone production, dynamics, rubatos, accents, tempo changes, and expression - almost everything that is vital to music. Rapid and short breathing generates a hectic mood, and, in general, melodic and rhythmic distortions are caused by excessive muscular contractions in and around the respiratory system. Stiff muscles and joints cause a hard sound, while excessively soft ones produce a pale, anemic sound.

Although the piano is far less responsive than string instruments (not to mention the human voice), it does nevertheless respond to one's technique, and it produces sounds accordingly. In the last analysis it is tone quality - the sound - that is the most essential artistic ingredient in the world of music. Every artist has a touch and timbre that we can recognize as his own.

Yes - I pestered my poor teacher to play a C major scale over and over and over to see if I could work out why it sounded so good - and so different from my version.

Love these quotes Tom

Thanks - but this one was a slip of the mind - the book is by Gyorgy Sandor (not Cziffra) now corrected in the original post.

Rachmaninov died on March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California, just a few days before his 70th birthday, and was interred in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. In the final hours of his life, he insisted he could hear music playing somewhere nearby. After being repeatedly assured that was not the case, he said: "Then it is in my head".

This is an extract taken from the Piano Society website on Sergei Rachmaninov
http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=176
Just thought it described his genius mind so well!!

No 3 From Ferrucio Busoni 'Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music' 1911
'Respect the pianoforte. It gives a single man command over something complete: in its ability to go from very soft to very loud in one and the same register it excels over all other instruments. The trumpet can blare, but not sigh; the flute is contrary; the pianoforte can do both. Its range embraces the highest and lowest prctical notes. Respect the pianoforte !'

A very good thread! May I add one?

No. 4: Claudio Arrau on Technique
From: Conversations with Arrau (London, 1982)

Joseph Horowitz [interviewing]: Is phrasing fast passages mainly a matter of finger strength?

Claudio Arrau: Also the position of the hand. You see, people used to never lift the wrist, and many young people still play that way. But the moment you are allowed to raise the wrist, along with the entire arm, the phrasing develops naturally; it takes care of itself. Really one should try to shade all passages, to do what the Germans call "beseelen" - to put your soul into it. The first movement of the Beethoven G-major concerto, which you mentioned, is a very good example. You have to create meaning and atmosphere even in the left-hand arpeggios.


- - - - -

Of course, Arrau could play more instinctively than most of us because he was one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. But this is an example of how musicality can inform technique, and I think it's inspiring.

No. 5: Steven Hough on Psychological Problems Playing the Piano
From: His Web Site[i]

Psychological problems probably account for the vast majority of difficulties or discouragements for a musician at every stage of their careers, and most of these should be avoidable. So often it boils down to inflated or distorted egos: the excessive desire to be admired, successful, or praised. There's a sense in which these desires contain perfectly natural reflexes for us as human beings, both sheer survival techniques and also a matter of common sense and mental stability. But there's also the potential here for enormous strain and self-destruction. If we walk on to the stage, or into a lesson, with an excessive hunger for approval or adulation we stifle something inside us. Aside from any moral or cultural distaste one might have for boastful, egotistical people, such self-absorption rarely makes sense from a purely practical standpoint. It's like driving on the highway and looking too closely at the car in the next lane the lack of perspective is dizzying and dangerous. Or like seeing reality in a mirror“ observing ourselves only through the eyes of others and their approval or lack of it. The great pianist, Egon Petri, once said that we would never be nervous if we were humble. It's not a matter of not caring, or of being a shrinking violet, but of practical mental health.

This is a battle with the self which is never completely won, and each defeat can be a further source of discouragement! I'm certainly far from victory and constantly have to remind myself again and again of these issues. But that bad masterclass, that failed audition, that vicious review, that memory lapse can pass us by unscathed if we can try to transcend the debris of our wounded egos. Whatever musical talent we have, whether great or modest, will flourish better in the larger garden of ultimate reality than in the cramped plant-pots of our own small worlds. To reach beyond ourselves in achievement is an ambition which can best be achieved by looking beyond ourselves. That is after all what ecstasy means, to stand outside: not as an outsider but as one passionately involved, with a perspective thats as large as the reality it aims to contemplate.

No 6. Martin Luther from Table Talk pub 1566

We must teach music in schools; a school master ought to have skill in music or I would not regard him; nor should we ordain young men as preachers unless they have been well exercised in music.

Just a short one - but my favourite:

No 7. Friedrich Gulda from the video So What?!

"Play every note as if your life depended on it"

In 1890 Debussy's professor at the Paris Conservatory commented on Debussy's use of parallel chords in the following way: "I am not saying that what you do isn't beautiful, but it's theoretically absurd." Debussy simply replied: "There is no theory. You have merely to listen. Pleasure is the law."

Great thread to read!
I have a few more that I'll look up and add later, but in the meantime, in the words of a JW Schaum, in a beginner's book,

"Always play as if a master was listening."

No. 8: Heinrich Neuhauss on The Artistic Image of Musical Composition
From: The Art of Piano Playing 1973 Barrie & Jenkinsl

"... a performance that satisfies musically, that is interesting, emotional, that holds the attention and carries away the listener, an interpretation that provides food for heart and intellect. And if that is lacking then to perform, to play for someone, is pointless."

"Even I, poor sinner. can grasp the substance of any composition at a first reading and the difference between this first acquaintance and a real performance after learning the piece is merely that 'the spirit is clothed in flesh', that the image conjured up by the imagination, emotion, inner hearing and aesthetic and intellectual understanding becomes a performance. I do not mean by this that the work on a composition does not add anything to one's initial perception and intent; far from it. The relationship between these two events is the same as between a law and its implementation or between willing and carrying out. I only want to say that if there is no 'law', no 'will', there is no reality, no implementation.

"If a composition has been learned, mastered, memorized, in fact if, as pupils call it, it 'comes off', what is the particular work which remains to be done to be done to give the performance a true artistic value? What must be done to make the performance emotionally moving, interesting, to make it reach the hearer? (I would remind the reader for the third or fourth time that some people can achieve this immediately, while others have to work hard to achieve it within the limits of their ability. I know what the answer will be: 'it is a question of talent, some can and others can't, that is all there is to it'. So long as I go on teaching I shall stop my ears so as not to hear this reply."

"Our purpose is modest, and at the same time vast; it is to play our amazing, our magnificent piano literature in such a way as to make the hearer like it, to make him love life still more, make his feelings more intense, his longings more acute and give greater depth to his understanding."

"... whoever is moved by music to the depths of his soul, and works on his instrument like one possessed, who loves music and his instrument with passion, will acquire virtuoso technique, he will be able to recreate the artistic image of the composition; he will be a performer."

No. 9: Angela Hewitt on Why we should all learn Bach
From: Bach Performance on the Piano 2008 DVD by Hyperion

"The great thing about Bach is that it teaches all you need to know about both technique and music right from the start. It is the perfect grounding in all the essentials: phrasing, articulation, rhythm, touch, the independence of every finger and the acquisition of a singing tone. It should be studied from the very beginning to prevent the formation of bad habits. If you start to play Bach after only studying ... Chopin and Liszt for example ... you will need to go back and learn many basic things. It is far too often omitted from the pianists repertoire these days. For me not studying Bach is a bit like a dancer not doing the warm-up exercises at the barre before then going on to do floor work. It is indispensable for the proper understanding of so many composers who came after him. Mozart, Beethoven ... even Chopin adored Bach and used to warm-up before his recitals by playing Preludes and Fugues.

Bach wrote most of his keyboard music as pedagogical material for his children and students, but it is more than just that, it is also food for the soul and even the tiniest miniatures like the little preludes are beautiful works of art."