"Because it is very much different to know something by heart than to sing it from memory, since only the wise may do the former, but fools often do the latter.”Today we generally take 'knowing by heart' and 'singing/playing from memory' to be synonyms, but for Guido it was the difference between fully understanding the music, and simply acquiring the ability to reproduce it by enough rote repetition. Something I have experienced both sides of myself, and that is sometime echoed (if not quite so succinctly) in current advice to musicians.
trouble me the bourdon
Wednesday 4 February 2015
Knowing by heart
A striking quote from Guido of Arezzo (written around 1030):
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I'd never really thought about it, but 'Knowing by heart' IS a quite different thing. Thank you for including the link for 'advice to musicians'. It was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is interesting to find the modern advice based on performance psychology was anticipated almost 1000 years before!
ReplyDeletei'd guess that "knowing" a piece means having the ability to improvise on the melody - while memorizing suggests playing the same thing over and over again.
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