CHAPTER XV

HOW TO REMEMBER MUSIC

Like all of the other faculties of the mind, that of music or tune is manifested in varying degrees by different individuals. To some music seems to be almost instinctively grasped, while to others it is acquired only by great effort and much labor. To some harmony is natural, and in harmony a matter of repulsion, while others fail to recognize the difference between the two except in extreme cases. Some seem to be the very soul of music, while others have no conception of what the soul of music may be. Then there is manifested the different phases of the knowledge of music. Some play correctly by ear, but are clumsy and inefficient when it comes to playing by note. Others play very correctly in a mechanical manner, but fail to retain the memory of music which they have heard. It is indeed a good musician who combines within himself, or herself, both of the two last mentioned faculties—the ear perception of music and the ability to execute correctly from notes.

There are many cases of record in which extraordinary powers of memory of music have been manifested. Fuller relates the following instances of this particular phase of memory: Carolan, the greatest of Irish bards, once met a noted musician and challenged him to a test of their respective musical abilities. The defi was accepted and Carolan's rival played on his violin one of Vivaldi's most difficult concertos. On the conclusion of the performance, Carolan, who had never heard the piece before, took his harp and played the concerto through from beginning to end without making a single error. His rival thereupon yielded the palm, thoroughly satisfied of Carolan's superiority, as well he might be. Beethoven could retain in his memory any musical composition, however complex, that he had listened to, and could reproduce most of it. He could play from memory every one of the compositions in Bach's 'Well Tempered Clavichord,' there being forty-eight preludes and the same number of fugues which in intricacy of movement and difficulty of execution are almost unexampled, as each of these compositions is written in the most abstruse style of counterpoint.