Memory is in two very distinct parts, the first a simple ‘rocking’ texture mostly in 3/4 but with occasional digressions in 5/8 which comes to an abrupt end. It’s as if a sequence of happy memories presented in the first 23 bars suddenly, in bar 24, triggers something that might be a painful, dark or unexplained event. The second part is a ‘sad chorale’ that follows as an imagined response to this event.
Really, the things we remember are the things we forget. I mean that when a memory comes back sharply and suddenly, piercing the protection of oblivion, it appears for an instant exactly as it really was. If we think of it often, while its essentials doubtless remain true, it becomes more and more our own memory of the thing rather than the thing remembered.