Music and Muscle Memory

My mom and dad came to town earlier this week to attend Louisa’s high school band concert.  It was a wonderful concert that featured klezmer music and included a song by Karl King, “Rough Riders,’’ that Louisa appreciated (she’s in an AP U.S. History class and just finished studying Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era).

My parents rarely show up for their short visits without some present for me, or for our family.  This time they brought smoochies baked by Mom (cookies made with Nutella and caramel Hershey’s kisses), and from Dad’s archives, a stack of my old piano and French horn books.

I didn’t look too long at the books that evening, but later in the week, plagued by an evil combination of writer’s block and procrastination, I searched through the books and found a soothing distraction: Japanese Festival: Seventeen Piano Pieces for Students by Yoshinao Nakada.  Inside was a piece I played one year for the annual piano contest sponsored by the Minnesota Music Teachers Association.

The piece, “Etude Allegro,” looks impressive on the page, filled with changing dynamics, tricky fingerings and – ooh boy, a glissando at the end.  Could I still play it?  I sat down at the bench and gave it a try.  Wonder of wonders, my fingers complied.  I was stiff, I mangled some notes, I had trouble seeing some of the notes clearly (darn older eyes), but I could still play it.  I was elated!

I loved – and still love – the piece.  I don’t know how many hours I spent learning it, memorizing it and performing it, but my fingers remembered.  It made me wonder: is everything we’ve ever learned inside our minds and bodies somewhere, waiting for an opportunity to return?  When something does return from long ago, it’s usually something I don’t need or care to remember, like the lyrics to the Mac Davis song, “Oh, Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble" – which came up in a recent conversation (click here for a video of Davis singing the song on The Muppet Show).

I’ve played through the piece a few times now, and I plan to keep working on it, so I will be ready to perform it the next time we have a “My Musical Family” recital.  Maybe I’ll even be able to memorize it.  If I do, I’ll try to be humble – but I won’t make any promises.