The Artwork of Conducting – Terry Teachout, Commentary Journal
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o what’s the news on this conductor man?” a pal as soon as requested after I took her to an orchestral live performance, the primary one she had ever seen. “Do they really want him, or is he simply there for present?” Her query was a great one. Anybody who has witnessed a efficiency by the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is aware of that a few dozen classical musicians can provide a shapely, polished efficiency of a symphony by Haydn or Mozart and not using a conductor. Any well-drilled symphony orchestra can do the identical factor.
Why, then, are just about all trendy skilled orchestras led by well-paid conductors as an alternative of acting on their very own? It’s an attention-grabbing query. In spite of everything, whereas many celeb conductors are extremely educated and educated, there have been others, a few of them legendary, whose musical skills had been and are much more restricted. It was no secret on this planet of classical music that Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony from 1924 to 1949, discovered it tough to learn full orchestral scores and typically discovered how you can lead them in public by first practising with a pair of rehearsal pianists whom he “carried out” in personal.
But recordings present that Koussevitzky’s interpretations of such difficult items of music as Aaron Copland’s El Salón México and Maurice Ravel’s orchestral transcription of Mussorgsky’s Footage at an Exhibition (each of which he premiered and championed) had been immensely characterful and distinctive. What made them so? Was it the virtuosic taking part in of the Boston Symphony alone? Or did Koussevitzky additionally carry one thing particular to those performances—and in that case, what was it?
A part of what makes this query so difficult to reply is that scarcely any well-known conductors have spoken or written intimately about what they do. Solely two conductors of the primary rank, Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter, have left behind full-length autobiographies, and neither one contains a dialogue of its creator’s technical strategies. For that reason, the publication of John Mauceri’s Maestros and Their Music: The Artwork and Alchemy of Conducting can be of particular curiosity to those that, like my pal, marvel precisely what it’s that conductors contribute to the performances that they lead.1
An impeccable musical journeyman finest identified for his energetic performances of movie music with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Mauceri has led a lot of the world’s high orchestras. He writes illuminatingly about his work in Maestros and Their Music, leavening his discussions of such issues because the foibles of opera administrators and music critics with sharply pointed, typically gossipy anecdotes. Most attention-grabbing of all, although, are the chapters through which he talks about what conductors do on the rostrum. To learn Maestros and Their Music is to return away with a a lot clearer understanding of what its creator calls the “unusual and lawless world” of conducting—and to know how conductors whose method is poor to the purpose of seeming incompetence can nonetheless give thrilling performances.
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rior to the Nineteenth century, conductors of the trendy sort didn’t exist. Orchestras had been smaller then—a lot of the ensembles that carried out Mozart’s symphonies and operas contained wherever from two to 3 dozen gamers—and their concert events had been “carried out” both by the chief of the primary violins or by the orchestra’s keyboard participant.
As orchestras grew bigger in response to the growing complexity of Nineteenth-century music, nevertheless, it turned needed for a full-time conductor each to rehearse them and to manage their public performances, usually by standing on a podium positioned in entrance of the musicians and beating time within the air with a baton. Many of the first males to take action had been composers, together with Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn, and Richard Wagner. By the tip of the century, nevertheless, it was changing into more and more widespread for musicians to focus on conducting, and a few of them, notably Arthur Nikisch and Arturo Toscanini, got here to be considered virtuosos in their very own proper. Since then, solely three necessary composers—Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, and Pierre Boulez—have additionally pursued parallel careers as world-class conductors. Each different main conductor of the twentieth century was a specialist.
What did these males do in entrance of an orchestra? Mauceri’s description of the essential bodily strategy of conducting is admirably simple:
The precise hand beats time; that’s, it units the tempo or pulse of the music. It may possibly maintain a baton. The left hand turns pages [in the orchestral score], cues instrumentalists with an invitational or pointing gesture, and usually signifies the standard of the notes (percussive, easily linked, sustained, and so on.).
Past these parts, although, all bets are off. Many of the main conductors of the twentieth century had been filmed in efficiency, and what one sees in these movies is so broadly assorted that it’s inconceivable to generalize about what constitutes a great conducting method.2 Most of them used batons, however a number of, together with Boulez and Leopold Stokowski, carried out with their naked arms. Bernstein and Beecham gestured extravagantly, even wildly, whereas others, most famously Fritz Reiner, restricted themselves to tightly managed hand actions. Toscanini beat time in a flowing, superbly expressive manner that made his musical intentions self-evident, however Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan typically carried out so unclearly that it’s onerous to see how the orchestras they led had been in a position to observe them. (One exasperated member of the London Philharmonic claimed, partly in jest, that Furtwängler’s baton signaled the beginning of a chunk “solely after the thirteenth preliminary wiggle.”) Conductors of the Furtwängler type are usually at their finest in entrance of orchestras with which they’ve labored for a few years and whose members have discovered from expertise to “communicate” their gestural language fluently.
Nonetheless, all of those males had been pursuing the identical musical objectives. Past stopping and beginning a given piece, it’s the job of a conductor to determine how it is going to be interpreted. How loud ought to the center part of the primary motion be—and ought the violins to be taking part in a bit softer in order to not drown out the flutes? Somebody should reply questions equivalent to these if a efficiency is to not sound indecisive or chaotic, and it’s far simpler for one particular person to take action than for 100 individuals to vote on every resolution.
Above all, a conductor controls the tempo of a efficiency, various it from second to second as he sees match. It’s inconceivable for a full-sized symphony orchestra to play a chunk with any diploma of rhythmic flexibility except a conductor is controlling the efficiency from the rostrum. Bernstein put it nicely when he noticed in a 1955 TV particular that “the conductor is a type of sculptor whose factor is time as an alternative of marble.” These “sculptural” selections are subjective, since conventional musical notation can’t be matched with exactitude. As Mauceri reminds us, Toscanini and Beecham each recorded La Bohème, having beforehand mentioned their interpretations with Giacomo Puccini, the opera’s composer, and Toscanini carried out its 1896 premiere. But Beecham’s efficiency is 14 minutes longer than Toscanini’s. Who’s “proper”? It’s purely a matter of particular person style, since each interpretations are powerfully persuasive.
Past the not-so-basic process of setting, sustaining, and ranging tempos, it’s the job of a conductor to encourage an orchestra—to make its members play with a charged precision that transcends mere unanimity. Step one in doing so is to steer the gamers of his musical competence. If he can’t run a rehearsal effectively, they’ll quickly develop bored and lose curiosity; if he doesn’t know the rating intimately, they won’t take him significantly. This requires intensive preparation on the a part of the conductor, and an orchestra can inform inside seconds of the downbeat whether or not he’s adequately ready—a reality that each conductor is aware of. “I’m extraordinarily humble about no matter items I could have, however I’m not modest concerning the work I do,” Bernstein as soon as informed an interviewer. “I work extraordinarily onerous and on a regular basis.”
All issues being equal, it’s higher than not for a conductor to have a transparent method, if solely as a result of it simplifies and streamlines the method of rehearsing an orchestra. Fritz Reiner, who taught Bernstein amongst others, didn’t exaggerate when he claimed that he and his pupils might “rise up [in front of] an orchestra they’ve by no means seen earlier than and conduct appropriately a brand new piece at first sight with out verbal rationalization and by means solely of guide method.”
Whereas orchestra gamers want this type of conducting, a conductor needn’t have a method as totally developed as that of a Reiner or Bernstein if he is aware of how you can rehearse successfully. Given enough rehearsal time, decisive and unambiguous verbal directions will produce the identical outcomes as a virtuoso stick method. This was how Willem Mengelberg and George Szell distinguished themselves on the rostrum. Their methods had been no higher than enough, however they rehearsed so meticulously that their performances had been at all times sensible and precise.
It additionally helps to provide the members of the orchestra with rigorously marked orchestra components. Beecham’s guide method was notoriously messy, however he marked his musical intentions into every participant’s half so clearly and exactly that merely studying the music on the stand would produce a lot of the results that he desired.
What gamers do not like is to be lectured. They wish to be informed what to do and, if completely needed, how you can do it, at which level the clever conductor will cease speaking and begin conducting. Mauceri remembers the recommendation given to a bunch of pupil conductors by Joseph Silverstein, the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony: “Don’t discuss to us about blue skies. Simply inform us ‘longer-shorter,’ ‘faster-slower,’ ‘higher-lower.’” Skilled musicians can’t abide flowery speeches concerning the internal which means of a chunk of music, although they’ll readily reply to a well-turned metaphor. Mauceri makes this level with a Toscanini anecdote:
One among Toscanini’s musicians informed me of a second in a rehearsal when the sound the NBC Symphony was giving him was too heavy. … On this case, with out saying a phrase, he reached into his pocket and took out his silk handkerchief, tossed it into the air, and everybody watched it slowly glide to earth. After seeing that, the orchestra performed the identical passage precisely as Toscanini wished.
Conducting, like all acts of management, is largely a perform of character. The violinist Carl Flesch went as far as to name it “the one musical exercise through which a splash of charlatanism will not be solely innocent, however positively needed.” Whereas that’s placing it too cynically, Flesch was on to one thing. I did a good quantity of conducting in faculty, however despite the fact that I practiced endlessly in entrance of a mirror and spent hours poring over my scores, I lacked the private magnetism with out which no conductor can hope to be greater than merely competent at finest.
Alternatively, a proficient musician with a sufficiently compelling character can flip himself right into a conductor roughly in a single day. Toscanini had by no means carried out an orchestra earlier than making his unrehearsed debut in a efficiency of Verdi’s Aida on the age of 19, but the gamers hastened to do his musical bidding. I as soon as noticed the modern-dance choreographer Mark Morris, whose information of classical music is profound, lead a refrain and orchestra within the rating to Gloria, a dance he had made in 1981 to a chunk by Vivaldi. It was no stunt: Morris used a baton and a rating and managed the efficiency with the reassurance of a seasoned professional. Not solely did he have a robust character, however he had additionally achieved his musical homework, and he knew that one was as necessary as the opposite.
The reverse, nevertheless, is not any much less true: The success of conductors like Serge Koussevitzky is at the least as a lot a perform of their personalities as of their preparation. To make certain, Koussevitzky had been an instrumental virtuoso (he performed the double bass) earlier than taking on conducting, however everybody who labored with him in later years was conscious of his musical limitations. But he was nonetheless able to imposing his larger-than-life character on gamers who would possibly nicely have responded indifferently to his conducting had he been much less charismatic. Leopold Stokowski functioned in a lot the identical manner. He was broadly thought by his friends to have been much more a showman than an artist, to the purpose that Toscanini contemptuously dismissed him as a “clown.” However he had, like Koussevitzky, a richly romantic musical creativeness coupled with the showmanship of a stage actor, and so the orchestras that he led, nevertheless skeptical they could be about his musical seriousness, did no matter he wished.
All nice conductors share this similar potential to impose their will on an orchestra—and that, in any case, is the center of the matter. A conductor might be efficient provided that the orchestra does what he desires. It isn’t like a piano, whose notes robotically sound when the keys are pressed, however a dwelling organism with a will of its personal. Conducting, then, is at first an act of persuasion, as Mauceri acknowledges:
The one that stands earlier than a symphony orchestra is charged with one thing each inconceivable and unbelievable. The inconceivable half is herding 100 musicians to agree on one thing, and the unbelievable half is that one does it by waving one’s arms within the air.
Because of this so many well-known conductors have claimed that the artwork of conducting can’t be taught. Within the deepest sense, they’re proper. To make certain, it’s completely attainable, as Reiner did, to show the rudiments of clear stick method and efficient rehearsal apply. However the thriller on the coronary heart of conducting is, certainly, unteachable: One can’t inform a budding younger conductor how you can domesticate a magnetic character, any greater than an actor might be taught how you can have star high quality. What units the Bernsteins and Bogarts of the world other than the remainder of us could be very very similar to what James M. Barrie mentioned of female attraction in What Each Lady Is aware of: “When you have it, you don’t must have the rest; and in case you don’t have it, it doesn’t a lot matter what else you will have.”
1 Knopf, 272 pages
2 Excerpts from many of those movies had been woven collectively right into a two-part BBC documentary, The Artwork of Conducting, which is out there on house video and will also be considered in its entirety on YouTube