Back in the days when Wikipedia was young, Google wanted to create its own
database of articles and came up with the "Knol - unit of knowledge". I
contributed with this essay on conducting in 2008, and now that Google is
closing down its Knols, I wanted to save it for posterity. Hope you enjoy
it!
Conducting Technique
Manual means of directing the musical ensemble in rehearsal and
performance
Conducting technique means the manual skills and techniques by which an
orchestral or choral conductor guides the course of music during a rehearsal or
a performance. This article gives an overview of different ways to conduct an
orchestra and explains the basic principles behind the interaction of the
conductor and the ensemble.
Contents
- What Is Conducting Technique, What Isn't?
- Means to an End
- Psychological Paradoxes of Conducting
- The Pulse or the Pattern
- The Problem of Phrasing
What Is Conducting Technique, What Isn't?
The sphere of orchestral and choral conducting includes many distinct
musical and extra-musical activities, like rehearsing, score study, performing,
season planning, public relations etc. Conducting technique must be kept
separate from the fields of rehearsal technique or interpretation, although
conducting technique is a tool to achieve an interpretation of an orchestral or
choral work.
The effect of conducting technique can be best understood if we imagine a
situation which sometimes occurs in professional life: A conductor has to
cancel his performance at the last minute, and a replacement who has had no
prior contact with the orchestra is assigned to conduct the concert in his
stead. Now it will be easy to see that the technique by which the orchestra
will be guided through the concert must be silent, because no verbal
communication is accepted during the concert. The conductor must use purely
visual means in conveying his message to the musicians. He must signal the
start and finish of each musical piece, as well as guide the orchestra trough
various changes in tempo, character and dynamics during the course of the
piece, using his body language only.
Contrary to the popular myth, you don't need to be born a conductor.
Conducting technique can be taught and learned, and it is a skill comparable to
playing an instrument. But because of the fact that the sound itself is not
made by the conductor but the group of highly skilled individuals in front of
him, it seems that conducting is easy and can be learned in a matter of
minutes. That is a misconception strengthened by the fact that so many
conductors actually lack the necessary manual skills to positively contribute
to the performance after the rehearsals have ended. Acquiring a good conducting
technique is a process that asks for many years of disciplined work for most of
us, just as is the case with any professional instrumentalist.
Means to an End
A good conducting technique is always appropriate as to the technical level
of the ensemble and the given musical situation. Each conductor has also his or
her artistic priorities, which dictate the quality of his or her technical
solutions. Add to this the fact that every human being has different physical
and kinetic properties and you will see why there is almost as many conducting
styles as there is conductors.
There exist certain regional schools of conducting, which reflect the
different regional traditions in orchestral playing. In Eastern and Central
Europe the tradition is that the conductor's gestures are often much ahead of
the orchestra's playing, and that is most convenient to the orchestras of this
region. In contrast, in the Northern Europe and North America the orchestras
want to play together with the gesture, "on the beat", and the more angular
style of conducting prominent in these regions goes well together with it.
These differences are nevertheless easily overcome, because a professional
orchestra usually can adjust to a different style of conducting in a matter of
minutes.
In conducting professional players or singers there will always be the
question of economy. Many times the ensemble is able to perform beautifully
without any help from the conductor. In this case it is also better for the
conductor to do less and save his technical arsenal for those moments when the
ensemble is really dependent on him.
Psychological Paradoxes of Conducting
To conduct well it is not enough to be manually talented and know how to
move your hands - it requires also good understanding of human psychology.
Conducting is not a language or a set of mathematical rules that squarely
correspond to the way the orchestra is playing. Of course there are some basic
conventions like the beating patterns, but the effective part of the technique
consists of subtle ways to send subconscious messages to the players. In this
sense the big paradox of the conducting is that clarity and expression are each
others' antipodes. If you are very expressive and show players a lot of
emotion, you cannot be crystal clear at the same time. If you are only
concerned of precision, the performance is almost guaranteed to sound dull.
We can take as an example the barline, the "worst enemy of music". If you
want to be clear and show each barline with a big vertical motion, you are
guaranteed to have an involuntary accent on the bar line. Why is this? It is
because a musician, let's say a string player, is moving his bow over the
string in a state of heightened perception. When you make a big downwards
motion in his field of vision, he reacts as if you would have given him a
gentle push - the bow will be pressed against the string with a microscopic but
involuntary motion. When one player does this, you could not possibly hear the
difference, but when fifty players do it, the effect becomes very clear.
Many more things in conducting are counter-intuitive. If you want to make
the music faster the natural reflex is to make bigger motions, like you would
do if you would need to swim faster. In practice the way to accelerate the
music is to make your motions gradually smaller so that it is obvious that
every beat will be shorter and thus faster than the previous one. The same goes
with the dynamics - the connection is not as simple as to say "big motion
equals big sound". There exists also big sound with big resistance and
concentration, all expressed in a smallest space, as well as light and airy
sound with big motion when it is needed to encourage relaxed bowing.
The Pulse or the Pattern
Two most basic elements in conducting technique are how to maintain the
pulse and how to express the time signature of the music. The means to show the
time signature is by using the patterns, which despite minor variations are
recognized by professional orchestra players throughout the world. Thus, in a
music which is marked 3/8, 3/4 or 3/2 it is convenient to use a "3-pattern",
which will go through minor variations depending on the tempo and character of
the music.
Most people interested in conducting teach themselves all the different
patterns and feel that half of the job is done. The truth is, nevertheless,
that it is far more important to be able to show the pulse, the tempo of the
music than the pattern. Clarity of pattern becomes crucial in music with
changing time signatures, but the fact that you must be able to conduct the
pulse does not go away.
To learn to maintain the pulse in conducting it is most useful to conduct
any mid-tempo piece "in one" with a simple up-down or circular hand motion.
When you have established a steady periodical motion it is time to add the
pattern to it, while making sure that the quality of the motion does not
change. It is very important that your basic motions have no involuntary
"flicks" or "clicks", because they always give a message to the player that an
accent of some kind is being asked for. Most of the time your conducting
motions should be of continuous legato character, like a pendulum motion with
no sharp angles.
It might seem counter-intuitive again, that in a staccato kind of music, or
for example in a pizzicato passage, you would conduct in a fluid legato manner.
Now think, is the main purpose of the conductor to "illustrate the music" or
facilitate the playing? If we agree to the latter, we see that a stop in motion
means also a stop in sending information about the pulse. With an even and
continuous conducting motion the placing of the next accent or pizzicato
becomes visible and the ensemble will be better. It asks great skill to combine
both the legato way of maintaining the pulse and the staccato character of the
played notes, but it is of course possible.
The Problem of Phrasing
One of the further paradoxes of conducting is how to build a beautiful
four-bar phrase when it seems all we can do is repeat one angular visual
pattern after another. This problem is related to the problem pianists face
every day - how to make a singing line when the instrument is essentially
percussive in its nature? When a conductor has a "pointy" way of conducting,
when he is only concerned of the togetherness of the beginning of each beat,
the orchestra is basically left on its own in interpreting a singing line.
The first step to achieve the singing quality in your motions was already
mentioned above - moving your hand or baton in a circular or pendulum-like
continuous motion. A circle or a figure-eight is in itself a symbol of
continuity and you should be able to fashion all your patterns as a succession
of loops when necessary. The second step is to "ignore" the barline and connect
one pattern to the next without any "special upbeat" to mark the first beat of
the bar.
The third step, which is most often ignored, is to utilize the depth
dimension of the conducting space. You can for example start the phrase with
your hands close to your body, extend them towards the top of the phrase, and
retreat them again to finish off the phrase. Your movements should make use of
all the possible dimensions and not be restricted to the two dimensions used to
describe the conducting patterns on the paper page.
