MEMORY

I remember very well that I thought it was very strange that John Lennon once said that certain Beatles songs he did not know exactly which album they were on. I could not imagine that at all. That you don't have all that, old and tired of days, ready, okay. But Lennon said that when the Beatles were not even that long apart, it was somewhere in the mid-1970s. I mean, the man has written so much that it has been burnt into the genetic material of our contemporaries, but he still had to think for himself whether that is from Sgt. Pepper's was of the White Album. Wonderful. Apparently he found that less important than his fans.

Now it happens to me that self - not what I have written has formed an entire generation, but that I no longer know what I wrote when and for what. It started about ten years ago, if not longer.

Sometimes you are asked if you still have that or that music - I have written dozens of musicals for youth theater and such, and then someone or an organization wants to perform that again. Then I look for the names of those performances, and I remember them. But then there are a lot of titles of songs and music underneath, where there are invariably a number of which I know or have learned that I have written music for it, but of which I really have no idea how it sounded again.

When I read the lyrics of the song in question, it usually seems familiar to me, but I can often no longer reproduce a melody. There is a good chance that if I had to provide that text with music again, it would be quite different.

When I listen to the song, I usually recognize it. But not even that always. I hear from the style of composing that it is (or was), but I really can't remember that I wrote it.

Age is the most obvious explanation. After 65 years, the hard disk just fills up every now and then, and then a sort of selection takes place: we throw this away and keep it. It may play a role, but it is not alone. Most of the things I write (or wrote) with those kinds of assignments were simply not meant to be remembered or to be played later, and that's how I approached it.

As soon as I finished it, it was able to get out of my system, especially where the less noticeable or important pieces went. That also happened. After delivering the music I heard it at most a few more times in the performance that I visited as a composer, but after that it was gone. Some people find that strange, but as a musician you do not know all the halls where you have played, and 98% of the performances themselves disappear from your memory - what remains are the special moments, which you then link to place or time .

That must have happened to John. After 1966, the band never played live again, except for a session on top of the EMI building - so there was no need for him to keep listening and practicing all those songs. We as fans thought those songs were important and would never forget in which year or on which album they appeared. Had he written and recorded it, he continued. It only started for the fans.