Conducting Philosophy
I had a thought about conducting the other day.
So many conductors will insist that their orchestras play "with me." They expect performers to play their instruments to match a visual reference. The performers are apparently supposed to read the conductor's mind and be able to tell when the stick is going to hit, and ALSO have the same interpretation of when the stick hits as everyone else in the ensemble, despite great variances in visual acuity and attentiveness, all the while playing instruments with varying means of sound production that take different lengths of time to speak.
Matching a complex multi-part sound production apparatus to a vague unpredictable visual reference. Yeah, that'll work.
Our reflexes just aren't that fast, and we're not equally good at anticipating things.
Some of this can be alleviated, many groups find, by coming to an informal agreement of a delay after the conductor's baton. Conductor hits an ictus, approximately x 32nds later everyone plays.
However, what I think is REALLY happening when they do that is that the group finds other cues that are actually RELATED to sound production. Such as breathing. Breathing has a subtle audio component. If everyone breathes together, the point is not that they are all "doing something at the same time," but rather that it is a translation from a visual into an auditory reference. All of a sudden, everyone can play "with you" because they have a sound and a feel of when something is happening, rather than just a visual.
When a conductor claps time for an ensemble, the ensemble is usually suddenly very effective at playing in perfect time with each other, because it is infinitely easier to make a sound "with" another sound, rather than to make it "with" a visual. You have instant feedback on whether your sound was actually with the sound, whereas the only feedback you have on whether the sound is with a visual is an angry conductor.
This is why click tracks are so effective.
So, my theory...
All music is chamber music. All music should be played by listening to the other musicians, rather than looking at someone and attempting to translate an indefinite visual into a definite audio. Ideally, all music could be played without a conductor.
However, there are a lot of things to do with music that require some sort of visual or audio cuing. Perhaps we want to slow down here, or all get quieter, or pause a bit. In chamber music, we make eye contact, or decide on it at a break, or someone just decides to kick the tempo up a notch and we can follow because there's only, say, 5 of us. We can all play together, in time, and we can change things up as we like.
This doesn't work well for an orchestra, because there are too many people. If it's a clarinet solo, the clarinetist can kick the tempo up a notch. If you want to kick up a passage that's played by the entire string section, you're SOL.
Enter the conductor. The conductor is a facilitator for everything that is logistically difficult for a large ensemble to do. They don't even actually "make" the tempo slower, as playing under numerous guest conductors has shown. The conductor doesn't make any sounds, and if the orchestra doesn't like the conductor, they can completely ignore all the flailing about.
Instead, the conductor indicates to the entire ensemble that the tempo should slow down here, and by approximately how much. The ensemble then sees this and does it, all listening to each other to determine what it all means.
The conductor can also convey a sad or happy or goofy face. The kind that the clarinetist might make during a particularly nerdy bit of Reicha... the rest of the quintet can see the clarinetist cross his eyes if they're paying attention, but the rest of the orchestra can't. That's the conductor's job. Perhaps a good conductor will even see the clarinetist crossing his eyes, find it amusing, and pass that amusement on to the rest of the orchestra.
I think many of the problems in orchestras today come from conductors that consider themselves the focal point for everything in the orchestra, and that everyone should base everything they're doing on what s/he says. Insetad, the orchestra should be primarily listening to each other, with the conductor providing everything that is logistically very difficult for the orchestra to do otherwise.
So many conductors will insist that their orchestras play "with me." They expect performers to play their instruments to match a visual reference. The performers are apparently supposed to read the conductor's mind and be able to tell when the stick is going to hit, and ALSO have the same interpretation of when the stick hits as everyone else in the ensemble, despite great variances in visual acuity and attentiveness, all the while playing instruments with varying means of sound production that take different lengths of time to speak.
Matching a complex multi-part sound production apparatus to a vague unpredictable visual reference. Yeah, that'll work.
Our reflexes just aren't that fast, and we're not equally good at anticipating things.
Some of this can be alleviated, many groups find, by coming to an informal agreement of a delay after the conductor's baton. Conductor hits an ictus, approximately x 32nds later everyone plays.
However, what I think is REALLY happening when they do that is that the group finds other cues that are actually RELATED to sound production. Such as breathing. Breathing has a subtle audio component. If everyone breathes together, the point is not that they are all "doing something at the same time," but rather that it is a translation from a visual into an auditory reference. All of a sudden, everyone can play "with you" because they have a sound and a feel of when something is happening, rather than just a visual.
When a conductor claps time for an ensemble, the ensemble is usually suddenly very effective at playing in perfect time with each other, because it is infinitely easier to make a sound "with" another sound, rather than to make it "with" a visual. You have instant feedback on whether your sound was actually with the sound, whereas the only feedback you have on whether the sound is with a visual is an angry conductor.
This is why click tracks are so effective.
So, my theory...
All music is chamber music. All music should be played by listening to the other musicians, rather than looking at someone and attempting to translate an indefinite visual into a definite audio. Ideally, all music could be played without a conductor.
However, there are a lot of things to do with music that require some sort of visual or audio cuing. Perhaps we want to slow down here, or all get quieter, or pause a bit. In chamber music, we make eye contact, or decide on it at a break, or someone just decides to kick the tempo up a notch and we can follow because there's only, say, 5 of us. We can all play together, in time, and we can change things up as we like.
This doesn't work well for an orchestra, because there are too many people. If it's a clarinet solo, the clarinetist can kick the tempo up a notch. If you want to kick up a passage that's played by the entire string section, you're SOL.
Enter the conductor. The conductor is a facilitator for everything that is logistically difficult for a large ensemble to do. They don't even actually "make" the tempo slower, as playing under numerous guest conductors has shown. The conductor doesn't make any sounds, and if the orchestra doesn't like the conductor, they can completely ignore all the flailing about.
Instead, the conductor indicates to the entire ensemble that the tempo should slow down here, and by approximately how much. The ensemble then sees this and does it, all listening to each other to determine what it all means.
The conductor can also convey a sad or happy or goofy face. The kind that the clarinetist might make during a particularly nerdy bit of Reicha... the rest of the quintet can see the clarinetist cross his eyes if they're paying attention, but the rest of the orchestra can't. That's the conductor's job. Perhaps a good conductor will even see the clarinetist crossing his eyes, find it amusing, and pass that amusement on to the rest of the orchestra.
I think many of the problems in orchestras today come from conductors that consider themselves the focal point for everything in the orchestra, and that everyone should base everything they're doing on what s/he says. Insetad, the orchestra should be primarily listening to each other, with the conductor providing everything that is logistically very difficult for the orchestra to do otherwise.