Memorizing a piece multiple times

Once you have a musical composition memorized, you might feel as though your task has been accomplished. Yet this is not at all true. All too many musicians stop practicing a work once they have learned it by heart, although finally having it memorized should rather be considered as the starting point for working on developing the finer details of interpretation.

Then there is also the question of natural forgetfulness: the piece you know so well today will, if you don’t continue to practice it, most likely fade out of your memory, little by little. After only a month of not returning to the work, you may find, when you then try to play it again, that you have completely forgotten certain sections, and are now unable to play it through without referring to the score.

This is of course quite natural. One way to avoid forgetting the piece would be to practice it, or at least play it through, on a regular basis. For example, you might make it a habit to play through your memorized repertoire once a week, every week. If you see that you have forgotten a section of a work, you can then concentrate on learning it again with the score.

However, the more works you learn by memory, the longer such special practice sessions will have to be, and this is not always convenient. In addition, we have seen that your subconscious mind will often help you to refine your playing during periods of time when you are not practicing it at all.

Thus another, more long-term, approach to building a permanent memorized repertoire might be more advisable.

After learning a work well – not only memorizing it, but also working out a well-grounded interpretation – you might consider simply putting it aside for a number of months, or even a year or more. True, you will no doubt consciously forget large parts of it during that time. However, when you then take it up again, you can simply memorize it once again from the beginning, “filling in” the memory gaps along the way.

The advantage of this approach is two-fold:

1) Since you will not have played the work in a long time, you will now be experiencing it with a fresh attitude. Had you continued to play it regularly, it might well have become “stale” – that is, you may have eventually come to be bored by it. By not playing it at all for an extended period of time, you will find it much more interesting, and even refreshing, when you finally return to it.

2) By memorizing it again from the beginning, you will have the opportunity to notice certain details that you may have missed the first time, or details that had become distorted, since you played it so often by memory. Now, you will have a chance to correct those sections.

3) During the period of non-practice, you will have been playing other pieces, memorizing them, and developing correct interpretations. Thus, you will have grown as a musician, so when you return to the previously memorized work, you will be able to take advantage of your broader musical knowledge and heightened artistic sensitivity when creating your “new” interpretation of the piece.

4) Things that we memorize more than once tend to stick in our memory for a longer time. Some say that 3 is the “magic number” in this respect: if, over a period of a few years, you memorize a work three times, you will probably remember it for years to come, even if you hardly practice it at all. I can’t say for sure that this is always true. With more complex pieces, such as Bach fugues, I have found it necessary to repeat the memorization process more than three times. Nonetheless, there is little doubt but that repeated memorization (whether the process is repeated, 2, 3 4 or even 5 times) is indeed the best way to embed a piece into your memory once and for all.

As already mentioned, the more we return to a piece, and re-learn it, the better our interpretation of that work can become.

There are some people who learn a work to the point of being able to give an excellent interpretation, but who then, after playing it in a couple of recitals, stop practicing it, and never take it up again, preferring to work on new repertoire instead.

I think this is a pity. True, there are thousands of excellent compositions out there waiting for us to get to know them, but on the other hand, if you have invested so much time and energy into learning a work well, wouldn’t it be better to return to that composition later, re-learn it, achieve an even better interpretation, and make it part of your permanent repertoire?

Many years ago, I read a book by Heinrich Neuhaus, who was the teacher of a Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, two of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.

Neuhaus wrote that there were some great pianists, who were recognized as geniuses, and who were capable of learning vast amounts of compositions, and playing them all well. “Normal mortals”, on the other hand, would never be able to learn so much music. But some pianists that Neuhaus had heard in the Soviet Union (where he himself lived and worked), had come up with a rather clever solution to this problem.

Knowing that they didn’t have the talent to learn hundreds of difficult compositions and have them at their command as part of their repertoire to be performed, they decided instead to select a number of works, enough to form only about three entire recital programs.

They then spent years learning, practicing, re-learning, and constantly polishing these works. For example, they played “Program 1” in recitals throughout the Soviet Union, travelling from city to city and town to town, always playing those same works, while practicing “Program 2” as well. Then, after giving hundreds of recitals over two or three years’ time, they would begin their tour again, but this time, they would play “Program 2”. And yes, you guessed it: a couple of years after that, after having played that program in hundreds of places, they began another tour, this, time, with “Program 3”.

By the time they had played all three of their programs in hundreds of towns, maybe six or seven years had passed, so that now, they could repeat the first program, or perhaps select pieces from Programs 1 and 2, in order to make up a new one.

The advantage to this method should be obvious. Although these pianists were not “geniuses”, they could play a certain repertoire – albeit, a very limited one – almost as if they were great pianists. By re-learning and refining the same works again and again, they came to eventually play them so well that even experts who heard them found their interpretations to be excellent, and practically on a par with those of truly great pianists. Also, by rotating their programs, they didn’t have to keep playing the same works for years at a time, but could put some works aside for longer periods while concentrating on others.

All of this is not, of course, to imply that anybody can end up playing like a great pianist. It should be kept in mind that those who adopted this approach had received excellent musical training, and were serious pianists who practiced for hours a day.

My point here is simply that by purposely limiting your repertoire, and by following a policy of returning to the same works again and again, your interpretations of them will, over time, gain immeasurably in precision, musicality, and depth. Naturally, you will only really want to try this with pieces that you have a special liking for. But do try it, if only with a few works. If you do, in years to come, when you have built up a solid repertoire of your favorite pieces, you will find that it was well worth the effort!