Training In Technical Proficiency Of Conducting
In the early nineteenth century, the responsibilities of conductor were split between the keyboard player and leader of the group, usually violin, which comprised of keeping time through the use of nodding and silent gestures. This evolved into the idea of composer-conductor timekeepers who stood before their players with a complete knowledge of the creative fabric of their own compositions, but without a trace of formal conducting technique. Conducting training today concentrates on learning and understanding music, sometimes at the expense of the technical expertise needed to convey this knowledge to the orchestra. For this reason, the intent of this project is to convey the importance of training and encourage the use of precise accuracy in the technical proficiency of conducting.
Conducting is one of the most demanding and enjoyable crafts of musicianship. To be a successful conductor, one must simultaneously be a musician, juggler, psychologist, actor, historian and theorist. Gunther Schuller discusses the ideal ‘compleat’ conductor as “an ardent advocate for the best in new music, with a deep and unshakable commitment to performing the great music of [their] contemporaries”. The conductor must provide an informed interpretation of the music though their own knowledge of musical style and performance practice, compositional style of the composer, and historical aspects of the work and composer.
Several research studies on virtual music conducting have been carried out in the past including the Microcomputer Based Conducting System, which was developed in 1980 but did not implement a gestural interface. It accepted an input using a graphics tablet, switches, or slides. Another system, the Virtual Conducting Practice Environment, provided visual representation of conducting gestures for conducting students such as beat windows. Applications related to a certain instrument may be used in a way that is similar to playing the corresponding acoustic instrument such as Le SuperPolm.
Other more modern gestural controlling applications include UBS Virtual Maestro: An Interactive Conducting Studio and Wii Music, both Wii control based, and offer the sense of conducting and cueing a ‘live’ orchestra. The idea of ‘smartphone-based music conducting’ uses a gyroscope as the main sensor that detects conducting motions using Apple CMAttitude to access this data. The conducting movement can be calculated via the pitch-axis of the gyroscope. The intentions of this project shall move away from the idea of producing and developing a sound in the present, and instead focus on recording an image and shape from the past, to further perfect conducting technique for future use and learning purposes, with particular focus on the ictus.
The ictus is more of a place than a thing, it is: “The point in a standard beat pattern where the stick changes direction and the primary pulse occurs is the ictus. An ictus can be anywhere in the field of conducting that the conductor places it. The standard beat patterns that have developed over the years are created by repeatedly placing each ictus of the pattern at approximately the same point each time the pattern is repeated.” David Brophy, previous Principal Conductor of the RTE Concert Orchestra, discussed in an interview how to ascertain the ictus for an individual: “one would extend ones arm and hand, as if to shake someone’s hand. The bottom of the hand, positioned at this extension, would be a conductors’ natural ictus”.
Historical Context and Developments
The history of musical direction may conveniently be divided into three overlapping phases: the singer-time beater (fifteenth to sixteenth century); the instrumentalist-leader (seventeenth to eighteenth century); the baton-conductor (nineteenth to twentieth century). The idea of time beating began with a singers’ ‘tactus’ – a marked unit of musical time, usually equivalent to that of a semibreve. Adam von Fulda discusses the tactus as being comprised of two hand motions, a downbeat and an upbeat (positio and elevatio, or thesis and arsis). In depictions of choirs, or indeed of opera, from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, there is often one man shown with his hand raised in the air, evidently beating time or ‘tactus’. “Silent signals were also used and the modern beat pattern (down left, right, up) was first described by Thomas Janowka in 1701. The multiple choir (cori spezzati) practices of the early seventeenth century made accurate time-beating even more necessary – a type of music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras which involved spatially separating choirs singing in alternation.
Viadana (1612) says that the maestro di cappella should stand with the choir, controlling the movement of the music and bringing the entrances of the singers. Maulers, describing polychoral singing in Rome in 1639, says that the master ‘gives the main beat in the first choir’, but in each of the other choirs there is a man whose only job was to watch the master and duplicate his beat so that ‘all the choirs sing to the same beat without dragging’. This gives evidence of the necessity of strict time-keeping from an early age in choral and voice performance.
However, in their correspondence during the 1770s and 80s Leopold, Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart continued to distinguish between the verbs tactieren, or Tact schlagen (time-beating in church music and oratorio) and dirigieren (directing with an instrument in opera or concert music). This correspondence perhaps undermines the quintessential element of conducting, whereby these composers understand the need for precise time-keeping in choral music but rely on the idea and philosophy of chamber ensembles self-guiding their own orchestral works. However, this did not relay across all composers of this era. Strauss’ admonition to a young conductor to keep his left hand in his pocket would appear anachronistic today, with the idea of the right hand-beating being the sole focus.
Even Furtwängler and Toscanini relegated most of the expressive aspects of conducting to the left hand, and used the body only sparingly. The need for an orchestral conductor started to emerge more strongly in the late nineteenth century due to the demanding nature of works during the period, which became increasingly complex in terms of structure, and more emotionally expressive. There was a greater importance placed on ‘interpretive philosophies’, so while one conductor’s interpretation might be flamboyant and vibrantly rhythmic, another may be internal and enigmatic, all the while dealing with the conflation between historical authenticity versus modern license. By the end of the twentieth century, stick technique and podium manner had become more standardized than at any point prior, mainly due to the rise of formal training and competitions.
Midway through the twentieth century, two ground-breaking books emerged to address the tensile needs of the conductor. The first was Lehrbuch des Dirigierens by Herman Scherchen (1891-1966), published in 1929 and translated into English in 1933. It was a seminal text that served as a foundation block for conducting, as Scherchen argued that technique exists and was a strong advocate for teaching it formally in classrooms, even though he was self-trained. His conducting, and use of the baton, has been referred to as being ‘functional, clear, scholarly, but combining knowledge of detail and vitality of spirit’. This idea of Scherchen’s ‘self-taught’ conducting technique has been the back-bone of this project, creating a method of learning and self-criticising technique through captured images.
The second book in question is Max Rudolf’s The Grammar of Conducting which first appeared in 1950. Both he and Max Rudolf (1902-95) depended completely on basic beat patterns and pattern drawings as the cornerstones of their technique. Rudolph then went on to discuss how the beat need not be a ‘pedantic beat’, but rather it “express the music with its great variety of feelings”. Through these theories, he brought the idea of adding expression to beats into practice by adding space and drawing his beat diagrams much larger so that they could express the subtlety of life-size gestures. Through the use of OriginLab graphing, it is possible to view and record these beat diagrams, and beat sizes which will be discussed in further detail at a later point.
Many of the twentieth century’s greatest conductors were also composers and virtuosi – Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky and Daniel Barenboim leap to mind. The conductor today is exactly the opposite of our predecessors from the Baroque and Classical eras. Today the role is first a musician and conductor, and second a composer and/or virtuoso. One could argue that the composers of these eras were so emotional in their music, and expressed so much feeling that there was less of a need for accurate conducting - perhaps also why a lot of this music would go un-conducted say in a chamber group or for chamber music. Music of today’s time, such as Igor Stravinsky’s Marche du Soldat rarely requires more than a strict and accurate beat, given its elusive, and irregular time signatures changes.
In its third movement. when there is clashing rhythms between the double bass and drum against the trumpet melody, there seems only a requirement for a basic time-keeping beat, as the score and instrumentalists have too much going on to focus on anything other than keeping their own rhythm against the other conflicting rhythms within the group. The arguments for there being less of a need for technical accuracy have included the myth of the ‘born conductor’, where personality and charisma overlook technique, and the increasing virtuosity of the orchestra making the role of the modern conductor easier.
Modern professionals are capable of playing much standard repertoires without any leadership at all and “accuracy, velocity, even beautiful sounds alone” are seen as creating only a “shallow perfection”. For these reasons one could argue that the less you beat, the stronger results you receive from your orchestra; that the more you show expression with movement, the less beating becomes “unobtrusive”. While the latter may be partially true, the fundamentals and elementary parts of conducting come down to a beating pattern.
Like other musicians, the conductor spends many hours alone in a room preparing, but unlike other musical artists, the conductor rarely gets to practice with his or her instrument. This instrument is alive. It contains up to ninety musicians, as well as their respective instruments. Though many aspiring conductors do not get as much exposure to their instrument as a pianist or cellist would, courses can be undertaken to give both aspiring conductors and musicians the opportunity to experience commanding the position, getting a feel for what leading a group in performance is like.
Years of musicianship and training that result in gaining skill and a well-rounded knowledge of the mechanics of many pieces do not translate into the limited amount of time visibly spent on the podium. As this relatively small window of time is precious, more preparation time should be invested into ascertaining the interpretation of the piece, and by what means a conductor can express this through their gestures. Instead, this time is often spent on covering the basic techniques of conducting; continuous beating, patterns, upbeat etc. By creating a method that tracks the shapes created in conducting, one can focus on creating and perfecting one’s accurate beating as well as improving anticipated beats through preparatory gestures while actually conducting in a performance to make directions easier for the musicians to follow.
