Memorize "Moonlight Sonata"

When I was much younger, I had issues with playing music without a score in front of me. Even if I’d memorized the piece, I still only felt comfortable if the music was up on the music rack. Of course, for longer pieces, this meant that I was only doing it to reassure myself, since I could only look at the front of the book of music, or at most… 2 pages of music, before it would require turning pages, which would in turn, take away from the performance quality, due to having to use my hands to handle the pages.

Later on in my career, when I played every day or night at public venues (i.e. hotels, resorts, restaurants & clubs), I kept a copy of the Moonlight Sonata in a 3 ring binder, which allowed me to “refer” to it, as I played. Even though I played it quite often *(it’s a signature piece for me), I never quite got it memorized enough to play it through without faltering.

Now that I’m adjusting to my injured right hand, and starting to take on goals in my “comeback” and return to playing once again… I feel that it might be a good piece to work on, all the way through to the end, at least memorized well enough that I can finally play it again completely, WITHOUT the music as a memory crutch. Now, if I could just play it completely through as perfectly as I used to, before my hand got munched.

Only time will tell how this goal will end up turning out.

I have the first 2 pages down, but i haven’t gotten any farther in 3 weeks. I’m getting lazy!

Isearchwithinmyreach-hiremeformoneymaywealwaysremainfriendsinL.A.
yes L.A.
I came correct.
My Turn.
Frankie

I’ve memorized about 90% of it – just keep messing up this one little part towards the end (but not the very end). I think if I just practice it more, I’ll get it down. :)

SO it was a bit difficult since I’ve never taken piano in my life, but totally worth it when I played it on my fathers baby grand. Such a pretty piece.

Ludwig Van Beethoven is the greatest composer! He is my inspiration…

i dont get it

A comic I’ve loved for a long time has turned into TV format in Japan, with a J-drama airing currently and an anime version in the planning. Nodame Cantabile story is a romance-comedy-drama about a genius pianist who dreams of becoming a conductor, set in a Japanese school of music.

In the start of the first episode he plays the fast movement of “Moonlight Sonata” for a bit, which made me want to start on this goal again. During the series more attention is given to other Beethoven songs, for example the “Spring Sonata” is heavily present in the early parts of the comic… In the drama version they play Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in its place.

I want to learn the second movement, that machinegun-fast hurricane of a sonata. I’m not doing anything towards learning this or even how to play piano at the moment, which is a bit of a shame. I’m confident that I have enough to learn to play piano at a ‘provisional’ level, so that the first movement could be executed in a technically accurate manner, but I’m sure the piano studies I cut off as a kid will come back to bite my ankle if I ever will start to practice the second one.

Edit: Looking back on what I’ve written, I do realize the fast movement is in fact the third movement, not the second. ;)

I found that memorizing the first movement wasn’t too difficult. It was one of the first real pieces that I learned on the piano. It’s a great piece to learn since most people enjoy listening to it and it doesn’t require strong technique to pull it off.

I’ve been taking lessons for about 2 additional years and am now memorizing the 3rd movement which is much, much more difficult (and long, 10 pages in my version) but very fun. Even then, there are still much more challenging pieces written by Rockmananoff that are next to impossible to master.