learning by heart?

[aewanko]

what does it mean, generally and your thoughts about it. i'm getting abit confused about it. ideas?

[tsagari]

Well I am bit comfuse about this too
The good thing with this (playing by heart) that you can play a piece without using a score and most prof. pianist play all pieces by heart.
However I have find myself that in order to be able to do this I have to go back to score eitherwise I will forgot the piece so sometimes I choose consiously not to learn it by heart unless my teacher insists on that. Then of course if you do not learn it by heart their are certain limits in tempo. You play faster and also you can listen to your play when your brain is not preoccupied with reading.
My question here is if you want to build a repertoire you must learn pieces by heart. On the other hand you learn new pieces for the regular progress and I find difficult to study the repetoire pieces plus what I need to study for my next lesson.  Any suggestion on how to organise my practice?
Now I do not Know if your question is about how to learn a piece by heart? This I think has to do with how your brain memorises information. I would be interesting too  If someone has any particular suggestion to this.

[spaciiey]

Learning by heart means you do not need to use the score when you play. It is very useful, but it does have drawbacks in that it takes longer to learn the piece for performance. Also, you have nothing to fall back on if you have a mental blank.

The way to learn everything by heart is really just to practice it over and over and over again. Try to pick the piece up from different parts of it.... play it over and over. Eventually it sticks.

I used to play everything by heart, but with school and everything else, I had so much to remember I just decided it was easier to use the score.

[Kassaa]

This is probably a language problem, learning by heart is English for playing it without the sheet music in front of you, this has nothing to do with the emotion you put in it (the emotion from your heart). The literal translation from the Dutch is probably better, playing it 'from your head', so directly from your memory instead of relying on the sheets.