
The Art of Conducting - whatami
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-art-of-conducting/
======
a_lieb
I think this is the take-away point: "Beyond stopping and starting a given
piece, it is the job of a conductor to decide how it will be interpreted. How
loud should the middle section of the first movement be—and ought the violins
to be playing a bit softer so as not to drown out the flutes? Someone must
answer questions such as these if a performance is not to sound indecisive or
chaotic, and it is far easier for one person to do so than for 100 people to
vote on each decision."

If you've ever worked with a conductor, even in high school band, the whole
mystery disappears right away. In classical music, "conductor" usually refers
to what would be called "musical director" in other situations: they oversee
all of the big and little artistic decisions you need to make good music.
Standing up there waving the baton around is a pretty small part of the job.
When you explain to people this way, it's almost obvious: just like any big
project, you want to have a manager with some kind of vision to give things
direction. It's pretty hard to run the whole thing as a commune.

~~~
SimonPStevens
This mostly makes sense to me. A conductor for music is the equivalent of a
director for a play.

Except with a play the director doesn't stand on stage pointing at each actor
to cue their lines. The actors rehearse and learn their own cues. The director
coaches them on timing, volume, expression, etc, but then mostly relies on
each individual actor to take that direction on board and follow it themselves
on the night.

Why is it different for a conductor?

[ Edit: Reading the rest of this thread has actually largely answered my
question now. taco_emoji's post was particularly helpful
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983052)
]

~~~
steinuil
The most basic function of a director in a concert is to dictate the tempo.
You can make do without a director in a small group of people by just looking
at each other in tricky moments, but when the people involved become dozens or
hundreds it is impossible to stay in tempo without a director.

You could take the director out and people would still be able to play, but it
would most likely result in a much worse performance.

~~~
taco_emoji
Also many bands have a drummer and/or bass player who will set the rhythm,
just by nature of their instruments cutting through the others, which
generally obviates the need for a conductor.

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autarch
I appreciate this article's focus on rehearsal. A lot of people not familiar
with classical music see someone waving their hands around on stage and wonder
why they're needed.

The answer is that they're not really needed _for the performance_. A
conductor who leads effective rehearsals and gives clear interpretation
instructions could probably not show up to the performance and the orchestra
would still know what to do.

But leading effective rehearsals and knowing the music well enough to
communicate interpretations details is _really hard_.

~~~
taco_emoji
I disagree somewhat--the conductor may not strictly be _needed_ for the
performance (with enough rehearsal, of course), but it's likely to be much
_better_ with them than without. For one, keeping a steady tempo by consensus
is pretty hard when you're trying to listen for it from your fellow musicians
while simultaneously attending to your own pitch & timbre. (Not to mention
_accelerando_ and _ritardando_ \--changing tempo in sync is nigh impossible
without a benevolent dictator in front of you!)

Also it's very easy for an individual musician to forget that oh, this is the
THIRD repetition of this really loud phrase, and this time we're supposed to
move on to the really quiet part, and seeing the wildly gesticulating figure
in your periphery suddenly shrink down smaller is a good reminder that things
are changing to the quiet part.

And as a former percussion player who had to wait for sometimes hundreds of
measures of rest before coming in precisely on time with, say, an extremely
important bass drum hit, it's extremely reassuring to get eye contact and a
finger-point from the conductor to verify that you're not about to ruin the
entire performance by coming in four measures early just because you lost
count and were therefore trying to base your entrance on the repetitive
phrasing of the piece. Not that this ever happened to me...

~~~
mikestew
Thanks for the insightful comment. I’ve often wondered how the triangle player
can sit for a hundred measures and still hit that one note right on time. And
the other stuff as well, but that one stood out.

~~~
taco_emoji
I don't want to downplay the need for rehearsal. It's nearly impossible to
simply count for that long, so percussion players REALLY need to know the
shape of the piece (perhaps more than the rest of the ensemble, in my biased
opinion) to get their cues right. A nod from the conductor is reassuring, but
she also has literally a dozen things happening simultaneously that she must
attend to, so you can't depend on it.

------
geekpowa
I dabble in music. Long time ago for a couple of years I studied arrangement
and composition as something interesting to do outside my day job. Included
some study on conducting. I did a few arrangements for big band orchestras and
it is quite a buzz to listen to musicians play sheet music you just handed
them live without any rehearsal. Yet the idea of conducting is completely
intimidating. I practised a bit but was never good enough and was relieved I
never had to do it for real when my teacher would step in conduct instead. I
found it to be a strange beast; quite the opposite of arranging which is very
mathematical and precise. If I ever decide to get back into that side of music
I'll have to make a point on working on that skill.

------
korbonits
If you enjoy this article, you'd love this book:

Absolutely on Music: Conversations (Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa)

[https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-Music-Conversations-
Haruki...](https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-Music-Conversations-Haruki-
Murakami/dp/0385354347)

~~~
thsowers
+1, This was such an excellent read.

There are a large number of pages where they talk about Mahler that I
particularly enjoyed

------
eadmund
> _Someone_ must answer questions such as these if a performance is not to
> sound indecisive or chaotic, and it is far easier for one person to do so
> than for 100 people to vote on each decision.

It strikes me that this is a bit akin to the role of a good CEO, or an active
monarch in a democratic monarchy: not to direct, but to roll with the flow,
and influence things just a bit — like a harmonic knocker, giving just the
right impulse at just the right moment.

~~~
yesenadam
Except in rehearsal the conductor has imposed his vision of how things will
flow in later performances. Different versions of the same piece from
different conductors can sound _extremely_ different, although the sheet music
is the same - different tempos, different changes in tempo, different
dynamics, phrasing, relative volume of instruments, timbre (quality of sound),
different lengths of notes and accents and attack on notes, etc etc, and each
composer has their own idiosyncratic ideas and preferences, both about what
the composer wanted and what they want the piece to sound like. Sometimes
different numbers of players are used. Also the particular way the conductor
speaks to the orchestra about the music and the players, and other things,
what they say and how they say it, can have a huge effect.

"To influence things a bit" is nothing like it. A performance may give that
impression, but the nature of the performance in all those details and more
has been thought out by the conductor and rehearsed beforehand. The orchestra
has been taught and trained in exactly how the conductor likes it, and that's
what you hear.

------
shostack
For any that want an entertaining and somewhat informative "behind the scenes"
take on conducting, Amazon's "Mozart in the Jungle" series[1] is pretty good.
Not sure how accurate it is, but still a fun look at something most people
don't get to see behind the scenes of.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_in_the_Jungle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_in_the_Jungle)

------
nateburke
Agree 100% with the functional points. One additional responsibility that
arises from time to time is to handle disturbances during performances. Having
someone able to speak eloquently to the audience in such circumstances (a/v
issues, noisy individuals, etc) can be the difference between an otherwise
great performance and a very awkward musical experience.

------
timthorn
A few years ago, the bbc ran a celebrity reality show where the contestants
learned to become conductors. It made for very good television whilst
explaining the role well:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/maestro/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/maestro/)

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mightybyte
In college I had a wind symphony conductor who was phenomenal. Playing for him
was so much fun. Someone once told me that the better we played the more he
danced, and the more he danced the better we played. I think this concisely
captures one of the big functions of the conductor.

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cafard
Most interesting. Thank you for posting this.

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madengr
When I think of a conductor, Bugs Bunny flashes into my mind. Must have been
burned in as a child.

[https://youtu.be/BX1ljYx3g3k](https://youtu.be/BX1ljYx3g3k)

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tytytytytytytyt
What is with the recapcha alert that pops up when the page loads?

~~~
sparky_z
I can't figure it out, either. I'm only getting the first paragraph of the
article.

Okay, I figured out a workaround. Click the print button at the bottom of the
page and print to pdf. You'll get the whole article that way.

It was a really good article. Worth the effort.

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tzahola
I thought this will be about electrical conductors.

