I am in the process of getting Christmas music together for the recital in December. That is always a fun thing for me to do. There are some really fun pieces I hope some of my students will be able to play. I even found a song that I absolutely love playing. I’m considering doing it for the recital, so you all know that I can actually play piano. 🙂 But I’m finding that it isn’t as easy as I first thought.
Oh, I can play the piece all right. I can play it in tempo with the right dynamics and the right rhythms and all that stuff. The thing I am having a problem with is MEMORIZATION. Do you remember when you were a child? It seems like children have great abilities when it comes to memorization. I could play a piece for a week and have it memorized. I could learn my choir music easily. But now? Oh good grief! I am having such difficulty trying to memorize this piece. Is it age? Did I really get old and forget how to do that?
The thing is, I expect all the students to have their pieces memorized by the time of the recital. If I want to play this piece, I can only give myself the same expectation that I give my students, which is to have it memorized. I have been working on memorizing the first page for a month! That is crazy! And I still don’t have it down. There are only 3 pages! Mrs. Rohr had better kick it up a notch so she can get this done.
If you don’t hear me play at the recital, it isn’t because I can’t play. (I play at church often.) It is because I couldn’t get the piece memorized! 🙂
Look for your children to be coming home with some Christmas music soon. I know you probably don’t want to hear “Jingle Bells” this early in the season, but if we want to have the music memorized, we need to start soon.