Classical Encounter with Seymour Bernstein, Part 3 (Philosophy on Memorizing Music)

so can i ask you a question absolutely how do you deal with the memory problem with pupils oh that's because you know the scientists many years ago i think before you were born i saw in the new york times an article about musicians and memory and they did a survey among the greatest musicians alive and they found out that a fear of memory slips constitutes 80 percent of nervousness yeah it's really true yeah it's really true so before while you were still sleeping i was speaking with alice [Laughter] and she was talking about she doesn't have perfect but she has good relative fish yeah and so i told her that i was going to discuss this with you and explode on to you a shocking realization that occurred to me when i was 90 years old okay here see if you agree with this you have perfect pitch don't you yeah of course so you do you memorize your music don't you yes i mean you do you memorize the left hand separately sometimes it depends on the depends on the the complexity of the piece yes but you do you do your backups work of referring oh yes okay now do you agree with what i'm about to say yes here's what i'm about to say when you play for memory when you're performing you're not playing for memory at all hmm you're performing with your ear completely agree is that correct it is correct yeah it is do you realize what an amazing statement that is because i don't play with my ear i i mean i didn't used to right because i don't have i don't have perfect so i discovered that if i was going if i would take my index finger see my index finger can you see it on the screen not really a little bit higher can you see it closer to your face closer to yes perfect you see the index finger yes yes if i take my index finger and play the right hand of any piece that i know perfectly from memory i can't play it my ear doesn't know what the intervals are and i have all my pupils they are shocked out of their senses that they can't play the star spangled banner with the index finger they don't know what they can sing it right but they don't know what the intervals are with their ear my pupils are not using their ear music is a language that comes to us through our ears and we don't use it unless we have perfect pitch or relative so i told alice here's my conclusion if well and good you don't have set perfect pitch well if you don't do something to in help your relative pitch you must never never never perform from memory the strain on the nervous system is going to ruin you yes so this is what i do for all of my pupils here's the piece that they're playing perfectly for memory i'm teaching them that they're not using their ear they're just going on their automatic pilot they're going to break down any moment take the index finger of your left hand okay and claim me the melody just the melody okay whatever the melody is so let's say they're going to do um the g minor ballad okay okay we wanted to play this right take this no not you no you're going to do it because you're you have perfect pitch so when they do it they're going to do [Music] this [Music] they're gonna hunt and pick yeah and now if they do it 15 minutes every day a different piece every day or folk songs any piece they start to develop their relative pitch then they can play for memory this is so interesting because i think this holds a lot of the the you know the despair that a lot of the pupils have in terms of memory because memory really is the most nerve-wracking thing on the stage 80 of nervousness right okay so now i have persuaded at nyu when i was on the faculty there you must allow the teachers to decide whether the pupils who play their jewelries are going to play for memory or with their music you must allow that to happen because you're going to miss the best performances there are the i have some had at the time some of the most gifted students who did not have perfect bits who kept breaking down in memory and so the the jury is not going to hear them play their best so they finally agreed to that oh that's wonderful yeah yeah and you know gilbert kalis made that part of the requirements as stony brook you can either play for memory or with your score oh that's great and how about you are you going to do that to your pupils now you're going to pass on to them the thing that's going to help them most of to play to be happy about life if they're going to worry about memory slips they're not going to give their best yeah it is so true because all the all the worries are on memory and can can function literally and even when you have perfect pitch you can have that fear so richard good now plays with all of his music yeah um uh the bach expert what's her name um which which bar clicks right well the latest one um what's her name i forgot her name no um she just played the whole series at the 92nd street y angela hewitt angela here yes yes right she has an ipad with a foot pedal and she turns the page with her foot pedal and yeah she knows the whole s the whole life of bach for a memory and yet she has that that ipad in front of her when she played the goldberg variations for a memory it all depends if you have any fear whatsoever you put the music in front of you here's clifford kurzan i'm studying with him in london seymour i've been told that my performance of the beethoven fourth is going to be televised would you turn for me um yeah there's no shame there's no shame oh i have a story i remember the first time i played the schumann piano concerto and oh yes it's very tricky it's because it's true man and it's constantly changing [Music] and you know i was fighting with mir because it's it's new and then the conductor came to me and he said you know you can use this he pointed at my ipad and he said use your ipad oh did you did you use it he said it's not about well i ended up not using the ipad but you know it was so it was a relief to hear him say that you know it's not about it's not did you have a foot pedal no i am always worried something might go wrong with ipad on the stage well i ended up spending two days lots less of tying and just going over everything for the performance went well without the score but the moment that he came to me and said you know it's not about that and it's really true it's really but why don't you learn to use a foot pedal i will consider buying a foot paddle and it really works i've heard a lot of performances and that never fails right yeah so if it gives you comfort look here you don't even have to look at the score even the fact that it's there in case you want to look you know it's a great luxury yeah it's really true look here a friend of mine was living in paris at one time and george damas was to play the first book of prairies and feuds one night and he got sick guess who they got to to uh to imprint to pull it to replace him sveataslov richter so my friend told me the stage lights went on and this gaunt figure came out clutching the preludes and fugues like this he brought out the book and he put it on the music desk he never opened it once he played the whole book from memory but there it was in case he needed it see yes of course yeah oh this is great yeah so all of this is good information for your pupils information this is so wonderful for everyone that's listening and for everything we're passing on like you do learning music we're passing on our knowledge whatever we learn to help them

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Id: tPsdMvCPFpI

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021