BBC News Magazine
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| In a feat of musical memory, the Aurora Orchestra will perform Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony without printed scores at the BBC Proms 2015. Neuroscientist Jessica Grahn explores how musicians manage to remember highly complex arrangements. |
The extraordinary ability of musicians to recall millions of musical notes over a lifetime is undoubtedly one of the most impressive feats of human memory. For scientists, such feats provide an opportunity to understand how human memory works - but, for musicians, having to achieve this on a regular basis can be terrifying.
Most musicians will have to perform from memory at some time in their career. Some, especially singers or soloists, have to perform from memory most of the time. Feelings about the practice are divided. Some musicians feel that performing without a score allows them to be freer and more expressive. Others feel that memorisation is time-consuming and less reliable than using a written score. Moreover, the fear of memory "slips" can hamper expressive performance, or worse. Debilitating stage fright may cause a musician to withdraw from the profession entirely.
Most ensembles escape the burden of memorisation - with notable exceptions being the Kolisch Quartet in the 1930s and the Chiara and Zehetmair Quartets today. An entire orchestra playing from memory, as the Aurora Orchestra will do this summer at the Proms, is all but unheard of.
Musicians with a hatred of memorisation may bemoan Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt, who were among the first 19th Century musicians to spark this trend. The image of a piano virtuoso was beginning to form at this time, with Liszt declaring that "virtuosity is not an outgrowth, but an indispensable element of music". Before this time, it was considered arrogant to perform without the score.
Beethoven explicitly disapproved of one of his pupils, who could play the composer's entire set of works from memory, as he was concerned that important details in the score could be missed.
Chopin was angered when he heard that one of his pupils wanted to play him a Nocturne from memory. Mendelssohn had an amazing musical memory, but would not let on - before one performance when his score was unavailable, he had a page-turner place a random book in front of him and pretend it was the score.
However, prior to the Renaissance, playing from memory was a necessity, as little or no musical notation was available.
Memorised music performance has interested scientists since as far back as the 1800s. One type of memory that musicians use is commonly called "muscle memory", but the memories are not actually stored in the muscles.
Muscle memory instead refers to a type of "procedural" memory called motor learning, in which memories for movement patterns are acquired through repetition. Procedural memory is separate from other types of memory, such as our memory for events (autobiographical memory) or general knowledge about the world (semantic memory).
We use procedural memory for actions such as driving, typing on a keyboard or riding a bike. This is the type of memory for which "practice makes perfect", and it allows us to perform complex actions, such as driving a car, with little attention.
However, when we are stressed or anxious, procedural memory may fail, and we "choke". Choking is often seen in athletes in high-pressure situations. Musicians also experience choking, for example when performance anxiety disrupts a procedural memory that is normally second nature, resulting in mistakes or memory slips.
Many of the practice strategies that musicians use are aimed at preventing and recovering from slips. Simple repetition, the most common practice strategy, does not necessarily prevent slips.
Read the full article in BBC News Magazine.
