Klarinet Archive - Posting 001107.txt from 1998/03

From: avrahm galper <agalper@-----.com>
Subj: MEMORIZATION
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 17:29:37 -0500

MEMORIZATION

I always felt uncomfortable about memorization, because I couldn't do it
at all.
I started rationalizing that if the pupils spend time memorizing, then
they really don't learn the finer points of the piece.
That's was my excuse for me not being able to memorize properly.
Mind you, after a million times, I do remember the piece.

Lately, I have had some pupils for whom this comes naturally.
I have a friend in Israel, Yitschak Katzap, who makes his pupils
memorize.I have two of them here and they seem to thrive on this.
I have one Korean girl, who is on Baermann 4 and she seems to be playing
most of it from memory.

There is something to be said for it, although it's not a common
practice.

There is a Music Festival here called the Kiwanis. The high grades have
to play from memory.

Brings to mind some of the famous people with memory, like Franz Lizst.
The composer Grieg came to him to show him his piano concerto. Lizst
perused it and then sat down and played it, without the music of course.

In a book called "My artistic life,"(quoted from Pamela Weston's book) a
famous Belgian clarinetist called Joseph Blasius, tells of the time he
and Lizst happened to be Moscow at the same time ( about 1842 ) and they
played the Weber Duo concertante together.
Blasius said about that performance:

"I am compelled to say that I have never felt more animated by that
evening, having been accompanied enchantingly by that devil of a man.
It seemed to me that my music was not the same after hearing him giving
it his values."

As to conductors conducting from memory, they surely must have a
photographic memory. They see the music in front of them. In the Toronto
Symphony, some of us felt uncomfortable with these memorizing
conductors. What if there was a lapse?
Karel Ancerl, who we had for four years, conducted from memory, but he
had the score in front of him and at the appropriate time, knew to turn
the pages.

It's a topic for discussion. However if a pupil has to learn a scale,
you'd expect him to remember the notes after a while and the fingerings!

Avrahm Galper

http://www.sneezy.org/avrahm_galper/index.html