Notes about Notes
1 - A FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT CONDUCTING and CONDUCTORS
Why do you want to conduct?
‘Well, I fancied having a go’ sounds pretty casual, like deciding to eat an ice cream. Or we might try the pretentious and superior approach... ‘I feel that I have something to offer’. Are you sure, or are you just an egotist who can't think of a better idea?
Compared to the question about why we take up a particular instrument, there isn’t as good an answer to this one. The instrument we choose has a sound we love, or there is some other reason so naturally understandable as not to need questioning, even if the choice is a very bizarre one, like … it’s very heavy, or needs a van, or a extra seat on a plane … or it was just there in the cupboard.
To be a conductor is to set oneself apart, to announce oneself as separate from the crowd, the scrum, the hoi polloi.
In the orchestral world this separation gradually developed to extraordinary levels during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It was based on the dictates of egos, agents, record companies and the interests of money and celebrity status in general. Nowadays there are signs of that particular tide ebbing as classical music’s own tide also goes out. More of that later.
When, at first, a player gets an instrument home what does he do with it? Holds it between his knees, even over the shoulder, under the chin, presses it on his lips, hits it, scrapes it, blows into it from quite a few different angles … and, hallelujah, makes a sound. I don’t care who you are, that moment is a triumph. To join the ranks of sound-makers is to become special.
But what does the conductor do, having decided that the world is waiting for him, him especially, and perhaps, only him? He looks around for a group of sound makers, who have already spent thousands of hours on their own, coaxing their beloved but very cussed instruments into uncertain life.
What does the conductor want to do? He wants to lead them upwards and onwards. How? By imparting his thoughts, unique and invaluable, on how things should, or more likely, must be done. He carves the air into invisible slices, he moulds it into suggestive curves, he dances, he opens his mouth and bares his teeth in a manner that would cause a fully grown shark to rear back in alarm. But …. He Doesn’t Make A Sound !
The sounders, the players, do that for him. Should he get to do this weird ballet in public, worse is to come. At the end of his display, he, the soundless wonder, takes the applause, while the sweating sounders (laughingly called ‘players’) cast their minds over the damage that he, the carver of air, left behind for them to clear up, and survey the wreckage that was previously a decent piece of music.
But, why did I myself start, for that matter ?
I began conducting totally by chance in the very late sixties at the invitation of Elgar Howarth, who sent me on an expedition to Yorkshire to conduct a couple of rehearsals with a Grimethorpe Colliery Band.
At that time I was the Principal Trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra and freelancing in the London studios, so this excursion was a very pleasant, if strange, light relief. “But I have never conducted ! Anything !” I protested when he asked me. “Just bring your arm down and follow them,” was his characteristically understated reply.
The Band’s playing was very assured and cohesive and I was made very welcome. Pints were sunk in the Miners’ Club, and musical anecdotes were swapped as if between friendly strangers from neighbouring planets.
Grimethorpe Band was, and I am sure, still is unique. Even on that first visit, and with them being careful about what they said, it was obvious that the band had an interesting social background that went well beyond music.
That encounter led to a couple of contests at different times in the following few years, which suggested to me that brass bands weren’t from a near planet but from a distant galaxy.
It wasn’t until some nine or ten years later, having just given up playing, and as a side dish to my orchestral conducting, that I linked up with Desford Colliery Band in the midlands of England and began to slowly discover what went on. Fact was again proved to be stranger than fiction …
Why are Conductors necessary anyway?
Assuming that they must do something for the money
… What in fact do they DO ?
Therefore let’s assume that you want to become a conductor, or already are a conductor, the question still remains: what does a good conductor do? He adds ‘what’? ‘What’ is it that he does that ‘is necessary’ ?
The ‘Maestro’ series on TV tried to show what happens in usual Big-Stupid-TV fashion, when several very different people known for one skill are taught, very fast, to imitate another. I should say more accurately “appear to survive in a situation rigged to ensure that they seem moderately competent.”
Interesting on the people-watching level … that it, if you have nothing better to do with your time … it of course reversed the normal (and sane) ways of learning. If it weren’t for the participants being willing lambs to the slaughter I would have felt deeply sorry for them. Think parrot-fashion. Think saying to a parrot “Pretty Polly” until amazingly it squawks something like “Knitted Brolly” or some such after countless repetitions.
The long-suffering orchestral players on ‘Maestro’, torn between pity for the contestants and self-hatred for being part of something so cretinous, took refuge in a grinning competition when not playing. But in Best British Stiff Upper Lip Tradition, they stuck together, notwithstanding the random gestures being hurled in their direction.
This togetherness elicited little cries of joy and gladness from the Jury, undistinguished save for one of their number, people who clearly must have needed the money, or just were desperate to be on TV, any old how.
Occasionally a few players took a reality check: I mean that they actually FOLLOWED one of the competitors-conductors, and like a gust of fresh air blowing through a stuffy room, a moment of genuine truth occurred … there was genuine chaos.
And chaos is what most of those conductors would cause, without the sounders’ and bangers’ and scrapers’ goodwill, good nature and extremely good and underpaid offices.
Time after time, during the years following my playing career, I have been astonished at what players achieve. That thought was very important to me in learning the true place of a conductor in the scheme of things. The realization, that the conductor makes no sound, is totally forgotten by most conductors and listeners. Even moderate professional players can and do play most things effectively without a conductor.
The best players need the conductor rarely, but, paradoxically, are always aware of him. If the conductor has the technique great freedom is available to him to shape the performance. Normally, however, the players dictate the result.
I later used these playing experiences of mine to good use in pioneering different techniques of training ensembles to play well together. In my days of working with student orchestras (at the Royal Northern College of Music with repertoire such as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring) and with brass bands, I gradually refined these techniques.
These ensembles learned heightened awareness of each other, in accompanying, in tutti playing, but also how to command the role of soloist. In my days in the LSO we regularly performed with ‘carvers of expensive air’ (conductors) who were as lost a Saharan cabbie in the Antarctic.
From the other side of the stand, on the other hand, I myself learned much from these techniques. In particular, to how to handle ‘corners’, and how to judge the musical line through a corner, those rits & accels & tempo changes.
Which brings me to one the most important points I or anyone else can ever make: perpetual learning is an essential of life. A day without learning is nul, void, empty, and a thorough minus. Without learning, one is preparing to be nothing more than one is at the moment.
We either move forward or we move back. Nothing stays comfortably the same. We are never stationary. So what do we then do with this learnt stuff?
The only thing a conductor sells is what he knows.
That's the only reason ever to pay him a penny. The knowledge. What you carry between your ears, so that you can pass it on in deeds and words... lots of the former, and as few as possible of the latter, please.
And if YOU don’t put ‘it’ there, no one else will or can. More exactly, that which you, personally, have put, by your own efforts, between your ears.
Forget TV, forget Masterclasses, forget stealing other people’s ideas from their recordings because you are too dumb or lazy to work it out for yourself. Try to sift out real value from the modern education industry, the industry that is pushed and pulled around by politicians in their efforts to window dress their particular party. Much of 'modern education' is junk. It will steal years from your life if you let it. Find, if you can, a good teacher who will REVEAL things to you.
You need only four things
- A chair on which to sit
- A score to read
- A pencil to make notes
- And an imagination to use
Oh ! and some silence will come in handy, during which to be alone with your thoughts. Silence is the best medium in which you, the musician, can track your thoughts, as you slowly and painfully give birth to them, as you work through the score towards the Holy Grail of what the composer wanted.
The number of skills that go into the activity of conducting are many and various. Almost like being a chef perhaps ? So what’s in the pot that the conductor stirs ? It’s a stew, of many ingredients. The nature of a fine musical performance is not unlike a great dish, cooked to perfection, and a concert like a meal.
Time to get positive and finish this introduction ! So let me talk about the good conductor and what he does and doesn't do, as opposed to the lesser conductor trying to do … something … anything … as if he knew what he was trying to do.
Not long ago I saw a TV broadcast from the London Proms, where the Chicago Symphony was performing Mahler’s Sixth. This is a truly great orchestra, and has been for many decades. For any student of performance it is a model to study. For the professional, who knows the how and the why, it is a joy to savour.
Like most of the Big Six in the States, one conductor took it from excellence to greatness. Fritz Reiner, abusive to musicians in the extreme, wielding a microscopic beat famously described as being the size of a postage stamp, accomplished it in a few short years in the Fifties. Following him came a mixture of maestros, most of high quality, but on this occasion one of the greatest of all, the present Music Director, was in charge: Bernard Haitink.
Still there were all the Chicago traits, but with the addition of a finesse, a delicacy and a variety of sound that I have not heard from them before. That rarest of things a magical mezzo-forte.
One glance at Haitink, and all was revealed. He fulfilled every requirement that a complete conductor must offer. No flailing. No posturing. No gasping-fish facials. All very simple. Riveting.
He wasn’t always like this: I saw performances of his many years ago when he did flail, sweat and push the orchestra, himself and the music close to death. There used to be a saying among orchestral musicians that it was impossible for anyone under 50 to be a good conductor. Truer than ever perhaps ? Can you get to know enough in under 50 years ? Is talent enough ? I only ask.
And then, the next night, I saw another terrific conductor, this time with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Such technique, such assurance, such knowledge. And talent as well. Quite young, and definitely under that ’50 year rule’. Lots of curly hair. South-American actually. He was discovered by my old friend, the former manager of firstly the LSO and then latterly the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl, Ernest Fleischmann. He may not stay as good as he is now, so go at once. He may become even better, so go at once. (For my obituary on Ernest, who died earlier this summer (2010), go to the LSO website.
His name is Gustavo Dudamel. If you are a budding conductor, a well-budded one, or even one from whom the petals have long dropped... go to hear his performances, to see his performances and to feel his performances. He is a one-off.