Quotes

from

The Book of Memory By Mary Carruthers

Music By Heart By Lilias Mackinnon

"The ability perfectly to replicate the contents of one's memory again and again, forwards, backwards, and in all sorts of combination, remained a revered skill at least until the end of the Renaissance" (The Book of Memory, pg 89).

"...ability to recite a text backwards as well as forwards or to skip around in it in a systematic way, without becoming lost or confused. The ability to do this marked the difference between merely being able to imitate something (to reproduce it exactly) and really knowing it, being able to recall it in various ways (The Book of Memory, pg 18).

"...process of acquiring smarter and richer mnemonic devices to represent information, encoding similar information into patterns, organizational principles, and rules which represent even material we have never before encountered, but which is "like" what we do know, and thus can be "recognized" or "remembered" (The Book of Memory, pg 2).

"It is my contention that medieval culture was fundamentally memorial, to the same profound degree that modern culture in the west is documentary" [The Book of Memory, pg 8].

"Some regard memory as being no more than one of nature's gifts; and this view is no doubt true to a great extent; but like everything else, memory may be improved by cultivation" [The Book of Memory, pg 211].

"By testing ourselves to see whether we remember a passage, we develop greater concentration without waste of time over the repetition of passages which we already know by heart. Thus, only those passages which tend to slip from the memory are repeated with a view to fixing them in the mind by frequent rehearsal" [Music By Heart, pg 231].

"No impression is lost; the second will 'take' more readily the third still more readily: the mind learns with a crescendo of speed if repetition is rightly spaced. But repetition, though necessary, cannot take the place of conscious thought..." [Music By Heart, pg 33].

"...set daily memorizing exercises of this kind for his pupils," [Music By Heart, pg 87].

"It is humanly impossible to focus attention all day..." [Book of Memory, pg 22].

"...only when he can easily recall either pitch or time values is he ready to undertake the double task of recalling pitch in relation to time" [Music By Heart, pg 83].

"Both learning by heart and writing have this feature in common; namely, that good health, sound digestion, and freedom from other preoccupations of mind contribute largely to the success of both" [Book of Memory, pg 233].

"There are, then, two kinds of memory: one natural, and the other the product of art. The natural memory is the memory which is imbedded in our minds, learn simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is that memory which is strengthened by a kind of training and system of discipline" [Cicero,207]

"Quintilian suggests imprinting in orderly progression a spacious house with many rooms, and then marking the items to be remembering by a nota, either an associative sign or a key-word" [Book of Memory, pg 107].

"...unnecessary associations, like far-fetched mnemonics, are undesirable" [Music By Heart, pg 83].

"Memory is a natural gift, but, like all natural abilities, must be cultivated and trained" [The Book of Memory, pg 113].

"The principle of attaching a syllable to a particular musical value or "degree" of a chord or scale was known in antiquity, and indeed is found in virtually every culture" [The Book of Memory, pg 106].

"...if rapid passages attention is given less to the note as a unit, and more to its place in a musical group (syllable, word, or phrase). The worst technique will become fluid" [Music By Heart, pg 28].

"...a player needs to think sounds in groups" [Music By Heart, pg 26].

"Within this progression we find a series of curves, both big and small, the shaping of which is decided by phrasing. The end of one curve may be the beginning of another curve; or it may be a definite breathing-point" [Music By Heart, pg 27,28].

"...small musical group is called a musical word" [Music By Heart, pg 27].

"Phrasing is a movement towards a definite point, from which another progression begins" [Music By Heart, Mackinnon].