On TV at the moment is a series called Maestro, where minor celebrities compete to be voted the best conductor of an orchestra.
It got me thinking. What do conductors do? As far as I could see, the orchestra spent most of their time either looking at their sheet music or in a reverie - anything but looking at the conductor.
Are there proscribed hand movements? If not, is it down to the individual musicians to interpret the gestures? Wouldn’t that lead to confusion?
How much freedom does a conductor have to alter a piece of music? After all, I thought it was all written down.
Well, my experience is pretty limited, but from the little I have had:
The conductor sets the timing, cues the orchestra, sections or individuals as appropriate to come in (or stop) and the dynamics (loud or soft).
The hand movements are generally following a proscribed pattern, but most conductors have their own style on top of that, an orchestra gets used to a conductor, and you rehearse enough and get yelled at enough by the conductor to know exactly what he or she means when they wiggle their fingers in that specific way
Interpretation: there is quite a bit of freedom: at the end of the day, the conductor could choose to change bits of the music (that’s what rehearsals are for). They choose how long to make the long notes, how fast to make the fast bits. When the music is loud, how loud is loud? And how loud is loud for the volins compared to the clarinets… All that kind of thing. They bring the written music to life, and make it sound beautiful, rather than perfect mechanical rendition of what’s on the page.
Hmmm. I thought we’d had a previous thread on this, but I can’t find one.
There’s a good summary of the basic aspects of technique on Wikipedia. I suppose if I was to make a sweeping summary of the role of a conductor, it would be that they are the way a large group of people (anything from a dozen to a hundred) can communicate with one another instantaneously and (hopefully!) unambiguously. If everybody pushes and pulls the music in their own way, in all sorts of musical matters as well as simple issues of tempo, the unified sound needed will rarely if ever emerge. With small groups, such as quartets or with a soloist and piano accompaniment, the communication can be done directly. With more people, a lead needs to be given, and it has to be a visual one.
Does the role of the players become a subservient one? Not in the slightest. It certainly is different to playing as a solist. As a violinist, my preference (and best abilities) lie in orchestral playing. Working with over a dozen others in the section, or thirty violins overall, or sixty string players in total, and achieving a unified sound and musical shape, is something very special. Yes, there’s a lot of information on the page, but there’s also a lot which isn’t written down.
Players not looking at the conductor? They certainly are looking, much more than might be obvious. They will have positioned themselves so that the sightlines to the music and to him/her are close to one another. They look (mostly) in small glances, not long stares. They can gain quite a lot of the necessary information through peripheral vision. They know which moments are the crucial ones, and of course these are likely to be when the camera focuses on the conductor rather than them!
Watching amateur conductors, however, isn’t a great way to see all of this in action. Youtube is a better resource, although the compression of files sometimes obscures details of motions and the exactness of timing. Try Beethoven 5, with Bernstein, Barenboim and Toscanini, to see different approaches to the same piece.
Also, besides watching what conductors do, you can HEAR what conductors do. Find four different recordings of the same piece, say Mozart’s 41st Symphony (the “Jupiter” symphony). All four recordings are going to be slightly different, either in tempo, or in the length of certain key notes, or in the phrasing, possibly even in which parts get played (there are several Brahms symphony recordings that I know of where the conductor skipped the repetition of sections that are specifically marked as repeated in the score). At least half of what a conductor does is actually done before the orchestra ever plays a note in rehearsal.
Ok can i ask this then.
Let’s say that an orchestra is supposed to be playing Beethoven’s 9th in front of the Queen on her birthday. They have gone through all the preparation that any group would have in the past, with or wihtout the conductor.
Would they NEED the conductor there on the day?
(Follow-up question, could they do it on the day, if someone-else were to yell out “1…2…1…2…3…4…”(or some equivalent) to start things off)
Need the conductor? Maybe. Benefit greatly from having the conductor? Likely. (Although there do exist groups that prefer to perform without a conductor). Be able to perform if someone shouted out a count to start things off? Probably, . . . but I bet they’d sound better with an experienced conductor standing in front waving his or her arms. Some of this is about expectations as much as practicality.
It is very hard for the average person to maintain a consistant rhythm for a long period of time. Professional musicians are going to be better at this than the average person, but they are still used to using their eyes to help maintain the rhythm. And what if there are tempo changes, or spots where people slow down or speed up? A good conductor can direct that, so that everyone slows down the same amount.
A good conductor helps keep the entire group together, and is in charge of figuring out when things are going so badly that it makes sense to just stop and start fresh. (OK, I’ve never seen this with professional musicians, but I can tell stories about amateurs who benefited from a re-do).
Many groups that don’t appear to have a conductor still have a person who is counted on to be a human metronome–first chair violin is a common one (unless I mis-remember). In pit orchestras for musicals, the keyboard player may be the music director. Sometimes groups rotate the resposibility.
Aside from keeping the orchestra on tempo? As mentioned previously, it’s not hard for individual members to wander off ever so slightly, no matter how well rehearsed.
In addition, a good conductor — and I’ve known several, as well as a dipshit or two — might well make very subtle changes depending on the current conditions. Even if the performance is taking place in the same venue as rehearsals (which isn’t always the case), an empty hall will not have the same acoustics as a half-full one, which in turn will sound different from a full one. And changes in temperature can have an effect as well. A good conductor may adjust the dynamics a bit to compensate, or even retard a tad. No major changes, but changes nevertheless.
Disclaimer: I’ve only been conducted in chorus (since I can’t play an instrument to save my soul), though a fair number of performances have been with an orchestra. Anyway, I imagine the same principle applies to an orchestra performing alone.
ETA: I’ve never heard anything even close to “1…2…1…2…3…4…” in performance. The performers rely on visual cues, not aural.
Thanks for all your replies. I’m still uncertain about the gestures. Is it like sign language? Does the conductor explain to the orchestra what a particular gesture will mean? How do they interpret what he’s doing?
There are specific patterns of motion for the various time signatures, and for things like dynamics changes and entrances and such, those are usually worked out in rehearsal. The motions the conductor makes to mark those events doesn’t NEED to be standardized, as the players are aware that such and such is coming up and the gesture is merely there to mark their point of entrance or the point where the volume must rise or fall. The conductor isn’t actually telling the orchestra what to do at the moment of performance. S/he is basically just banging time and pointing cues. The actual WORK involved happens before the performance, when the conductor heaps abuse and recrimination on the misbegotten assassins of music s/he is saddled with. Actually, there are several very important and very difficult but almost invisible things happening that the groundwork is laid out for weeks or months before the actual performance begins.
The conductor must know the score of the piece inside out and upside down. And if you’ve never seen an orchestral score, you have no idea how complicated that can be. We’re talking about pages and pages and pages, each page composed of 15-20 staves (one for each section of the orchestra, and sometimes the four voice parts (the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, for example)).
The conductor must determine the dynamics and rhythmic flow of the music and rehearse those with the orchestra to the point where they only NEED that gesture to know what to do.
The conductor is often in charge of planning the season in concert with the symphony board…what pieces are going to be performed, how many concerts they’re going to have, who the special guest performers are going to be.
It’s not all just getting up on the box and waving the stick around.
There are standard gestures–I know what it means (generally) when someone conducts a specific way, but I am not going to explain for fear of making stupid mistakes. Conductors may explain what a particular gesture will mean if the gesture is weird or the music is complicated/weird. (Ok, pianist, watch my left pinky finger, I’ll give you the beat for the new section coming up. Choir, cut of when I make the standard cut off gesture. Soloist–watch my eyes, when I look at you, that means it’s time for you to start). I’ve especially seen this with choirs holding out long notes–OK, sing the final vowel, when I do this, move to the “n”, when I do this get quieter, when I do this, stop singing.
There’s a standard pattern for conducting music which is written with 3 beats to the measure, and one for 4 (and probably some for other numbers of beats as well). If the tempo gets really fast, sometimes conductors conduct in “one”–which basically means that every time they drop their hand, it’s a new measure.
In my experience as a member of a handbell choir, it is not uncommon for the first measures to be counted out (and subdivided) orally, as well as conducted by gesture. This may say something about the level of professionalism associated with the handbell choirs I’ve been in–low. Subdivided means that the director says 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and (or even 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a or 1 e and a 2 e and a . . . ) rather than 1 2 3 4.
And sometimes how a conductor chooses to beat a passage has a huge effect on how the musicians play that passage, or how easy it is for them to get the feel.
I recently conducted a show, and in one number, the song goes from 4/4 (1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4) to 3/4 (1 2 3 1 2 3). There is generally a way to conduct four and to conduct three. However, in this song there was an odd tempo change at the same place, and the bars of three were quite fast. The orchestra had a really tough time getting the feel of the change, and after two rehearsals where that transition just was not coming together, I looked at it for a while and decided to conduct the 3/4 bars in one (just beating one beat per measure), and lo and behold, like magic the thing just worked. Not only that, but conducting it in one naturally lead to the heavily accented downbeat of each measure that I wanted as well.
Sometimes the conductor will explain his gestures. Otherwise it’s up to the musicians to decipher them. In my experience, that’s what distinguishes a good conductor from a bad one. Each conductor has his own style, but with a good one, it’s obvious what he wants (tempi, cutoffs etc). With a bad conductor, nobody on the platform has a clue. When that happens, we generally transfer our gaze to the leader of the orchestra and take our cues from him.
Actually, there are several very important and very difficult but almost invisible things happening that the groundwork is laid out for weeks or months before the actual performance begins.