Someone sent me a link a few months ago to some video footage of Vittorio Grigolo ‘learning’ Faust for his forthcoming debut in the role.  His studying seem to consist of gurning at the camera and building plastic Airfix planes, while shouting along to a recording of the opera playing in the background. Presumably this naturalistic scenario had been devised with the help of his marketing team to show his relaxed approach at its best, but it did get me thinking about how I memorise music.

I’ve been working on a new recital programme that gets its first outing this Saturday and have been struck by how easily some songs slide into my memory and how resistant it is to some others.  As an inexperienced singer I assumed that simply repeating a song enough times would cement it, but not all songs are born equally catchy. Sleeping with the music under my pillow has also proved sadly ineffective.

Certain truths seem undeniable – if a song is well-written and if I like it, it’s easier to remember.  If I think learning it is a waste of my time and my few remaining braincells, it’s really very hard to make it stick, even if I am being paid to learn it.  I’ve discovered that I memorise a song most effectively if I break it down into three phases: words, then rhythm, only adding the melody relatively late on.  It’s not immediately rewarding to do it this way but I do find that the words stick better if I bother to create some proper scaffolding for my memory, particularly with lots of verses.

Of course it’s still possible to forget where I am in a song even when I think I know it really well.  I’ve only had one total loss of the plot in public but I still dream about it.  In that case I knew I didn’t know the song quite well enough but foolishly chanced it. The audience was rather drunk and extremely forgiving, but the sixty seconds during which I realised I was lost, tried and failed to sort it out, were the longest of my singing life.  I’ve seen it happen to several great singers in recital, too, all of whom rightly laughed it off as an occupational hazard of holding an empty stage for forty-five minutes with only your pianist (who has the music) for company.  At least in an opera there’s hopefully some furniture or a colleague to clutch if you forget the words, and the chance to race back to the dressing-room to have a look at the score.  But in a recital it’s a mind-game with oneself, especially if recitals aren’t a core part of your singing life. I do believe in trying to sing a recital programme from memory, not only because I know I personally sing so much better this way but also because I think the music-stand acts as an unnecessary barrier to communication in an already formal situation.  On the other hand, there’s no point in torturing oneself unnecessarily if concert day arrives and the words are still a mystery.  On an opera stage an audience loves to see a singer thinking on their feet and solving whatever problem has developed.  In recital, seeing a singer get into trouble and not be able to get out of it is just excruciating.

The best advice about what to do in the case of memory loss, or just an obvious mistake, was given to me by a singer of a certain age a few years ago:  “wear a sparkly dress with a low neck”, she said. “That way if you mess it up you can just jiggle about and the audience will still feel they’ve had their money’s worth”.  Wise words.