Chris Bonds wrote:

>The worst memory slip I saw from a professional was made by a Hungarian
>pianist, Andor Foldes, who was playing Beethoven's Pathetique sonata.  He
>got in trouble in the 3rd movement and did a fast segue to the last couple
>of lines.  It was extremely obvious and pretty much obliterated the effect
>of the piece.  I'm not sure how much he left out but it was a lot.

That's a pretty unfortunate experience.  Imagine a performance of Hamlet in
which the cast got collective amnesia about the point that Ophelia died and
suddenly found themselves watching Hamlet and Laertes do each other in!
Rather confusing.

>I agree that the pressure of memorization puts incredible demands on many
>performers.  Others don't seem to have any trouble.

I think that ability to memorize easily and musical talent are really two
very different things.  Someone may have a photographic, or nearly so,
memory coupled with great musicality (say, a Toscanini), but someone else
might memorize very easily but play lousy.

>One defence of memory work is by analogy with the actor on stage.  But
>it's a poor one, since the instrumentalist is not creating an illusion of
>reality, but rather the illusion of making it up on the spot.  Everybody
>knows that's not the case, so why continue with the charade except to prove
>one can do it?-- which puts one in the category of a daredevil act.  A
>better defence is to say that memory gives the performer more freedom with
>the music.  I think this is probably true in a lot of cases.

I think your comparison with acting is very good, but based on my
experience, I don't think that your last point is necessarily valid.  True,
if you thoroughly memorize a piece you don't have to worry about getting
lost following the lines of music (which can happen just as one can lose
one's place reading a verbal text out loud), fumbling around turning pages,
etc., but this is probably balanced out by the fear of possible memory
lapses, unless you happen to be one of the lucky ones who memorizes easily.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]