Should piano students memorize their repertoire?
Should piano students memorize their repertoire?
This is a controversial question! I’m here to give you my answer after over 20 years of experience. However, I always encourage every teacher to adapt anything that I say to his or her individual context and teaching style, as well as to the individual student arriving for a lesson each week.
Want to see the video where I discuss how to teach students to memorize? Fill out this form:
One caveat before I get started: this question should be answered differently for pre-college students than it should be for recreational adults. As one who is now middle-aged, I know from personal experience that our brains change as we age. It is much more difficult to memorize after the age of about 30, and the goals of a recreational adult as well as the responsibilities of a teacher of adult students are entirely different, as you will see from my comments below.
So - should piano students memorize their repertoire? My short answer is yes. Continue reading my three reasons here or watch the video below to find out why.
Whether we like it or not, memorization is a cultural expectation in classical piano study. Students who participate in exams, festivals, and competitions or go on to study music at a university or conservatory will be expected to memorize. If we do not teach our students this skill from their earliest study, we are doing them a disservice. It is one skill among many that we are expected to teach on at least some level.
Getting away from the score allows students to solve technical problems that they might not otherwise tackle. It’s so easy to be so engrossed in what’s on the page that you forget what is happening in your body. (This is also one reason that I am a huge advocate for rote work with beginners.) Moving away from the printed page generally helps students listen more attentively, and this in turn reinforces technical work and helps students use that technique to play more expressively.
But the most important reason, in my opinion, is that most young students do not truly know their pieces unless they memorize them. Working towards memorization teaches students to analyze an individual piece and internalize all parts of it. Here are a few examples of “opportunities for internalization” that often come to light when a piano student first tests her memory:
She doesn’t actually know what her left hand is doing. Her ear has focused on the right hand melody to the detriment of understanding the bass line or accompanimental figure.
She is unaware of the form of the piece, not knowing which section follows another section. Transitions are rough.
She is unaware of the differences between two very similar portions of the piece (such as that moment in a sonatina where the recapitulation veers off from what was previously the exposition).
She cannot shape the overall dynamic range of the piece because she hasn’t thought through the overall structure and narrative of the piece.
Now - does a student need to memorize every piece that he or she learns? Absolutely not! And do all students need to memorize every piece that they perform? I think the answer to this question is also no. However, I do think students should be encouraged to get away from the book from a very early age, on a regular basis, so that the idea of playing and performing away from the score is familiar and not scary.
With all of this in mind, how do we teach our students to perform? Well, I’ve answered that in a video titled Tools for Memorization which you can view by entering your email address here:
