A pianist and her memory

It was Franz Liszt who launched the tradition of the solo piano recital played from memory. Thanks to his needlessly ostentatious display, to this day the vast majority of solo pianists, myself included, feel compelled to follow his example. And my memory was rock-solid until I was 17. That was the year I slid off an icy highway and wrapped a Toyota Corolla around a very inconveniently located telephone pole. The result was lacerations, a chipped tooth, a fractured pelvis and a concussion, the latter of which created an insecurity about performing from memory that endured for 25 years.

Until my accident, I memorized effortlessly. My teacher was a big believer in analyzing scores as an aid to memory, but I never felt the exercise to be anything more than tedious. I relied on my ear (I was born with absolute relative pitch) and muscle memory, which were sound enough that I could often start a piece during practice and reach the conclusion without consciously being aware of what had occurred in the middle. In other words, I could be daydreaming, but my fingers would still march inexorably through a piece of music accurately enough that I would somehow reach the end successfully.

When I was paying attention, I never worried about going astray, because my ear would always guide me back home. I’d feel nervous before performing, but the impetus was anticipation, not fear.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Pianists can’t be consciously aware of every note we play. We know that this leads to that, or a chord feels this way, or we practice so much that some things just happen after a while. Some people have photographic memories; I’m not that lucky. For me, there must be some use of the ear and muscle memory. The net result is a multitude of opportunities to temporarily lose my way. (I know that audiences are aware of this because I’m typically asked, at least once per recital, how I can possibly remember all the notes.)

My teacher at my bedside

One of my clearest memories from the first few days of my weeklong hospital stay after the accident is my awareness that my piano teacher was sitting at my bedside: There are easier ways to get out of piano lessons, she quipped dryly. I was aware as well that I was asking the same questions repeatedly, unable to hold on to the answers. I hear this was an improvement over my previous attempts at conversation, and also a typical stage in recovery from a concussion.

I had permanent scars on my face, and deeper scars on my psyche. It took about 23 years for me to feel anything but cold dread at the first snowfall, but at least if I was petrified I could drive slowly, or get someone else to do it. Playing the piano afforded no such luxury.

I have brain damage, I thought. Pieces that would have been routine became adventures. I could go from beginning to end with no incidents, or suddenly lose my way, with no idea how to retrieve the musical thread. My teacher compared it to turning off a light switch. It was that abrupt: I knew where I was, and then suddenly I didn’t.

I couldn’t imagine myself as anything other than a pianist, so I developed coping skills. I started singing along in my head as I played. I closed my eyes and allowed my body to move more freely, trying to further immerse myself in the musical experience. I studied scores away from the instrument for the first time in my life, playing through the pieces in my head. I also prayed a lot, hoping that I could allow God to play through me, and thus be shielded from the anxiety that could potentially disrupt my performances.

A concert with Gunther Schuller

Despite these tactics, in 1996 I decided the stress of performing from memory was too much and that I had to quit. To be sure, this was a mind game; every time I’ve decided the stress of solo performing is too great, something happens to convince me otherwise. In this case I had a contract to do Gershwin’s Concerto in F that April, conducted by world-renowned jazz scholar Gunther Schuller. I had never performed the piece before, and with my husband in graduate school I was the breadwinner in my family at the time, which meant learning under duress. These were hardly ideal conditions for someone with a phobia about forgetting.

I’m not sure why I was so focused, rather than scared, when I met Dr. Schuller and the orchestra for the first time. I hadn’t studied the concerto with anyone, and although I had practiced with a second piano playing the role of the orchestra, no one had listened to me critically. Even worse, I had been told that Dr. Schuller could be very blunt if a musician made mistakes.

Miracle of miracles, he liked me, and he liked the way I played. Even though I can’t say I collaborated flawlessly with the orchestra— setting my own tempi in spots and challenging them to keep up— the performances went well enough that I started to rethink my decision to quit. Instead I began to think of music as a calling— and if it’s a calling, you have to deal with the hardships.

The guy snoring in the front row

So much of life is attitude. Knowing that my brain isn’t going to shut off randomly is very empowering. Looking back, I realize I was the one sabotaging myself, not some biological problem. It was a part of my brain saying, ”What if you forget?” Thinking about my kids, or my bills, or the guy snoring in the front row. Questioning whether or not I’ve practiced enough to deserve to play well. Not a question of memory, but of focus, and my focus was sorely tested, in many cases, by the extra-musical events in my life: the birth of my two children, for example, and the breakup of my marriage.

Every performer must contend with such distractions, of course. But for me, the gradual realization that I had the same chances for success as anyone else with my training was a monumental. I now believe my brain is as fundamentally sound as that of any other 40-something. This means I get mildly annoyed with myself for falling short of musical perfection— a dramatic improvement over the outright terror I felt before.

In the end, it wasn’t a sudden, life-changing incident that freed me from my fear. Rather, it was a long, steady process. Perhaps as I was forced to cope with things far more crucial than missing a passage in a piece of music, I learned to trust my inner resources. Maybe as I prayed for clarity in other situations, some of that trickled down to my music making. Maybe it was simply my tenacity.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov in his 1951 memoir, Speak, Memory, “and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Nevertheless, I am glad that I refused to allow my particular circumstances to extinguish the illumination I gain from making music.



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