FEATS OF MEMORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 23, 28 January 1938, Page 4

FEATS OF MEMORY

BX FAMOUS MUSICIANS

Mr. Frank Howes, the music critic, speaking at the annual conference of the Incorporated Society of, Musicians in London gave instances of the remarkable memories of two well-known musicians—Dr. George Dyson and Mr. Jolin Barbirolli, says the x "Daily Telegraph and Morning f>ost." "When he was a student at the Royal College of Music, Dr. Dyson used to play the drums," said Mr. Howes. "This was in Stanford's day, and they had a new Irish rhapsody' or a new symphony to rehearse. After the rehearsal Dr. Dyson came down from his drums, sat down at the piano,' and played the whole thing." After Mr. Barbirolli had introduced one of Bax's symphonies at a Philharmonic concert the only full score in existence went astray. "Mr. Barbirolli took the score to a party where he was to meet the composer to-run through, certain points," said Mr. Howes.' ( "At the' end of the party there was a certain confusion Of taxi-cabs.. The'score went off in one, Mr. Barbirolli.in.another,' and Sir Arnold Baxin a third, and that score could not be found. "Mr. • Barbirolli • conducted two rehearsals and performed a work he had never heard simply through a chante interieure which he had got from the score." "PHOTOGRAPHIC" MEMORY. Sir Percy Buck, King Edward Professor of Music, University of London, expressed the opinion that these feats of memory were less wonderful than we gave them credit for being, and said that he believed they were photographic. "We have all got that kind of photographic feeling," he said. "I can play two pieces by heart on the piano, and OC can make a very bad shot at about a thousand others, but I am perfectly certain that in anything I played on the piano I could tell you where the copy turned over." He recalled that the late Lord Randolph Churchill had a photographic memory. "When he was a young man and was hard up," said Sir Percy, "he used to make money by betting anybody that if he opened a book at any page and allowed him to look at it for 15 seconds he would recite the page by heart. He did that over and over again." _