Sometimes we have very fascinating conversations around the edges of choir rehearsals at our church. The members of the choir are people with very interesting lives and I am frequently amazed by their wisdom. Yesterday as we were waiting for some of the members of our bell choir to arrive, we were talking about rhythm. Our director told us that she has had the anthem that we are working on to ring in worship on May 12 playing in her brain all week long. At one point she was sitting and hearing the tune she realized that she was able to recall the tune in all of its complexity with the melody and countermelodies all in place. She said her memory was very specific, right down to the arrangement of the bells. In this particular anthem, the ringer who rings the smallest and highest pitched bells also has one large bass bell that is only rung once, in the final measure of the piece. Normally we stand so that the bells are arranged from the left to the right with the lowest bells on the left and the highest on the right when viewed from the choir’s perspective. The sound of the deep bell coming from the opposite end of the bell tables is a very unique and slightly unexpected sound at the end of the piece. The piece also has a lot of syncopation and it has been a challenge for our bell ringers. We have been practicing for several weeks and finally are able to play through the piece with a fair amount of accuracy and we still have a few weeks to rehearse to get the piece ready for worship.

So our director was sort of rehearsing the piece in her mind between rehearsals when she realized that she had the entire piece memorized. The interesting thing about her memory is that while she was going over the piece in her mind she happened to shift her hand to where she could feel her own heartbeat and realized that in her memory she was hearing the piece at the same rate as her heartbeat, which averages between 50 and 60 beats per minute. That means that in her memory she was hearing the piece with all of its details at roughly half the speed that we normally rehearse and ring the music. She realized that she was unintentionally slowing down the piece in her mind as she thought about it so that she was able to fit all of the complexities of the piece into the song.

Musicians often rehearse music at slower rates than will be used in performance so that they can be sure bout all of the timing and pitch changes. Then they gradually speed up their singing or playing of the piece to achieve the pace they want the piece to be heard.

The conversation got me to thinking about some of the stunning musical performances that I have heard. I frequently watch YouTube videos of classical musicians performing as a way of winding down after dinner. One video that I’ve watched several times is an encore performance by the pianist Yuja Wang. The piece is a familiar short piece that is often presented by a solo instrument, Risky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee.” In the video she plays the entire piece in well under two minutes. Her fingers are moving across the piano keys at such a rate that the video camera is unable to record their movement and the appear blurred when you watch the video. The video is from several years ago, when the artist was quite young. I read once that she has played that piece as a concert encore for at least 15 years. Repetition is one of the time-honored methods for musicians to perfect a performance. In piano lessons, students play scales over and over again to train their fingers to play not only individual notes, but sequences of notes involving all of the keys on the piano. Over time students are able to speed up the scale exercises and play with remarkable speed and agility.

I confess that I didn’t invest the time in piano practice that is required to be confident playing the instrument for an audience. I love to listen to piano performance, but my own playing is usually a disappointment for me. I often remark that the piano just isn’t my instrument and that I don’t play in public. My love for the instrument, however, isn’t diminished by my lack of skill and ability. When I hear a talented pianist, I am spellbound by the music.

The conversation with our bell choir director got me to thinking about what might be going on in the brain of a talented pianist as that person prepares for a performance. Do you suppose that Yuja Wang can hear the music in her head even when she isn’t sitting at a piano? Might she be able to “listen” to her memory of the piece at different rates so that the music and the movement of her fingers becomes so imprinted that she is able to perform at a much greater rate of speed. Or was she always able to play the music at such a stunning rate?

Musicians often refer to muscle memory. There are many parts of performance where a rehearsed musician doesn’t have to go through complex mental calculations to create the sound. The ability to play consistently comes from the muscles in the body knowing a precise pattern of movement and the musician can play without having to be consciously aware of each individual motion. The process of repeating over and over in rehearsal makes the movements automatic. When ringing handbells we learn to sense the location of our bells so that we can switch bells without having to look at them. In a similar fashion, pianists learn where the keys are located and don’t need to look at their fingers to have them in the right place on the keyboard despite the fact that a piano keyboard spans a large amount of space.

However, the process works, time is an amazing factor and the rhythms of our music are connected to the rhythms of our bodies and sometimes, in an incredible performance, all things come together for music that engages our hearts and minds and bodies.