# Should you have the music you've heard "memorized"?



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Until now, I've always believed that I should be able to recognize a work of music if I heard just a few moments of it--especially the opening measures of a movement or of the overture. 

I think I would recognize dozens of works within seconds of hearing the first notes, but I've always worried that I don't know them well enough unless I would recognize any particular excerpt. There are very few works--perhaps a dozen--that I might know that well. 

There are even thousands of works that I've heard, even listened to attentively, that I might not recognize at all. For example, recently I listened to Hindemith's piano sonatas. I've heard them all at least two or three times before, but as I listened I realized that although I "remember" the music in some sense, I would not be able to identify any of them. It often happens even with relatively familiar works that some part seems totally novel to me, as if I'd never heard that moment of the music before. It can be a delightful discovery, but it is also a warning that I don't even know such works very well. 

Today, however, I had a novel idea. Given that there are so many great works of music--literally thousands, based on the TC recommendations project managed so skillfully by Trout--hundreds of which I haven't heard, should I actually have listened to any one of them so many times that I can remember it? Perhaps I should listen to so many works that when I get through them all, returning to something like one of Haydn's London symphonies, so much time should have passed since I've last heard it that almost the entire work seems new to me. 

Perhaps, then, actually recognizing a bit of music should be a warning that I've spent too much time listening to that work and too little time exploring all the others! 

I don't know, of course. Just wondering.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I used to take pride in just hearing 3-5 notes, I could immediately identify the composer and the work, but at this point in time I have probably quadrupled my listening repertoire and instant identification is no longer so easy.

Even so, I'm sure I would fare a lot better in a classical music identifying contest than your typical Tampa inhabitant.

Haydn's London Symphonies? Three or five notes and I can still recognize any of the 12. Of course, this would be a lot easier if Haydn didn't write so many slow introductions to these symphonies that sound so similar, instead plunging right in to the initial theme of each first movement.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't know. I like to do things thorough, or not at all. I'd rather know 1 piece of music very well than listen to a 100 only to forget them all.
I realize with this attitude I will never listen to vast amounts of music, but I've accepted this. So yes, I'm very slow.


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

I have a similar problem - I feel the need to remember how a piece goes before moving on the next one. Recently I've convinced myself that if I can't remember a piece, it's because it just doesn't strike me as memorable enough. Usually listening to the piece multiple times won't change that much, and even if it does become engraved in my mind, so what? What does that accomplish? I could've been listening to so much awesome music in the mean time.

But maybe you'll conclude that you would like to be able to recognize lots of music. I think that's a pretty cool ability! My personal goal is to listen to as much music as I can (and find works that I love, of course). I also like to rank my music so I can make lists. I dunno, it's fun for me.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

I used to be able to recognise very quickly but alas find myself frustrated now as I am continually saying, “Oh what is that or is that Brahms etc” the joys of getting older


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

My family and I used to play my iPod on random and try to guess the works. I found that I could not name the vast majority of works I had obviously heard before. Often I would find the work very familiar and have the feeling, "I should know this." Sometimes I would know a work from the first few notes, but much more often I simply could not identify it. 

Over the past few years I have spent the vast majority of my listening on new works I had not heard before so my ability to recognize even works I've heard several times is probably worse than before.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

EarthBoundRules said:


> I have a similar problem - I feel the need to remember how a piece goes before moving on the next one. Recently I've convinced myself that if I can't remember a piece, it's because it just doesn't strike me as memorable enough. Usually listening to the piece multiple times won't change that much, and even if it does become engraved in my mind, so what? What does that accomplish? I could've been listening to so much awesome music in the mean time.
> 
> But maybe you'll conclude that you would like to be able to recognize lots of music. I think that's a pretty cool ability! My personal goal is to listen to as much music as I can (and find works that I love, of course). I also like to rank my music so I can make lists. I dunno, it's fun for me.


The older we get and the more we listing the better we recognise it .


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

hpowders said:


> Haydn's London Symphonies? Three or five notes and I can still recognize any of the 12. Of course, this would be a lot easier if Haydn didn't write so many slow introductions to these symphonies that sound so similar, instead plunging right in to the initial theme of each first movement.


I know a guy, a musicologist/conductor, who actually knows every Haydn symphony - he can sing the principle theme of any Haydn symphony movement on demand....knows what key the movements are in...the instrumentation...pretty amazing.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Hi Science! Has anyone told you (lately) that you worry too much? 

Anyway, the design of doctoral qualifying exams in music might give you food for thought as you work out the issues you have raised. Some such exams have a listening identification component, in which a series of short excerpts are played and the test subject is asked to either identify the excerpts by composer and title or to speculate on the composer, date of composition and type of work based on stylistic analysis. Some of the excerpts will tend to be things everyone should know and which the administrators will be shocked to see misidentified. Other works will be relatively obscure and for these, the ability to make a reasoned and well-supported guess can be valued as much or more than a correct response based on memory. So, is it important that a musical amateur be able to identify thousands of works based on hearing random passages? I am sure it is important to a few obsessive compulsives. I would be much more impressed with someone who could say: That piano quartet is definitely from the late 19thc, it doesn't have quite the harmonic flavor of Brahms, so I would guess it is likely Dvorak. Or the person who fails to identify Josquin's (or Pierre de la Rue's) Absalon fili mi, but figures out that it is a 16thc motet with a few strange features.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Dan Ante said:


> I used to be able to recognise very quickly but alas find myself frustrated now as I am continually saying, "Oh what is that or is that Brahms etc" the joys of getting older


Same here, especially after getting a concussion a couple years ago. Between that and aging, my memory for new pieces has really hit a brick wall.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

No, I wouldn't want to listen to classical music over & over in order to memorise it. However. I do have the yen to do that with folk songs & tunes that I like - obviously a much easier thing to do - but it's more because that's where my real passion lies and I want to live in that music. With classical music, I am more like a guest.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I want to recognize passages, voicings, or phrases I missed the previous time. The brain will take care of memorization without us thinking about it, and will probably tell us to move on to other things because it's getting bored.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

I think it is the same in music as in anything else as far as memory goes. The more familiar you are with something, the more likely you are to remember it. There's lots of music I've heard a couple of times that I probably won't be able to name but play any 5 seconds of a Beethoven symphony and I'll know exactly what it is.


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## JamieHoldham (May 13, 2016)

Personally I don't think you should ever worry about recongizing every single piece you listen too, because unless you have OCD you are no longer listening and enjoying music, your making it a tedious task for yourself and will get annoyed if you do not remember a certain piece, or you might deprive yourself of the "freshness" of listening to a new piece by listening to it dozens of times in order to memorize it. 

Just my view


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Memorized or not, it's the performance itself that matters.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The bigger question is: Can you_ help _it? When I was learning the repertoire, I'd play a new work I liked a bunch of times until it was superceded by another new work I liked, Came to know a lot of music that way, if imperfectly. But pattern recognition in the human brain is a powerful thing -- and it's amazing how few notes in a passage it takes to identify something you are familiar with. (More irritating is that I am a wide reader and tend to unconsciously remember things I am interested in -- so I am a wonderful (or irritating) fountain of odd facts. Google and smartphone apps have now made me obsolete.)


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