Retentive Memories

This book tells elsewhere how Mozart, still a boy, heard Allegri’s famous Miserere and kept it in his head so well he could write it down afterward. He wasn’t the only one blessed (or burdened) with that kind of memory.

Take Battishill, an English musician whose recall was so strong that even the longest works by Handel, Corelli, or Arne stayed present enough in his mind that he didn’t need the printed text while playing. Dining one day with Dr. Arnold, Battishill played from memory several passages from Arnold’s oratorio The Prodigal Son—music he had not heard for thirty years, and which Arnold himself had completely forgotten.

Among English organists and composers, the name Wesley is revered. Both brothers, Charles and Samuel Wesley, were famous for exceptionally retentive memories. Charles could play Handel’s choruses from memory. Samuel offers an even wilder story: in his early years he wrote an oratorio that filled more than three hundred closely written manuscript pages. It was later performed at a Birmingham festival. On the way back to London he was robbed; the portmanteau containing the score was never recovered. Nearly twenty‑five years later, at a friend’s urging, he wrote the entire work out again with striking ease—saying he could “see the score” in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it were on the desk.

Blind musicians often develop strong memories through constant need. Even so, the blind English organist Henry Smart amazed people: he could have a friend read him the notes of a Handel chorus and later go to church and play it correctly. How? “I carry the notes in my mind,” he said, “and do not think of the sounds.”