On Learning New Repertoire and Old

Learning music is a part of being a musician. In fact, it is one of the most exciting parts of being a musician. Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy the "mastery" part of having gone over a composition a thousand times in an effort to achieve a certain kind of perfection as well. However, the delving into a new piece, that unknown territory of bowing, fingering, and phrasing is a pretty cool feeling. It makes me look at my fingers and why I choose certain fingerings over others in a different way. Why, if the interval is the same and the notes are exactly the same in a particular place in the new piece of music as opposed to another piece, would I choose a totally differently fingering? Confounding perhaps? Well, maybe not all that much. Giving the context, the musical phrasing, dynamics, bowing, and over all mood of the music it becomes clearer.

I know, I know none of you can see the music that lays out before me but for those musicians who read this they will probably argue the same once they mindfully compare two different fingerings, from two different pieces, with exactly the same notes but with a different mood and feel. 

Well, that wasn't the way I actually thought I was going to begin this post. That was just a side note that popped into to my thoughts while wondering how to begin. Oh well, it will remain there. Ha....

What I really wanted to mention here was how my approach to learning music, whether I have practiced it a thousand times already or haven't even played one note of it yet. This summer I suddenly realized that if I truly wanted to have a piece of music in my head so that I didn't have to think twice about notes, fingerings, bowings, dynamics and be able to focus on the music making I would have to drastically revamp my practice habits. Going over large chunks and force-feeding myself extended passages won't work. It hasn't worked so far (that's probably close to 20 years worth of practice in that manor) and it never will work! 

That's when I had an epiphany. Haha, I say it's an epiphany but really I was watching a video about Rostropovich and how the great conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky related a story of the great cellist learning the very difficult Hindemith concerto one night before performing it! Long story short they both stayed up until very early in the morning going over the concerto one measure at a time. And you know what? Rostropovich played it by memory without mistakes that night, less than 24 hours after beginning the learning process. 

I don't know if he never heard it before or never had seen the music. I doubt it. The point is really that he knew what to do to keep that music in his head and in his fingers and how to do it effectively. That story stuck with me and I determined to try it out for myself. First, I started on a small piece, technically easy. The Sicilienne  by Maria-Theresa von Paradis. I only learned one measure at a time. When it was perfected and I knew it by heart I went on to the next and repeated the process until I ran out of measures to memorize. To my astonishment, I knew the piece better after only hours (of cumulative practice) than any other piece I had already been playing for years! I could play it the next day after finishing the process and the next as well. Then I waited over the weekend to find out how well it really stuck, after all, it could be that I had simply been poring over it every day for a week. Next week came and wouldn't you know it, the music was still there waiting to by played from memory. 

Later on I decided to learn the third movement of the Schumann cello concerto in the same method. The pages totaled eight--very complex, arpeggiated, jumping passages weaved in. The effort lasted for four weeks but I can still play it now after two months. It is really an exciting process to know that the music is going in your head in a logical and consistent way. After all is said and done I would venture to say that the number of times going over the same passages are reduced by a 1/3 or at least a 1/4. While I never counted the repetitions done to memorize the music I do know that it is a whole lot more effective than cramming it into the head all at once. --I would liken the former process to that of trying to put a puzzle together by simply dumping the pieces out of the box and hoping they fall into place. 

Thank you Rozhdestvensky for telling that story.