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Hard work, in short, is the key. But, when push comes to shove, can you entirely trust your memory? We look into the phenomenon of performers playing without a score \u2013 what are the benefits of playing music from memory, and should we all be doing it?<\/strong><\/p> The great composers certainly thought so. Susan Tomes recalls the story of Beethoven<\/a><\/strong> chastising his pupil Carl Czerny<\/a><\/strong> for playing from memory, saying it would make him casual about his markings on the score.<\/p> Ironically, one of the first artists to overturn centuries of performance practice by performing from memory at the piano was Liszt<\/a><\/strong>, who was often shown gazing skywards, as if seeking divine inspiration. In truth, he performed only a fraction of his repertoire from memory<\/a><\/strong> and all of his own pieces from music, in case audiences thought he was making it all up as he went along.<\/p> In the age of Wikipedia and smart phones, the whole idea of committing information to memory seems increasingly quaint (how many millennials have even had cause to memorise a phone number?). Where once the ability to recall information was prized as an indicator of learning, today we rely far more on \u2018external’ memory in the form of information stored digitally in the cloud. The skill is not so much remembering information as knowing where to find it. But in the classical music world, memorising music has long been part of the conversation.<\/p> But there are signs of a reaction against this collective memory loss. A number of recent bestsellers have highlighted the dangers which the information age can pose to our minds (including recent works by neuroscientists Ryuta Kawashima and Daniel Levitin); \u2018brain training\u2019 websites such as Lumosity and Memrise have proliferated; and there is an increasing body of scientific evidence indicating that keeping our memories active can help militate against dementia later in life.<\/p>The great composers who played music from memory<\/h2>