A Century of Memorization Pedagogy

Abstract

In 1837, eighteen-year-old Clara Schumann performed Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, opus 57 from memory. (1) A century later, performing the piece from memory would have been commonplace, but early in the nineteenth century, performing without the score was viewed as arrogant and ostentatious. It focused attention on the performer and the performance and away from the composer and the music. In the 1840s, only a few years after Clara Schumann's feat, Franz Liszt performed more than half his recitals from memory. (2) Romantic virtuosity was sweeping through the world of music and performing from memory was the act that could inspire awe. People viewed performers playing memorized music as having almost super-human powers. By the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for instrumentalists to perform concerti by memory and for pianists to memorize solo recitals. A pianist performing with score became the notable exception. Commentators began discussing the merits of performing without a score almost at once. Chopin discouraged the practice (3) while Liszt actively encouraged his students to memorize. With conventions moving toward performing from memory, it was not long before the pedagogues, as well as the critics, took up the topic in the periodicals of the time. One of the earliest discussions, appearing in the 1872 volume of Dwight's Journal of Music, concerns whether or not music should be conducted by memory. The author, Ferdinand Hiller, provides both sides of what appears to have been an ongoing debate, and decides in the end that soloists may be excused the virtuosity of playing from memory, but not conductors who: ... have a higher object: that of presenting in the best light the musical picture confided to them. The more they disappear as individuals from before the audience, the better. Nothing is a greater mistake than for a conductor to assume the place of a virtuoso, and attempt to attract the attention of the public to himself personally ... divert[ing] their attention from what, in the eyes of a conductor, ought to be of more account than anything else [the music]. (4) By this point, probably influenced by the great performers of the Romantic era, the practice of performing from memory was being accepted as common. Pedagogical discussions shifted away from whether or not to memorize to the most effective way to memorize. At this point, writers either clearly advocated memorizing, at least in certain situations, or took it for granted. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the debate with a handful of articles written between 1990 and 2001 (n = 7) again questioning the convention of performing from memory. The purpose of this paper is to identify trends in pedagogical writing on committing music to memory to determine whether thinking and techniques have changed during the last 106 years. Articles written by musicians and music teachers and published in English language periodicals or as book chapters were subjected to a content analysis (N = 185). The articles chosen were specifically about memorization; not considered were articles on broader topics that included a passing mention of memorization. While an attempt was made to be exhaustive, it is likely that not all articles on the topic were included in the analysis. The earliest article was the aforementioned 1872 article by Hiller and the most recent was written in 2006 by Oshima-Ryan. (5) As can be seen in Figure 1, the number of articles published each decade varied, with a dramatic increase since 1980. More articles were published in the last twenty-six years (n = 109) than in the entire preceding century (n = 76). A number of journals demonstrated a repeated interest, publishing more than five articles on the topic, including The American Music Teacher (n =16), Classical Guitar (n = 7), Clavier (n = 16), The Etude (n = 17), Music Educators Journal (n = 7), Music (n = 8), and Musical Times (n = 8). …

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