This paper describes how Mexican piano students enrolled in higher education music courses memorise scores, which is necessary to increase their capacity for memorisation and to prepare a repertoire of higher complexity. We also analysed the different types of memory in the musical practice of the students, investigating what they emphasise the most to memorise musical pieces. Interest in this topic arose because it was observed that piano syllabi in the different participating institutions do not include a specific memorisation development process for piano repertoire; however, piano students are required to present a memorised repertoire at the end of each semester. We distributed a questionnaire to 545 students from 18 Higher Artistic Education institutions with a degree in music, with piano as the main instrument, in 13 states of Mexico. The results indicate that the development of analytical memory through musical analysis is fundamental and essential while learning memorisation skills to achieve a better understanding of the score and its piano performance. We also found that there are significant differences between the variables of age range and gender.
The present study analyses the different types of skills and abilities that piano students use to memorise pieces. During students' education process, it is important to implement different study strategies for the proper learning and improvement of memorisation. Mastering this task is essential to the professional future of students, who must play musical scores by memory in exams, public concerts, recitals, public examinations, and other performances (Bernal, 2009a; Hallam, 1997; Lim & Lippman, 1991). In the Mexican context, a defined methodology for memorisation strategies for piano students has not been identified. Thus, to gather the necessary information for the development of this research, piano students (N = 88; 44 men and 44 women) answered a questionnaire formulated by Mishra (2007) and adapted to our context. This measurement instrument provided information about the type of memorisation strategies used most often by the participants of this research. Most results point towards the use of analytic memory study strategies, followed by aural, kinaesthetic, and visual memorisation. Furthermore, the personal strategy the students used most frequently while memorising was practising their instrument daily. This activity generates greater fluency and confidence when playing a piece from memory.
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