The relationship between Memory, Affections and Instrumental Music Performance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a possible relationship between memory, affections and instrumental music performance. It comprises the music composed predominantly between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and therefore, periods which differ substantially. It starts off with discussions regarding memory, considered herein, a quarter of what is understood as the classical division of Rhetoric, as well as the art of memory (mnemonics), and affections, to then culminate in the question which more intensely motivated its investigations: the role of memory and the memory of affection in instrumental music performance. By means of a review – in such a way, the nature of this work - the literature on emotions according to the Rhetoric of Aristotle, and the support of several other philosophers and authors, we draw a relationship between memory, affections and musical performance, pinpointing how the performer handles the affections the work involves while being performed - at runtime - and how to behave emotionally, so that one´s audience is taken by those very same affections. Dealing specifically with the relationship between rhetoric and music - promoted by Luther in the proposed Lateinschulen reforms – the comparisons between the speaker and the interpreter are plentiful.