Journal of the Conductors Guild

Special 35th Anniversary Retrospective Issue 1975-2010

Volume 30

7 1 9 Tw i n r i d g e L a n e R i c h m o n d , VA 2 3 2 3 5 - 5 2 7 0 T: (804) 553-1378; F: (804) 553-1876 E-mail: guild@conductorsguild.org publications@conductorsguild.org Website: www.conductorsguild.org

Officers
Michael Griffith, President James Allen Anderson, President-Elect Gordon J. Johnson, Vice-President John Farrer, Secretary Lawrence J. Fried, Treasurer Sandra Dackow, Past President

Advisory Council
Pierre Boulez Emily Freeman Brown Michael Charry Harold Farberman Adrian Gnam Samuel Jones Tonu Kalam Wes Kenney Daniel Lewis Larry Newland Harlan D. Parker Maurice Peress Donald Portnoy Barbara Schubert Gunther Schuller Leonard Slatkin

Thelma A. Robinson Award Recipients

Beatrice Jona Affron Eric Bell Miriam Burns Kevin Geraldi Carolyn Kuan Katherine Kilburn Octavio Ms-Arocas Laura Rexroth Annunziata Tomaro Steven Martyn Zike

Board of Directors
Ira Abrams Leonard Atherton Christopher Blair David Bowden John Boyd Jeffrey Carter Stephen Czarkowski Charles Dickerson III Kimo Furumoto Jonathan D. Green Earl Groner Claire Fox Hillard Paula K. Holcomb John Koshak Anthony LaGruth Peter Ettrup Larsen Brenda Lynne Leach David Leibowitz* Lucy Manning Michael Mishra John Gordon Ross Lyn Schenbeck Michael Shapiro Jonathan Sternberg* Kate Tamarkin Harold Weller Kenneth Woods Amanda Winger* Burton A. Zipser*
*ex officio

Journal of the Conductors Guild Editor

Jeffrey Carter

Max Rudolf Award Recipients

Herbert Blomstedt David M. Epstein Daniel Lewis Gustav Meier Otto-Werner Mueller Gunther Schuller Paul Vermel

Conductors Guild Staff

Executive Director Assistant Director Amanda Winger Scott Winger

Theodore Thomas Award Recipients

Claudio Abbado Maurice Abravanel Marin Alsop Leon Barzin Leonard Bernstein Pierre Boulez Frederick Fennell Margaret Hillis James Levine Kurt Masur Max Rudolf Robert Shaw Leonard Slatkin Esa-Pekka Salonen Sir Georg Solti Michael Tilson Thomas David Zinman

The publication date of the present issue of the Journal of the Conductors Guild is November, 2010. The Conductors Guild reserves the right to approve and edit all material submitted for publication. Publication of advertising is not necessarily an endorsement and the Conductors Guild reserves the right to refuse to print any advertisement. Library of Congress No. 82-644733. Copyright 2010 by Conductors Guild, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 0734-1032.

Table of Contents
The Conductor Gustav Mahler, A Psychological Study (JCG Volume 1, No. 3, 1975) by Dr. Ernst J. M. Lert Contemporary Mozart Performance: A Diverse Landscape (JCG Volume 2, No. 2, 1981) by Max Rudolf Rehearsal Efficiency and Score Analysis (JCG Volume 2, No. 3, 1981) by Alan Pearlmutter Schuberts Position in Viennese Musical Life (JCG Volume 3, No. 3, 1982) by Otto Biba Appropriate Brass Timbre: A Conductors Responsibility (JCG Volume 5, No. 1, 1984) by William E. Runyan The Rationalization of Symphony Orchestra Conductors Interpretive Styles (JCG Volume 11, No. 1&2, 1990) by Jack B. Kamerman Oral History, American Music (JCG Volume 11, No. 3&4, 1990) by Vivian Perlis Medicine in the Service of Music; Health and Injury on the Podium (JCG Volume 12, No. 1&2, 1992) by John J. Kella From Classroom to Podium: Teaching All of the Craft (JCG Volume 13, No. 2, 1992) by Jonathan D. Green Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Forgotten Giant (JCG Volume 15, No. 1, 1994) by William R. Trotter Are Our Audiences Skeered to Clap?: A Brief Survey of Applause Practices (JCG Volume 16, No. 2, 1995) by Robert Ricks Benjamin Brittens WAR REQUIEM: Notes on Conducting (JCG Volume 23, 2002) by Paul Vermel Toscanini and the Myth of Textual Fidelity (JCG Volume 24, 2003) by Linda B. Fairtile Conducting Cannot Be Taught (CCBT) (JCG Volume 27, 2008) by Harold Farberman page 1

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...Advancing the Art and Profession

Mission of the Conductors Guild

The Conductors Guild is dedicated to encouraging and promoting the highest standards in the art and profession of conducting.
The Conductors Guild is the only music service organization devoted exclusively to the advancement of the art of conducting and to serving the artistic and professional needs of conductors. The Guild is international in scope, with a membership of over 1,600 individual and institutional members representing all fifty states and more than forty countries, including conductors of major stature and international renown. Membership is open to all conductors and institutions involved with instrumental and/or vocal music, including symphony and chamber orchestra, opera, ballet/dance, chorus, musical theater, wind ensemble and band.

History of the Conductors Guild

The Conductors Guild was founded in 1975 at the San Diego Conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League, and it continued for a decade as a subsidiary of that organization. In 1985 the Guild became independent. Since then, it has expanded its services and solidified its role as a collective voice for conductors interests everywhere. It is supported by membership dues, grants, donations and program fees and is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit corporation.

Purposes of the Conductors Guild

1. To share and exchange relevant musical and professional information about the art of conducting orchestras, bands, choruses, opera, ballet, musical theater and other instrumental and vocal ensembles; 2. To support the development and training of conductors through workshops, seminars and symposia on the art of conducting, including, but not limited to, its history, development and current practice; 3. To publish periodicals, newsletters and other writings on the art, history and practice of the profession of conducting; 4. To enhance the professionalism of conductors by serving as a clearing house for knowledge and information regarding the art and practice of conducting; 5. To serve as an advocate for conductors throughout the world; 6. To support the artistic growth of orchestras, bands, choruses and other conducted ensembles; and 7. To communicate to the music community the views and opinions of the Guild.

The Conductor Gustav Mahler A Psychological Study

(JCG Volume 1, No. 3, 1980) By Dr. Ernst J. M. Lert
No attempt (as far as I know) has yet been made at a scientific analysis of orchestral conducting in the light of modern psychology. There are, to be sure, textbooks on conducting, but they teach only the technicalities of the profession. There are also histories of conducting, but they are, in the main, mere records of the development of those technicalities. As for the numerous biographies of outstanding conductorsthese are hardly more than fictional life stories, records of triumphs and struggles, eulogies of arraignments of the individual art of their subjects, achieved by citations from newspaper criticisms, edited and colored by the personal bias of the biographer. In short, there exists no scientifically reliable description of the artistic nature of the conductors work. Almost twenty years ago, in the course of a short biography, I tried to trace the development of a typical operatic conductor.1 This juvenile attempt, however, stopped at a point where the real task should have begun: the psychological analysis of conducting in general and of Lohses in particular. I shall now try to make up for that omission of long ago by analyzing Gustav Mahlers art of conducting. Some will ask, Why Gustav Mahler? Why not Toscanini or Stokowski? Gustav Mahler the conductor is unknown to the present generation, for he left no gramophone records of any of his interpretations, while Toscanini and Stokowski are still here to testify to the relative accuracy of any analysis of their conducting art. True; yet while Toscanini and Stokowski are with us, Mahler, the conductor, stands aloof in the distance, a safer historical subject, because he is free from the distortions of partisanship still inevitable with the other two. Besides, Mahlers published correspondence is a fund of evidence, a veritable revelation of his approach toward music. His compositions, his method of scoring are incontrovertible facts illuminating his mentality as conductor. Finally, and perhaps most important and intriguing of all, Mahlers career as a conductor reached its peak just when the European mentality was passing through the crises Victorian bourgeois-individualism and twentieth century mass-mindedness. Philosophically, Mahler was an idealist in the days when Schillers individualistic idealism was being supplanted by Hegels and his schools absolute idealism; that world outlook which later degenerated into a collectivistic dogmatism out of which, in turn, sprang all the pseudo-philosophic isms. Therefore, Spechts elaboration on the following anecdote is, at best, a sorry joke indeed. At the close of a concert featuring Mahlers Third Symphony, Richard Strauss, who had conducted, said jestingly, During the first movement I had a vision of interminable battalions of workers marching in the (socialistic) May-Parade at the Prater. Quite obtusely Specht adds, he is sure that Mahler, had he heard this Straussian bon-mot, would have exclaimed; Thats it! I didnt know it myself until this moment, but thats it! (Strange! Because the printed score of this first movement bears the programmatic title: Pan awakens, summer marches in.)

1 JCG Vol. 30

What a hopeless misconception on the part of Specht to imply that Mahler hijacked Marxist music from the Kurt Weills and Hanns Eislers before they were born. He has literally made Capital of the absolute. That Mahler the idealist should have portrayed in tone masses of proletarians marching for higher wages and shorter hours is simply unthinkable. Mahlers marches (like Beethovens) celebrate the progress of no man-made factors. In his music it is only the march itself that marches. To Mahler, whose entire boyhood was spent in the atmosphere of a military barracks, the march pulsation was a general human expression, to use his own favorite term, a sound of nature Naturlaut (Letters 215). It cannot be denied, he wrote, that our music involves the purely human (all that belongs to it, including thinking) (sic!)If we wish to make music, we must not think of painting, poetic imagery, description. By making music one expresses only the integral (i.e. the feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering) human being (Letters 277). To him music is beyond all that is matter-of-fact. The realm of music starts where the dark, shadowy feelings assume full sway, at the threshold of that other world, where things are no longer bounded by time and space (Letters 187). So thought the mind that called Schopenhauers explanation of music (as expressing the essence of all things) the best definition of music (Letters 126); the mind which contended that the musician lives inwardly (Letters 202) with little interest for and capacity of understanding the outside world. (Mahler unconsciously proved the truth of this when he travelled through Italy without visiting museums and cathedrals.) (Letters 482). A musician standing at the borderline between two civilizations, he is compelled to admit programmatic tendencies in modern music: There is no modern music since Beethoven which has not an inner program, says he (Letters 296), but proceeds at once to separate himself from the tone-painters and describers. You are right in saying that my music eventually arrives at a program as the ultimate revelation of a dominating conception, while with Richard Strauss such a

program is presented at the outset as a given task to be performedIn evolving a major musical conception I always come [to] the point where I have to reach for the word as the indispensable bearer of my musical ideas (Letters 228). This is a blank affirmation of Mahlers conception of music both as spiritual and rhetorical. According to him, music does not imitate, it tells; it evokes no reality, but expressing the world beyond our senses, only the idea of reality. Corroborating my description of a mystic2 the recent Mahler book by Bruno Walter tells us that his favorite readings were Lotzes Mikrokosmos, Fechners Zend Avesta and Nanna, oder das Seelenleben der Pflanzen, Eduard von Hartmanns Philosophy of the Unconscious, and the philosophical poems of the mystic Angelus Silesius: philosophers all, and, if not outspoken mystics, with a decided inclination toward mysticism. Mahler studied these authors to confirm his own painful experiences of the double personality of the limited man and the limitless artist. It is his rhetorical conception of music which makes him feel so close to Siegfried Lipiner, a Viennese dramatist. Lipiner treated great mythical subjects (Adam Hippolytos) as transcendental philosophies personified. His characters are not life-like individuals. They are impersonal megaphones declaiming high-sounding commonplaces, packing involved ideas into skeleton-formulas, much like Wagners philosophic libretto-slogans. Lipiner, also a case of borderline-crisis between Victorian Romanticism and modern mass-ideology, anticipated the manner of the collectivistic expressionists, while remaining philosophically the enlightened individualist. His practice, as dramatist, of expanding the individual to a universal symbol, brought him into close kinship with Mahler; his skeleton-language literally crying out for fulfillment through flesh and blood, or through music, was thoroughly Mahlerian. My dear Siegfried, Mahler wrote to him (Letters 283), You are really creating music. Nobody will ever understand you better than JCG Vol. 30 2

the musician, and I may add, particularly myself! Sometimes it strikes me as almost absurd how akin my own music is to yours. An important admission! Mahler confesses his rhetorical conception of music as an expression paralleling transcendental poetry achieved by simple, slogan-like formulas. In fact, for his texts Mahler not only used, but himself produced such poetry as evidenced both by his adoption of humble folklore verse from the Wunderhorn, and by the creation of such lines as his own (Vater, sich an die Wunden mein: Kein Wesen lass verloren seinLetters 161). In the Eighth Symphony his treatment of the mighty medieval hymn Veni Creator Spiritus and the transfiguration of this rhetorical conception on an exalted plane. Mahlers abstract idealism in life and music has been demonstrated. II But Mahler was attacked for his stark realism as conductor and composer, objects my honored opponent. The real mystic is the real realist, I answer with the New York lady of a former article of mine.3 Unfortunately the superficial textbook-andmagazine-philosophers fail to realize that the idea of reality includes reality as an object to be spiritualized, and this process of spiritualizing is a mental struggle of stirring passion. Mahlers despotism, his sudden angers, his terrible nervousness, his unbearable sarcasm, his fanatical insistence on the accurate execution of all his intentions, his (apparent) absentmindedness, his insatiable greed for correcting and improving, all these personal features of the musician, which so often contradicted the soft-hearted man, are but symptoms of his enforced struggle to project ephemeral reality into the timeless form of the idea. He himself relates the following significant instance: 3 JCG Vol. 30

Taking part in the funeral services for von Buelow he hears the chorus sing Auferstehen, ja auferstehen (Arise, yea, arise). These words move him profoundly; he has found the finale for his Second Symphony, that finale which expresses the resurrection of all flesh on Judgement Day. This personal experience at the obsequies of an acquaintance (von Bulow was nothing to Mahler) combines with his ever-present childhood impressions of marches and Military signals, and they become, through subtle alchemy, abstracted and magnified into Great Roll-Call and the tremendous Resurrection chorus of all humanity. As modern directors of Shakespearean plays, heedless of the clock of time, produce Julius Caesar in modern costumes and uniforms; as Connelly, in The Green Pastures, merely expressed the Bible in terms and characters of New Yorks Harlem of today, so Mahler, the first modern artist to conceive humanity as an army marching to its destiny, Resurrection, midst the fanfare of military trumpets, read into Beethovens Ninth the mass-minded orchestra message of spiritual propaganda for the super-national unification of humanity. Reality and ideology: is every fiber of his being the typical Austrian, he was a traditional individualist, yet he claimed New York, the world-core of modern standardized collectivism, as his spiritual homestead (Letters 393). Another proof of his spiritual world outlook is the almost complete absence of romance in his life. We know that many conductors virtually live on the sex-appeal they exercise on their audience and on the female singers. In Mahlers case we know of but one romance during his entire career as conductor prior to his marriage. That lone love incident occurred in his early twenties and so disrupted his inner life that he fought down and overcame the sensual impulses it evoked as though they had been his worst enemies. He married rather late to remain a one-woman man to the end of his life. Thus the boy who wanted to become a martyr lived up to his idealism until he died. As was his life so is his musicnever sensual, and even so was his conducting.

Beside that of other famous conductors, whose spiritual oscillates between their scores and friendly bridge, skat or tarok-tables, Mahlers education seems to have excelled by far the usual learning of professional musicians. Nevertheless he reveals himself exclusively the musician to the uttermost boundaries of his rather considerable learning. His letters show an almost complete lack of humor, much as the letters of Wagner (but unlike those of von Bulow or Reger). He expresses his thoughts by means of keen formulas tinged with sentiment and, often, with violent sarcasm. Whatever the subject of his commentary, he always returns to the two integral problems of his personality: the double life of the musician and the problem of expressing a given reality by music (program in absolute music). Yet he fails consistently to find any solution, or, at least, any new or convincing solution. Furthermore, his life and his letters betray the notoriously poor taste characteristic of musicians in all matters outside of music. He himself admits that the musician has no appreciation of the visible world. Strangely enough, even in the world of the audible, Mahler is not highly discriminating. It is very significant that he speaks of Halevys La Juive as a wonderful, sublime work; I number it among the loftiest ever created. III Although idealism is a permanent feature with Mahler, the expression of this Weltanschauung (world outlook) is anything but permanent. Like most idealistic artists he shows no striking, deviating development. Das Klagende Lied and Das Lied von der Erde are, from conception to orchestration, unmistakable expressions of the same mentality through the same style. Mahlers development is one of expansion, of increasing depth, refinement, and differentiation, without any accompanying material change or growth in his artistic personality. Beethoven started in the Haydn style, and Wagner in the Meyerbeer manner, but Mahler the composer started as Mahler.

So too was it with Mahler the conductor. His conception of the works he interpreted was the same, from Olmutz (1882) to New York (1907). It was not the matter, but only the manner of expressing them that changed as he matured. Mahler connoisseurs will shake their heads and point to Mahlers violent, often grotesque movements of the baton, hand, head, feet, body, and eyes during his early years, in contrast to his statuesque, almost affected-looking immobility towards the end of his career. It is true that Mahler (when I, as a little boy, saw him conduct at Vienna) made upon me the weird impression of a frenzied gnome. He frightened and fascinated me at the same time. Yet many years after, when he conducted the premier of his Sixth Symphony (perhaps the most typically Mahlerian of all his works) his statuesque immobility before the huge orchestra, even when it exploded into an indescribable turmoil of temperament and despair, created just the same uncanny impression, nay, an even more frightening one, because a single impulsive movement of his hand or head would have relieved the almost unbearable tension. That immobility of his was anything but calmness. Frau Mahler relates how at Essen, at the general-rehearsal of the same symphony, Mahler ran up and down in his dressing-room, irrepressible sobs literally bursting from his lips (Letters 13). That external change (his abandonment of the baton-waving manner) has no counterpart in any inner development. Mahler was at first little understood by the orchestra because he did not beat the trodden path of tradition. Any given aggregation of performers, prior to a proper grasp of his style, had to be trained to the intensity of polyphonic thought and expression which was Mahlers orchestral ideal. Mahler too had to find the proper technique for his new polyphonic method of handling an orchestra. Gradually the orchestras grew accustomed to this new style. Eventually he found that he could eliminate most motion as superfluous and concentrate on that subtle fluidum which establishes a deeper communion between leader and his men than any amount of waving and signaling. JCG Vol. 30 4

But Mahler did change continually! I hear many object. Why, he even changed his own works! Well let us see what Mahler had to say for himself on that score. He writes to Bruno Walter from New York, 1909 (Letters 417): Just as I want my scores edited anew every fifth year, so I require fresh preparation each time for conducting the scores of other composers. My only solace is that I REALLY NEVER HAD TO ABANDON MY WAY FOR A NEW ONE, BUT WAS ALWAYS IMPELLED TO CONTINUE ON ALONG THE OLD PATH. The changes he made never affected the meaning of a work, they served only to intensify, to clarify that meaning for the immediate environment by means of the particular group of players on a given occasion and in accordance with that relentlessly evolving spirit of change which we call the march of time. IV The essence of every re-production is exactness, Mahler used to say in his crisp, slogan-like manner, apparently contradicting another favorite expression of his: The best music is not written in the notes. Yet a reconciliation between these two apparently clashing ideas is not out of the question. A subtle, invisible band joins them inseparably. That uniting psychological force is the conception of the artwork by its conductor-interpreter. Since our understanding of the words or works of others depends entirely on the sum of our inborn individuality and our private fund of acquired experience, we cannot grasp their exact meaning. We can only understand them as our own mind receives them. This personally-tinged understanding of a thing is, in fact, our conception of it. Not only does our personal color qualify the view-point with which we regard a work, but so do impulsive changes we unconsciously inflict upon the original by our own individuality. To the interpreting artist the re-production of a work is correct, if all the written notes and marks of the author are reproduced literally. This process is, after 5 JCG Vol. 30

all, merely technical; and it can be, is being, and always has been done by every technical artisan, for He has the parts well in hand, But Alas, without the spiritual band. This spiritual band is the sole key to the meaning of the original, that best music [is] not written in the notes which even the utmost of sheer technical prowess cannot conjure forth in sound. This imponderable quintessence of an artwork achieves revelation through that power or mental assimilation possessed only by one able to switch off his own ego completely in order to merge it with the ego dominating the work itself. Furthermore, an intense power on this part of this new, assimilated self is required for the expression of this quintessence through the actual orchestral reproduction. The most amazing example of such genius and power in the world today is Arturo Toscanini. Yet Toscanini is a realist by nature, mentality, and education. His intuition functions exactly like that of a great scientist; his power of re-producing an artwork is the very instinctiveness of nature itself. In short, he possesses the extreme faculty of Einfuhlung, i.e., of so merging his own ego with the object of his attention that his own life becomes one with the life of that object. However, the madman who identifies himself with Napoleon, and Toscanini, who assimilates his spirit to Verdis Requiem so that Verdis own spirit seems to interpret his work, are certainly two opposite poles, although they revolve on the same axis. Though the power of such identification of work and interpret[ation] was not natural to Gustav Mahler, he often came quite close to it. He once wrote to Bruno Walter: In a word: one who does not have genius, should keep away from the work; but whoever has it neednt be afraid of anythingAny prattling back and forth about the matter strikes me as if one, who has made a baby, racks his brain afterwards over the question whether it is really a baby and whether it was produced with the right intentions, etc. The thing is simple. He just loved andcould. Period! And if one doesnt love and cant, why,

no baby comes of it. Period again. As one is and canso the child will be. Once again: Period! (Letters 277). V The idealist is by nature, a split-personality. Therefore, that happy fusion of work and interpretation, which is prerogative of the objective, naive, realistic artist Toscanini, was denied to Mahler the idealist.4 Mahler himself throws considerable light upon this matter in the following synthesis of cited extracts. What is it that thinks within us? And what is it that acts within us? (Letters 415). Why do I believe that I am free while I am imprisoned by the walls of my character as in a cell? (Walter, p. 90). I experience strange things with all of my works while conducting them. Wondering curiosity, as poignant as a burning sensation, takes hold of me. What is that world which mirrors such sounds and shapes? BUT ONLY WHILE I AM CONDUCTING! For afterwards, it is all extinguished suddenly; (otherwise, one could hardly resume living). This strange reality of visions, which suddenly melts away like the chimera of a dream, is the deepest cause of the split-life of an artist. Condemned to a twofold existence, woe to him if life and dream become confused. For then he must answer terribly for the laws of the one world in the other. (Letters 419). This discord between man and artist, this eternal struggle between reality and the idea of reality is the bitter legacy of transgressing idealism. Here is the key to Mahlers individual conception of music. Here is his contradictory position between a world which has been and a world to come. Here is the intuition which made his interpretation, even of the old classics, point to the future.

And not a happy future. He foresaw the breakdown of our civilizationthrough the all-toocomprehensive realization of absolute idealism; hence his fundamental sarcasm, perhaps the most striking feature of the man and the musician. Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is all this nothing but a gross, terrible JEST? We must solve these problems in some way, if we are to continue livingeven if we shall only continue dying. (Letters 189). Not only did this outlook on a world, present and future, express itself in his own music, but he also imposed it on whatever music he conducted. Its constant theme was the conflict between two worlds, a tragic struggle, in which triumph meant the attainment of the other world, where things are no longer bounded by time and space, in short, the world where the unio mystica is a fact. This is the goal toward which all his symphonies strive. No less appropriately, he might also be called the finale-conductor because everything he conducted was subjected to a dominating finale-concept. Everything else in the world itself was subordinated to that idea. Take his production of Mozarts Nozza di Figaro. Some great French bonmotier said of the play by Beaumarchais: Voila, cest la revolution qui marche. Mahler revealed in Mozarts opera buffa the bitter social arraignments of Schillers Kabale und Liebe. From the sarcastic, devilish hurry of the overture he continuously built up to the slow movement of the finale, where pure humanity opened yearning eyes for a moment only to be eclipsed again by the commonplace of the noisy stretta-finale, implying that the old order will go on and on. The central idea of rebellion was ever-present. All the sforzati, sudden ff and pp, all the apparently sweet melodies with their bitter underlying meaning, were aimed at that climax. Specht (p. 95), describing Mahlers reading of this work, only mentions how the little wedding-march seemed irritated by accents of stinging painfulness, played against the dark background of a silent crowd of people behind the iron garden-fence, While two big bowls of sinister red fire lit up the wedding-ceremony. Actually, Mahler JCG Vol. 30 6

even re-interpolated the original trial in court and composed biting secco-recitatives for it, to point out the modern revolutionary trend of Mozarts work. To him the demiourgos was in everything. Since he was convinced that the central-idea created the art-work according to an architectonical plan (blueprint), everything had to be subordinated to that idea. To Mahler there could be no independent episodes in an art-work. His was this fascist ideology half a century before Fascism; everything functions only as a cog in the machine of the art-works microcosm. His absolute unity of idea and execution, his despotic insistence on architectonic structure, his finale-conducting were but the natural consequences of the split-personality of the idealist striving and struggling for final amalgamation. The clash of reality and idea is the very core of dramatics. Mahler the musician dramatized everything he conducted. Yet the factors of his dramatizations were never personified. He never portrayed the struggle of petty humans, but only of ideas. Impersonal abstracts alone clashed in the world of his creation. VI What were the technical means employed by Mahler during a performance to transmit to an orchestra his complicated conception of a musical composition? Analyzing a conductors art from a technical viewpoint means testing it for the following: his sense of rhythm, his sense of tempo, his dynamics, his agogics, his reading of harmony and counterpoint, his treatment of orchestration. Rhythm is music in its most primitive state. When the impish, impious von Bulow, punning on the Bible and Goethe, exclaimed: In the beginning there was Rhythm, he unwittingly uttered a scientific truth, amply corroborated in our own day: viz., that the first musical expression of animal and 7 JCG Vol. 30

man is purely rhythmic. The drum is the earliest musical instrument; the dance is the very backbone of music. Rhythm retains its natural, pristine correctness so long as it is the pulse of music performed by a coordinated group of musicians. The moment an appointed leader superimposes his individual rhythmic conception upon the groups collective (almost instinctive) sense of rhythm, there arise discrepancies in the styles of performance. Rhythm now becomes a problem. As early as the Sixteenth Century critics protested against the arbitrary rhythmical movements of the conductors. The sense of rhythm is inborn. It may be subtilized, but it cannot be acquired. Toscanini brought a copy of his recording of Mozarts Symphony in D Major (K. 385) to Italy and played it for his colleagues. The first movement of the symphony finishes in the middle of a record, leaving no indication as to the exact moment the second section will begin. Involuntarily the Maestro, who had been beating the time during this record, with the close of the first movement, gave the up-beat for the second section on the very dot it actually began. This showed that for Toscanini the pause between the two movements had an exact rhythmical value. At a concert this pause cannot be observed faithfully because of the disturbing conditions in the reactions of the audience. In the enforced calm of the recording laboratory, however, it can be so observed. Originally measured before a living orchestra, this pause was reproduced in exact facsimile by the same conductor, although he now beat the time to a mere mechanical instrumentthe gramophone. Toscanini is, of course, an extreme example of rhythmical logic. Pauses emphasized by Fermatas, technical marks of prolongation, separate the fanfaresque chords which began the overture to The Magic Flute. When Mahler finished the first chord, the ensuing pause was so long that I looked up from my score to find out why the conductor did not continue. Just then he attacked the second chord. Now came a pause that

seemed still longer. When the third chord finally sounded the audience had grasped the idea Mahler wished to convey: the solemnity of the trumpet call. He was the herald whose pronouncement awaited the reaction of his listeners. Compose your thoughts for this message! Thus Mahler established the central-idea of the Realm of Saratro. When, after the fugue, the same three chords returned, Mahler made the pauses even longer than before. That was quite logical and natural; for the mind, having been swept along with the tide of the Allegro, was now in a turmoil and needed still more time to recompose itself. Out of this breathlessness the central-idea must emerge again, more impressive and clear than at first. Its solemnity must be revealed on a still higher level. A similar rhythmical presentation of an idea by Mahler during his early years (Leipzig) has been transmitted by Max Steinitzer (Stefan, pg. 43). It was something to remember, the way he took the first four measures of the great Leonore Overture [No. 3]. In the most simple manner each one of the descending octaves became a moment of increasing import for us, until finally the low F-sharp lay revealed in its majestic, calm immobility. These few instances (I could have cited many more) suffice to show how Mahler made rhythm a primary spiritual element of his interpretations. Rhythm to him was not the natural pulse-beat of a composition but rather the rhetorical accentuation of the evolving content of the work. His was a logical, perhaps a psychological, but certainly not an instinctive treatment of rhythm. Therefore the rhythmic element was a highly subtle matter for him. It would oscillate between rigid strictness and reckless daring. It was dominated by thematic considerations alone. Even beneath an apparent rigidity there was a world of almost imperceptible degrees of pulsation that was in open disagreement with the normal rhythmic beat of the music, sacrificing that to intensify the musics underlying spiritual content. He treated rhythm in the works of Wagner and Beethoven just as he did in his own symphonies: with freedom and flexibility, introducing startling

accents and irregular melodic scansions. In a word, Mahlers reading of rhythm was primarily rhetorical, not uniformly measured. He unhesitatingly disobeyed the letter of a score in this respect so that he might be more faithful to its spirit. VII Tempi! The first disputed and still debatable of all the characteristics of conducting. He takes all the tempi wrong! is the commonest criticism one conductor whispers to you about another, implying that the so-called right tempo is the sine qua non of all correct interpretation. When is the tempo right? The great Monteverdi, in the preface to his eighth book of Madrigals (1683) distinguishes between two different species of tempo; the tempo dello mano (of the hand) and the tempo dell affetto dell animo (affected by the mind). By this Delphic distinction Monteverdi means the tempo beaten by the hand of the conductor as opposed to that produced by the effect of the music upon the performers. To him the latter is the only right tempo, for he adds, somewhat maliciously, that it operates without anyone beating time, meaning that the right tempo does not need a conductor. Yet there can be no scientifically demonstrated right tempo just as there is no set, objectively correct interpretation. There is only a subjectively right tempo, i.e., the tempo which is right for one particular conductor. We have a very precise, scientifically accurate device for fixing the right tempo: Malzels metronome. It is over a hundred years old. It stands on every piano. Composers have used and still use it freely and frequently to indicate the exact tempo they want. However, musicians and especially conductors dont pay much attention to it. Even those who havent read Beethovens letters will cite Beethovens dictum on the metronome the moment JCG Vol. 30 8

you mention it to them: It (the metronome) is a stupidity; you must FEEL the tempi! Thats just what Monteverdi said in 1638-and what Sibelius said (to Rodzinski) in 1937. Yet subjective feeling is an unreliable means of achieving correctness of tempo, unless The late Max Smith devoted the last years of his life to a study of Toscaninis conducting-art. Smith assisted at all the Maestros rehearsals and performances and, stopwatch in hand, measured carefully the minutes, seconds, and split-seconds Toscanini required for performing certain compositions. He timed at least twenty different performances of the Eroica and of Debussys La Mer and found that Toscaninis readings of the same compositions on various occasions never differed in the slightest in this respect. The late Otto Lohse used to look at his watch before giving the first upbeat and after the last note of an opera-act. His various timings of the same act of an opera, including the first act of Gotterdammerung and the last act of Meistersinger, never varied more than a few seconds. Yet the majority of conductors, when sounded upon this very stability of tempo, will scornfully sweep the question aside, insisting that they are not metronomes, but free artists, conducting only according to the dictates of their heart and mood. Nevertheless it is just stability that sets off the creative artist (even as interpreter) from the arbitrary Gipsy. Toscanini illustrated this axiom once and for all when he said, I cant understand arbitrary changes in anything which is evident. If I study and restudy a work until I have attained a clear vision of it, then that vision becomes final. It cannot be altered thereafter. He meant that conception could never entertain any essential, organic changes, such as revisions in tempo. What IS the real essence of any art-work? It is its integrity crystallized in the unalterable impression: Thus it is; so it must be; it cannot be otherwise. One may not alter the smile of 9 JCG Vol. 30

Mona Lisa, nor the inscription on the door to Dantes Inferno, nor the prelude to Tristan und Isolde, nor for that matter, Toscaninis reading of Beethovens Pastorale. A work of art (and conducting also has to be such a work) is irrevocably fixed, if it is really a work of art. Though innumerable books, booklets, and articles have been written on Mahler, there never was, unfortunately, a Max Smith with his stopwatch to report whether Mahler subscribed to that rather amateurish notion of the artist being swept along by his momentary whims, or whether his tempi were as unchanging as his general conception of a composition; for the steady integrity of his tempi is the test of a conductors artistic integrity. We have only a few rather contradictory documents pertaining to this subject. There is, for instance, a mythical letter (unpublished and anonymous)5 supposedly written by a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra after Mahlers first performance of Lohengrin at the Vienna Hofoper. The writer asserts that he had played Lohengrin under Wagners own direction and claims that, since that time, Mahler was the first conductor with the right tempi. He stresses especially Mahlers conception of the prelude, which he took just as slowly as Wagner himself, and the prelude to the third act, which he lead in genuinely Furioso manner. In short, his conducting was Wagnerian, because Mahler knew how to modify the tempi to conform with Wagners intentions. If that letter is authentic it is a revelation. If it is apocryphal, i.e., trumped up to defend the conductor against the criticisms of the profession, it is still more eloquent, for then it proves that Mahler was inclined to slow up the slow tempi and speed up the swifter ones. A very primitive and crude statement, perhaps, but it hits the nail on the head. It implies that in order to bring out the central ideas as clearly as possible, Mahler accentuated every detail of contrast as sharply as possible, and especially contrasts of tempo. The Romantic tradition in music was all for the transitional evasion of violences; it doted on so-called medium-tempi and

standardized, unobtrusive contrasts. Into that atmosphere of old-time Viennese mellowness Mahler crashed like a bombshell. Even at Hamburg, some years before, when he took over some concerts for von Buelow (who was quite a violent dramatizer himself) the orchestra rebelled against Mahlers tempi (Letters 136) just as they rebelled anywhere against his scorn of the classical tradition (Letters 102), against his habit of acceleration (Letters 477). Furthermore, our letter implies that Mahler used to modify the tempo. That again (along with our disclosures concerning Mahlers rhythmics) means that he subordinated the tempo to the central idea of the composition. Thus, according to Steinitzer (Stefan p. 43), he began the terzetto of the dying Commendatore (in Don Giovanni) in a rather fast tempo, but immediately started to slow down very gradually and steadily, until the few bars of the postlude resulted in an Adagio of the most moving effect. I remember this gradually expiring music well, because it was the first time that an operatic death-scene did not make a ridiculous impression on me, for I really had the feeling of the inexorable (steadily retarding!) approach of Death. Steinitzer does not mention this effect was achieved in the first place by the reluctantly drumming monotony with which Leporello stammered his fast-beating counter-melody. We see by this little instance how the general idea, in this case the concept of the dying father, modified the interpretation. Mahlers modifications consist not only in the striking pp Steinitzer notes relative to beginning of the Allegro of the third Leonore, but also in the slow beginning of that movement and its subsequent acceleration. Here we have the finale-conductor again, introducing the spiritual significance of architecture into his interpretation. VIII His highly individual employment of dynamics was one of the features by which one could single out Mahlers conducting. An examination of the dynamics in Mahlers

orchestral works reveals most interesting data concerning the orchestral language in vogue during the period of transition from Romanticism (Wagner, Strauss) to modern realism and expressionism (Alban Berg, Stravinsky). Such a study, moreover, throws particular light on Mahlers style as a conductor. Mahler was so sensitive that he himself rehearsed Le Nozze di Figaro (one of his most carefully prepared standard performances at the Vienna Hofoper) with orchestra and complete stage personnel throughout six successive general rehearsals when he brought that production to Salzburg. And why? Only because he wished to accommodate the opera perfectly to the acoustics of the Salzburg theatre. The conductors (Mahlers) treatment of dynamics was also subordinated to the demands of rhetoric. In Mahlers time the outstanding style of dramatic interpretation on the legitimate stage was that for which Max Reinhardt (inspired by Stanislawskis Russian Art Theatre) was held responsible. It consisted in a rather fervid naturalism expressed through exaggerated declamation, exploiting all the possibilities of dynamics, from the hushed whisper to the stentorian shout in opposition to the pleasant transitions favored by tradition. The audience was to be taken by surprise. It was not characters, part of real, unobtrusive Nature, who acted the drama, but mere ideas personified, overstated by actors who were forced to be symbols. As Mahler puts it (Letters 281) all that is material must be dissolved into form; a higher realm of phenomena where types are individualities. It is in keeping with such principals that Mahler reproaches the singer cast as Ortrud (Lohengrin) for having been too loud during her first scene with Elsa. That was not the right tone for the hypo-critical Ortrud with her mysterious behavior, her assumed meekness (Letters 155). It made no difference to Mahler that Elsa would see through Ortruds too obvious distimulation. What mattered to him was that Ortrud be established as a regular JCG Vol. 30 10

villainess regardless of logic and psychology. (Logic and psychology were, and still are, despised by the idealists of expressionism.) I remember that scene very well; it was my first Lohengrin. In order to stress his idea of an innocent, sweet Elsa as contrasted with a saccharine, yet dangerous Ortrud, Mahler exaggerated all the musical marks Wagner wrote into this scene, the little cresc and dim, the sudden sfz and pp. Thus he created a magnificent suspense; he led up to the outburst Entweihte Gotter in a way that caused the audience to applaud that invocation, if only to relieve its own tension; then he literally drenched the following scene, Ortruds poisoning of Elsas confidence, with the colors of a thrilling mystery-play. I could not help the feeling of overemphasis, unnatural declamation, cheap obviousness. Lohengrin, which (musically and dramatically) borders perilously on bad taste, attained with Mahler a strange flavor of artistic perfection through ham-acting singers and a ham-declaiming orchestra. He engineered the dreamy prelude, from the pppp, (not the original pp) up to the ff of the brasses, instead of portraying the climax of an organic growth (usually one of Mahlers strong points) exploded like a sudden onslaught of blunt reality. Speidel, Viennas most renowned dramatic critic, described this effect as magical (Zauberhaft), while I remember only a harsh awakening from a dream. Yet the Wagnerian idea, the program, was carried out; the Holy Grail descended to Earth, to be sure, but in this case it reached Earth with a crash. What was Mahlers reason? At the very end of the opera one knew it. There the motif returned again, austerely elevated, fff instead of the original f. The outburst in the prelude had been but a foreboding of this final touch. The effect was striking, a real delight to every intelligent theatergoer. However, in the theatre and in the concert hall I dont want to be intelligent. Mahler doted on dynamic contrasts. That anecdote concerning the premier of his First Symphony is significant of Mahlers sudden dynamic assaults.6 He loved the drastic treatment of the orchestra, (Stefan, p. 65), claiming that Beethoven favored it. 11 JCG Vol. 30

When he edited Beethovens Ninth, he intensified the markings, freely reinforcing or muting sound effects. In fact, such was his general practice. One of his instructions given to the conductor of his Second Symphony portrays, perhaps better than anything else, the theatrical nature of Mahlers dynamics. He writes (Letters 316): The audience is raised to the highest tension by the fanfares of the trumpets; now the mystical sound of the human voices (which may enter ppp, as if out of the remote distance) must come as a surprise. I suggest that the chorus (which has been seated until this point) remain seated, and rise only with the E-flat major Mit Flugeln, die ich mir errungen. I have found this to be an infallibly astonishing effect. IX By the term agogics we mean not only the process and the result of modifying strict tempo to bring out the full expression of a phrase (tempo rubato) (Pratt). We include within the limits of that term also any details of execution pertaining to the expressiveness of an interpretation. In this connection the conductor-composer speaks best for himself in a letter full of good advice to a beginner in composition (Letters 191): You are still too intent on sound and color! That is a defect of all talented beginners doing creative work today. I know of a similar stage of my own developmentMood-music (Stimmungsmusik) is a dangerous foundation (Boden). Take my advice, for these things are no different than they were. Aim at THEMES clear and plastic, which may be readily recognized in any transformation or development whatever; next, at abundant variety, heightened by the clear contrasting of opposing themes, but above all, rendered interesting by the unfailingly logical development of the central-idea. With you all this still seems confused. Furthermore: you must get rid of the pianist in you! Yours is not a setting for orchestra, but one conceived for the piano, and then somehow translated into the orchestral language.

I too suffered from the same trouble. Today we all originate from the piano, while the old masters came from the violin and from singing. You see? Sound and color are not Mahlers primary concern. He finds the expression of moods dangerous. Plasticity (which means distinctness) and the logical development of the central-idea are his leading principals. Therefore you will find no sweet sentimentality in Mahlers interpretation. The soulful vibrato, the sensual devices are alien to his ascetic intellectuality. He prefers to oppose phrases of genuine contrast against each other. He does not want the orchestral score approached from the pianists viewpoint, for he regards pianistic phrasing (especially that instruments wealth of rubati and grupetti) as anti-logical, knowing it to spring from the chordal nature of the piano, a basic trait at variance with the melodic, singing quality of the orchestra. Mahler would say to his orchestra: I breathe every breath with you. (Letters 156) In other words he formulated even the small details of agogical expression in the rhetorical way, ever intent on the content of the single phrase, the meaning, to which the sound and color were to be subordinated. X He was a linear musician, one who reads the orchestral score horizontally, perceiving melodies, as opposed to one who reads vertically, concentrating on the harmonies. There is no harmony; there is only counterpoint is an utterance legend ascribes to him (Stefan, p. 94). He proved this principal when he was a youngster, when he arranged Bruckners Third Symphony for piano for four hands. He followed the orchestral score faithfully, striving particularly hard to render the single voices in the characteristic range of the instruments, even though such practice sacrificed facile and convenient rendering on the piano (Stefan, p. 29). Mahler experienced music thematically, not

harmonically. To him accompaniment did not exist. Every part of the orchestra expresses itself independently. It was Mahler who first showed that even second violins of Verdi were not monotonous fillers-in, giving them thought, life, and importance of their own. If Mozart is called the savior of the woodwinds (especially of the clarinet), Mahler justly may be called the savior of the middle voices (the filling-in parts) of the orchestra. His jest on his own style of composing also applies to his style of conducting when he quotes an imaginary critic and writes: My musicians play without paying the slightest attention to each other and my chaotic and bestial nature reveals itself in all its vile nakedness. (Letters 220). Listening to Mahlers music today we regard it as comparatively tame and harmonious. Yet in his own interpretation it sounded anything but simple. Similarly he made Beethoven and Wagner anything but the mellow classics they had seemed before him. We must remember that Schoenberg and his school were born out of the performances of Tristan und Isolde conducted by Mahler, for his Tristan often sounded like that modern atonality it actually created. Mahlers daring in leading of discordant parts against each other, regardless of traditional harmonic and esthetic tenets, created the revolution we call modern music. The central idea, Day vs. Night, manifested itself by clash and discord, even during moments of the most peaceful transfiguration. Only the design counted, never the color. Today Mahlers polyphonic conducting does not appear revolutionary at all since almost every conductor born east of Munich calls himself a pupil of Mahler, though he never gave a single lesson in conducting during his entire career. Result: the orchestras execute faithfully the most extravagant stupidities of their conductors. The Vienna Philharmonic of 1900 was a band calculated to inspire fear in a conductor. Suppose I did come to Vienna, wrote Mahler (Letters 102). What tortures would I have to undergo there with my manner of handling things musical? If I were only to attempt teaching my conception of a Beethoven Symphony to the famous Richter-trained JCG Vol. 30 12

Philharmonicum I would at once find myself in the midst of the most disgusting squabbles. That was my experience even here (at Hamburg), though, thanks to the support of Brahms and Buelow, I occupy here a position of unquestioned authority. XI Mahler was the father of that huge orchestra of our period of mass-minded superlatives that has to be furnished every conductor who has even a modicum of self-esteem. They cant perform with less than the now accepted 20-20-16-10-10 proportion of strings. Mahler transplanted his own magnified orchestral conception of the classics, particularly to Beethoven. He explained his principal notions of orchestral treatment when he justified his retouching of Beethovens Ninth. In an announcement to the public he said:
The unsatisfactory condition of the brass instruments at that time [Beethoven] rendered impracticable certain sequences of sound necessary to the undisturbed maintenance of the melodic line. It was that defect which gradually brought about the perfection of those instruments. Failure to utilize these improvements in order to achieve as fine a performance of Beethovens works as possible would be a crime. The ancient device of multiplying (Verfielfachung) the string instruments eventually resulted in a corresponding increase of the wind instruments in order to attain a balancing reinforcement of certain parts without the slightest emendation of the orchestral voices. It can be demonstrated by means of the orchestral scorethat the conductor was concerned only with following Beethovens intentions to the smallest detail. Though he refused to be hampered by tradition in this regard, he wished neither to sacrifice the slightest intention of the master nor to permit such an intention to be lost in an overwhelming concordance of sounds (Stefan, p. 66).

harmony, but in counterpoint. Therefore in his edition of Beethovens Ninth, to balance the preponderance of the strings, he doubled the woodwinds, he added a third and fourth pair of French horns, and in the last movement a third and fourth trumpet. In 1900 such an innovation was attacked as sacrilege; today it is a common practice. Mahler dethroned the first violins from their ancient absolute sovereignty over the orchestra. The hitherto apathetic state of the second violins and violas was elevated to one of equality with the first violins and cellos respectively. The ascetic Mahler did away with the constant, sweet vibratos, with the sensuality and pompous glamour of the string section. The Vienna Philharmonic, glorying in the popularity of their emotional soarings, the sensuous, almost Gipsy-like sobbing of their strings, resented being banished from the golden Viennese heart to the limbo of the Mahlerian transcendent brain, but the rich Schmaltz they lost was amply compensated by a proportionate gain in deliberate, impressive delivery. Never before and never since Mahler did they play the prelude to Lohengrin, the Adagio of Beethovens Ninth, the transfiguration music of Bruckners Fifth with such unearthly, breathtaking spirituality. Mahler wanted singing passages in the strings played with the whole length of the bow, to contrast them with the short figures gasped at the frog or tittered at the point. He reveled in the higher positions of the violin G and D strings without indulging in the sentimentality natural to such fingerings. His secco of short, hard chords played by the whole section had the reckless, despotic dryness of a volley of gunfire; his tremolo was insidious rather than weird, for it sounded completely dematerialized. In general (if I may be permitted the comparison) Mahlers treatment of the string section had something of the intellectual style, the severe chastity of the Busch Quartets playing today; not much sex-appeal, but lots of logic. It was through Mahler that the woodwind section attained the importance it enjoys in all good orchestras today. He tempered the different colors of the various instruments to organ-like equality. When (especially in his beloved Beethoven) the different

By concordance of sounds Mahler meant the result of the traditional practice of conducting Beethoven from the melodic-harmonic viewpoint, for he knew Beethoven as one who created not in 13 JCG Vol. 30

woodwinds alternated concertante, you never felt a break in color unless it was intentionally so marked, to achieve contrast. He even trained the single instruments to make imperceptible transitions from one position to the other. On the other hand, he exaggerated the tonal differences between those positions, if the dramatic expression so required. He made the naturally dark low register of the flute or clarinet sound almost black and urged the high register to shrillness. (Note the vulgar use of the C and the higher E-flat clarinets in his own symphonies.) Often in unison of strings and winds (flutes with violins or cellos and double basses with bassoons) he forced the weaker winds to dominate the strings, even by doubling the winds, if necessary. Mahlers pet hobbies in the orchestra, however, were the brasses and percussion. (He grew up near the military barracks in Moravia.) The French horns, the group which tradition made transitional from the woodwinds to the brasses, were (strange enough for a basically Romantic musician) the most indifferent group to Mahler.7 I cant remember any particular feature of his treatment to them. The trumpets and trombones, especially the trumpets, were his chief concern. These are the instruments most often mentioned in his letters. What he denied to his strings, he gave to his trumpets: sensuality, sweetness, even sexuality. This is one of the ironical twists in his musical nature. His exultant, solo-like projection of the climactic trumpet passage in the second Finale of Aida still rings in my memory. It yelled like a joyous animal while violins sounded restrained. The disciple of the wonderful Austrian military bands became a master in blending the brasses. They also were never mere accompaniment, padding of the highlights of a composition. Theirs were dramatic functions throughout. Somehow I always had the impression, when Mahler made the brasses enter, that they seemed to be already playing though they were certainly silent until that moment; or, with typically Mahlerian contrast, they came in as a sudden surprise. To them too he gave what he denied to the

strings; sensuality, even a certain vibrato to the trombones and particularly to the Bayreuth Tubas, whenever they sobbed out their theme. Again, for contrasts sake, he had a certain way of getting a secco from his trombones that made you shiver: that hard, short sfz, almost like barking. He featured short but violent crescendo exaggerating them as in roaring glissandi (e.g., in the prelude to The Flying Dutchman). He blended woodwinds and brasses to a unity of sound never realized before. It is in no idle praise of his conducting to assert that even specialists could not differentiate between woodwinds and brasses in the offstage passages of the cemetery scene in Don Giovanni. His percussion-battery shows equally the influence of his military boyhood surroundings. All his symphonies employ a large battery, culminating in the Sixth, where he used an especially constructed gigantic drum (an entire bullhide stretched over a huge square sounding-board, beaten by a gigantic wooden hammer). This instrument really sounded like fate pounding at the door, a programmatic nuance which Beethoven had been content to express with a modest kettledrum. Mahlers percussion declaimed heavily. Glitter and despair, roughness and delicacy, literally ran amok in his percussion. He showed a marked difference in his handling of timpani and bassdrums, piatti, and tam-tam. Their rhythm was always dominating; the entrance of the battery had somewhat the effect of outstanding solo-work. XII The conductor Mahler, consistent idealist by temperament and mentality, built up his re-productions (interpretations) on a rhetorical development of the central-ideal of a work to its final climax and exit (the finale conductor). All tectonic features (rhythm, tempo, dynamics, agogics, polyphony, orchestration) were subordinated to the architectonic structure and had no independent significance. Mahlers rhythms were rhetorically accentuated, his tempi dramatically modified, his dynamics and agogics histrionically declaimed, his reading multi-voiced, contrapuntal JCG Vol. 30 14

rather than harmonic, his emphasis one of design rather than color, in short, interpretations which individualized the orchestral parts, making them carriers of integral, yet interdependent ideas. The net result of such conducting was an unabashed intellectualism8 vehemently presented, almost placarded, by clairvoyant brainwaves. Beethovens dictum, Music must beat fire from a mans mind, is often quoted, seldom felt, and rarely grasped in its ultimate meaning. Yet it was fully realized by Mahler the conductor. With the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler performed seventy-seven concert works. Twentyfive of them were by Beethoven.
*****

Mahler have we biographical works which can be compared with Wyczewa and Saint Foix on Mozart or with Kurth on Bruckner. The Stefans, Spechts, etc., are fanatical fighters against anybody who dares the slightest criticism of their idols, but they themselves do nothing of real importance to explain these idols. 6 At the attacca introducing the last movement, a dignified lady, shocked by the violence of the attack, dropped her handbag, spilling its contents on the floor. (Letters 477). 7 EDITORS NOTE The horn (in the treatment of which authorities agree Mahler was one of the greatest masters of all time) had never so important a role. To the noble level of expressiveness it had attained in Bruckners hands Mahler added a new power, enabling it by means of dying echoes to carry smoothly an idea already exploited into a changed musical atmosphere. Sometimes a solo horn would issue with overwhelming effect from a whole chorus of horns among which it had been concealed, or singing in its deepest tones it would lend a passage the air of tragic gloom. In Mahlers resourceful use of the horn every register seemed possessed of a different psychological significance. Gabriel Engel, Gustav Mahler Song Symphonist. 8 In our times of rugged collectivism and instinctivism, the nomenclature intellectual is regarded as an insult equaled only by that of individualist. Therefore, we must bear in mind that in Mahlers time brains and personality were the most honored property of man.

Ernst Joseph Maria Lert (1883, Vienna 1955, New York City)was an Austrian composer, librettist, stage director, writer, and music historian. The preceding article is reprinted by permission of the Bruckner Society. It originally appeared in Chord and Discord, January 1938, Volume I number 9, pages 10 through 28. ENDNOTES
1 Otto Lohse ein Duetscher Kapellmeister (Leipzig, Breitkopf und Haertel, 1918). 2 Chord and Discord, December 1936. 3 Ibid. 4 Notwithstanding the great progress of modern psychology, the best psychological explanation of the difference between the realistic and idealistic artist is still Schillers study, On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. 5 It seems to be the common fate of the great revolutionary musicians to find biographers who overflow with praise and orthodox zeal, but who lack reliability, scientific seriousness, and sincerity of research. Neither of Richard Wagner nor of

REFERENCES
Gustav Mahler Briefe Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Wien 1924. Gustav Mahler Paul Stefan R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich 1920. Gustav Mahler Richard Specht Duetsche Verlags Anstalt, Stuttgart-Berlin 1925. Gustav Mahler Bruno Walter Wien 1937 Herbert Reichner Verlag. Note: Numerals after the word Letters in this article refer to pages in Gustav Mahler Briefe, copyright by Paul Zsolnay Verlag.

15 JCG Vol. 30

Contemporary Mozart Performance: A Diverse Landscape

(JCG Volume 2, No. 2, 1981) By Max Rudolf
Are there guidelines for the performance of Mozarts works? If we look for readily applicable universal rules, accepted and practiced by a majority of performers and teachers, the response would have to be negative. If, however, we conduct a survey of present usage which compares selected readings of Mozarts works, live or recorded, two lists would be created. The first would include characteristics that most of the readings have in common. The second would be a list of the divergent or non-conformant practices. The degree to which the divergent practices outnumber the similarities would certainly fluctuate from one work to another. Whatever the ratio, the lack of unanimity as regards tempo, expression and other details of interpretation, is a recognized and accepted fact. Some listeners welcome the diversity. Others, partial to a favorite artist whom they regard as a master of the Mozart style, are blithely unconcerned about other Mozart admirers who may confer the same honor upon a performer with totally divergent ideas. Obviously, observations based on comparisons do not proffer guidelines. Rather, they act as a guide to the available choices which are derived from prevailing performance practices, individual taste, or force of habit. In order to separate transitory musical customs from a composer oriented evaluation, musicians, when searching for the Mozart style, ought to seek out tangible criteria, such as the manner in which a composition was conceived, notated, and meant to be performed. This should be done in the light of what one might call Mozarts workshop. In order to gain insight into his workshop, thorough knowledge of a score is not sufficient. Each single composition must be viewed as part of Mozarts total creative effort. Moreover, we must attempt, through the use of biographical data and other pertinent sources, to formulate a living picture of his personality as an artist and human being, as well as of his musical habits, aspirations and tastes. To quote Goethes simple mandate: Whoever wants to understand the poet must go in the poets land. A discussion of this type often raises more questions than it can possibly answer. For example, is information available which could inform us as to how Mozart conceived, notated, and performed his music? Did he expect performers to comply with his own interpretations? Is it possible, under present conditions, to strive for authenticity by emulating performance practices which have evolved over nearly two centuries? If so, is it desirable? Finally, how do we explain the diversity of approach to Mozart among prominent musicians? Limited space permits only brief answers. We do not always know how Mozart conceived a work. In a number of cases, a comprehensive study of his letters and contemporary reports allows for acceptable conclusions, yet more frequently much is left to the educated guess. Specific data should always therefore be of special interest. One wonders, then, why Mozarts own German translation of two scenes in Don Giovanni (to which he added colorful stage directions that well illustrate his ideas) has gone virtually unnoticed. In the recent past the accuracy of Mozarts musical notation has been ascertained through autographs and other important JCG Vol. 30 16

sources. Although we had long suffered from unreliable editions, since about 1950 most of the composers output has been made available in well-researched volumes. They should be consulted. If a performer fails to do so, he will probably continue playing (or singing) incorrect notes, distorted rhythms, modernized phrasing, and be mislead by faulty tempo indications. It is indeed hard to believe that works such as Mozarts Haffner Symphony are still being performed from bowdlerized scores. For the performance of orchestral and ensemble music, Mozart generally expected the players to adhere to the written text. Solo performers, however, whether in arias, sonatas, or concertos, were allowed to alter the melodic line by adding ornaments, changing the rhythm, and inventing variations. For musicians who accept the sanctity of the written note virtually as an act of faith, it seems almost incredible that Mozart not only permitted, but expected, tampering with his music. It is interesting to note that Mozarts ideas on this subject were diametrically opposite to those of his older confrere Gluck, who rejected the time-honored practice. Mozart believed that the ability to add embellishments was an essential part of music education (contradicting the everything-is-in-thescore theory cherished by some famous 20th century musicians). However, textbooks of the day contained the following caveat: performers who lack a thorough training in composition and have not acquired a refined taste should keep their hands off! On one point Mozart was extremely strict: the choice of tempo. In his words, tempo was The most necessary, the most difficult, and the most important thing in music... This attitude is readily understandable, since the pacing of a composition determines its intrinsic character. Consequently, Mozart devoted considerable care to marking the speed. In his manuscripts he would cross out one indication only to replace it by another, more appropriate, tempo marking. He went so far as to eliminate the word cantabile in an Andante cantabile to prevent too slow a pace. It is only by acquiring such special knowledge, that 17 JCG Vol. 30

performers can hope to understand the composers ideas. Since Mozarts days drastic changes have taken place in musical performance. Not only the pitch, but also the sound quality and mechanics of all our instruments, have been substantially altered. Even more importantly, musical habits, tastes, and modes of expressions change continually. Although directions as to how to read behind the notes were well explained in books of the time, Mozart performances have steadily yielded to performance devices typical of the Romantic era. To assume that the great master would have welcomed all these changes would be a rather tenuous speculation. Those who disapprove of efforts to revive former performance practices point to the impossibility of restoring the physical and mental environment which is inseparable from each eras artistic creations. They also direct our attention to changes in the publics receptivity. Modern man, they say, lives and feels differently. Therefore, new approaches are needed to infuse life into musical masterworks of the past, even if this practice causes a disregard of former concepts of sound, phrasing and emotional expression. Trusting their intuition and the feeling for style (based perhaps on recent traditions rather than on factual knowledge) they remain convinced that they are serving the great masters of music in the best possible way. Those taking an opposite position claim to serve a master like Mozart better by trying to stay close to his own intentions. They also insist that art created in former days should be understood and enjoyed with the help of an imagination that leads the listener back to the spirit of an era, to the driving force that produced its works of art. Although aware of the inherent limitations of their efforts, they advocate a quest for authenticity, an attitude reflected in the words of Henry James: Admitting that ultimate truth is unobtainable is one thing, another is trying to avoid errors. These differences in attitude are not related to musical questions alone. They reflect divergent

views on the theory and philosophy of art. Where does this leave the performer? Stravinsky, in his Poetics of Music, dealt at length with the problem. He spoke of the loving care to which performers should be committed. Genuine love for a composer, just as for any love object, must contain an overt demonstration of intellectual curiosity which is, for such a project, the sine qua non! Stravinsky also maintained that, while every musical performance is unavoidably a sort of translation, performers had to make sure that the original would not, gradually, over a period of time and unnoticed by the public, take on the character of a free arrangement. ***** Max Rudolf (June 15, 1902 February 28, 1995) was a German conductor who spent most of his career in the United States. Rudolf was born in Frankfurt am Main where he studied cello, piano, organ, trumpet, and composition (with Bernhard Sekles) at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt.[1] He held positions in Freiburg, Darmstadt, and Prague, before moving to the United States in 1940. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen. He served on the conducting staff of the Metropolitan Opera between 1946 and 1958, when he became music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for 13 years. During this period he became a noted orchestra builder and teacher, serving on the staff of the Tanglewood Institute. He wrote The Grammar of Conducting, the most widely used text for orchestral conducting. First appearing in 1950, it was republished with significant revisions in 1980 and again in 1995. After his tenure in Cincinnati, he served as conductor of the Dallas Symphony for a season (1973-74), artistic advisor of the New Jersey Symphony (1976-77), as well as regular engagements with major American orchestras and opera houses. In between this time, he was head of the opera and conducting department at the Curtis Institute of Music (1970-73 and 1983-89), which is perhaps what he is best remembered for, since many of the leading conductors of this day studied under him.

JCG Vol. 30 18

Rehearsal Efficiency and Score Analysis

(JCG Volume 2, No. 3, 1981) By Alan Pearlmutter

The primary consideration is not who needs a rehearsal but what use is being made of it. Indeed, the fact that the conductor, while working with the orchestra, still has to decide on details of interpretation which are of vital importance to the performance, should contribute to making a rehearsal an exciting experience. It is the happy combination of objectivity and initiative, rationalization and feeling, discernment and intuition that, in addition to technical ability, is the decisive factor in leading a successful rehearsal.1

length of time that brasses and woodwinds have been idle. This sense can be developed through experience and will be enhanced if the conductor himself has spent time playing in orchestras. Additional efficiency can be gained by planning what and how to rehearse. This assumes that the orchestra has already read the composition and is also dependent upon factors such as the level of the players, the feasibility of holding a sectional rehearsal, and the technical demands of the composition being rehearsed. In general, it is advisable to decide what to rehearse in advance of the rehearsal, depending upon the results of the previous reading. Of course, the crux of a rehearsal is impromptu decision-making, totally dependent upon the sounds emanating from the rehearsal. Maximum rehearsal efficiency will be achieved with a proper balance between pre-rehearsal planning and appropriate extemporaneous decisions during its course. Aside from the aforementioned organizational considerations, a significant factor that will develop maximum interest and efficiency is theoretical, relevant primarily to nonprofessional orchestras. Working with students or community musicians can be a very inspiring experience, since it provides the conductor with an opportunity to familiarize his players with the structure of a composition. For example, fugal passages help players understand the melodic development of the composition. Often, rehearsal of a section for one orchestral group is relevant to other groups. Educating our players does not entail superfluous verbal commentary.

Whether we are directing professional musicians or young students, successful communication with players depends upon the successful rehearsal. Discipline problems encountered during rehearsal result from boredom, a symptom of inefficient rehearsal technique. The best way to develop fluency in rehearsals is to consider the needs of the orchestral player. For example, every player wants to read clearly marked parts. Thus, before the first rehearsal of a composition, the conductor is responsible for making clear markings on all parts, including dynamics, bowings, and fast page turns. A great deal of rehearsal time will be gained if parts are clearly marked to begin with. Considering the needs of the player means taking into account the amount of time a section of the orchestra has been idle. Granted, it is sometimes difficult to negotiate string and woodwind rehearsal time, especially if difficult string passages need considerable practice. Nevertheless, a conductor needs to develop an inner sense for knowing the 19 JCG Vol. 30

It involves utilizing the rehearsal in such a way as to interest all players, even if they are not participants at a given moment. Smetanas Bartered Bride Overture provides an interesting study with regard to structural techniques and how they can be used to optimize rehearsal efficiency. Early in the overture is a fugue for strings, which is begun at m.8 tutti, and is continued with the second violins at m.14. At m.31, first violins enter. Violas and outside celli state the theme at m.52. Inside celli and basses enter with the fugal theme at m.73. The head motive for the fugue is quoted in Example 1. In rehearsing this entire fugal section, the conductor might consider using the second violins as a model for the other string sections. The five bar head motive needs to be played fortissimo, with accents as written, followed by a subito piano. The piano (or pianissimo) dynamic must continue throughout, even after the next fugal entrance. Each section of the strings should be rehearsed in this fashion, with the second violins having provided the example. Efficiency is gained during the rehearsal if the conductor insists that the strings listen to the second violins in the first place, in order to gain a proper concept of dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. Utilizing rehearsal time in this manner will help develop string ensemble, and will add needed interest to the many repeated scales that are being performed. The entire string fugue should be performed after each string section has been given the opportunity to practice the head motive. Sequences can provide an orchestra with insight into compositional structure, and can serve to minimize monotony, if rehearsed properly. At m.128, a four bar pattern begins, which is repeated three additional times, in keys which are a minor third higher than the preceding key. Thus the cycle of keys are C Major, E-Flat Major, G-Flat Major, A Major, and C Major.2 These four four-bar phrases must be performed and rehearsed at four different dynamic levels: pp, p, mf, and f. During rehearsal, the orchestra must be advised to make a gradual crescendo, so that a true fortissimo is reached at

m.144, and not sooner. The orchestra needs to be made aware of this sequential structure. Moreover, the fourth bar of each phrase must have hairpins, without exaggerating the dynamic of the following sequential phrase. It is extremely difficult to maintain a gradual crescendo throughout the entire 16 bars, particularly when the final bar of each phrase contains an expressive swell. Rehearsal of this 16-bar section based on the preceding theoretical knowledge will enlighten the orchestra and encourage a willingness to perform what is indicated in the score. Another interesting sequence begins at m.237. A structure of six six-bar phrases includes motivic counterpoint on offbeats. It is a fugal sequence beginning with viola and bassoon. This entire 35-bar passage must emphasize the fugal entrances, and the syncopated motivic imitation. In order to successfully negotiate thematic balance, it would be wise for the conductor to rehearse only what needs to be audible (Example 2). If only these isolated excerpts are played during initial rehearsal of this passage, the orchestra will be informed about its compositional structure. This in turn will enable the player to understand that any scale passages during the course of this section must not overshadow the motivic elements illustrated. This kind of rehearsal technique clearly delineates what must be audible, makes the rehearsal interesting for all players, and saves rehearsal time. During rehearsals, conductors sometimes need to be more attentive to inner voices than to melodic passages. A case in point is the chromatic modulation in the Smetana overture which begins at m.378 (Example 3). Here the modulation is from D-Flat Major to E-Major, with inner voices supplying rising tones independent of each other. Tension is built into the chromatic alterations simply because the tones do not change simultaneously. In rehearsal, the celli and violas should emphasize individual note changes without creating artificial accentuation. The patterned sequence of chromatic change occurs instrumentally as follows: winds, inside celli, outside celli, violas. The conductors gesture should invite these instrumental entrances in JCG Vol. 30 20

that order. The rehearsal of this passage should emphasize the importance of each individual note change, as players would not ordinarily be familiar with the parts of other sections. Here again, theoretical knowledge or analysis can lend insight into making a rehearsal efficient and worthwhile for all players. Implied in the above study is a simple but important distinction between theoretical analysis for its own sake and theoretical analysis for the sake of an efficient rehearsal. After learning a score a conductor should clarify, in his own thought, the important theoretical and/or structural devices used in the composition. The only theory that need concern him is the theory that will (a) help his orchestra understand the music; (b) save rehearsal time; (c) help support his own interpretation and, therefore, his reasoning for making musical decisions prior to and during the course of the rehearsal. Such meaningful and practical score analysis will serve the best interests of the composer, the players and, of course, the audience. It should also insure the interesting and effective use of valuable rehearsal time. ***** Alan Pearlmutter is a conductor and music professor. He currently teaches at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts. He also has served Boston Universitys online graduate music education program and the Department of Fine Arts of Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. Alan is Music Director of Bostons Kammerwerke Orchestra which he established in 2006. Alan Pearlmutter earned his D.M.A. at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Alan has had several articles published in the Journal of the Conductor Guild, an organization which he served as secretary in its earliest years. ENDNOTES
1

Max Rudolf. The Grammar of Conducting: A Practical Study of Modern Baton Technique. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1950), p. 329.

It is surely no coincidence that the keys are a minor third apart, since the critical melodic interval of the overture is a minor third.

23 JCG Vol. 30

Schuberts Position in Viennese Musical Life

(JCG Volume 3, No. 3, 1982) By Otto Biba

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Viennese musical life was decidedly different from the relatively homogeneous international scene so familiar to us today. Hence it is not possible to assess Schuberts position within this rich tradition if we insist on making comparisons by todays standards, or if we evaluate historical testimony using our own experiences as the reference point. The result can be a dramatization of what appears extraordinary to us now, but was self-explanatory then; it can also lead to our overlooking a development that was indeed extraordinary in Schuberts time, but seems common practice today. Franz Schubert has perhaps suffered more than any other composer at the hands of biographers unable to distinguish between yesterday and today. We remain indebted to Otto Erich Deutsch who, more than sixty years ago, rescued Schubert from the twin realms of fantasy and fiction. His return to the solid ground of contemporary documentation can be put to even better use when we compare events in Schuberts biography with those of his fellow composers and musicians. The sesquicentennial celebrations in 1978 afforded me the opportunity to delve afresh into a rich variety of archival material housed in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and elsewhere I was able to examine a number of important collections of concert programs from the period. Out of these investigations several startling new perspectives on Franz Schuberts musical and professional life have emerged. Along with offering a general overview of Viennese musical life in Schuberts time, I propose to define Schuberts position within this network,

drawing special attention to new disclosures. This is best achieved under several different headings. Perhaps most central is the arena of public concert life. In the early 19th century in Vienna, concerts were presented either by independent virtuosi-who assumed both the artistic and the financial risks-or by private societies. There were at that time three such organizations: the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, founded in 1812 and still very active today; the Gesellschaft des Privat-Musik-Vereins, founded in 1818; and from 1819 on, the Concerts sprituels einer Geslischaft von Musikfreunden. All three of these societies were on friendly terms with the others. To be sure, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was the most important; it was to play an important role in Schuberts life as well. From 1816 on the society sponsored regular orchestral concerts, and in 1818 it inaugurated a second series, devoted to Lieder, polyphonic vocal music, and chamber works. This later earned the title of Musikalische Abendunterhaltungen. On a poster from the year 1818 announcing the commencement of these concerts, Schuberts name is already found. We read that masterpieces by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Onslow, Spohr, and Schubert will be performed. Both Onslow and Spohr, as well as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, were highly esteemed composers in their day. Schuberts inclusion is all the more impressive in light of the fact that in 1818 not a single work of his had yet appeared in print. Before this performance could take place, however, Schuberts relationship to the Gesellschaft received JCG Vol. 30 24

a harsh blow. In March of 1818 the young composer applied to the society for membership. On patently specious grounds his petition was denied. We do not know what the precise grounds were, but my suspicion is that they involved strictly personal matters. Even at that time Schubert was already a freischaffender Komponist, one who earned his entire income through his own artistic efforts, without either a steady income or a traditional profession. All other composers supported themselves either through teaching, or else they worked in the civil bureaucracy and composed on the side. Even Beethoven had a base income in the form of an annuity supplied by a group of aristocratic patrons. Schubert was the very first Viennese composer to live solely from his compositions, and I can well imagine that to some of his contemporaries this was viewed as anti-bourgeois and irresponsible. This could have been one reason why the worthy gentlemen of the Gesellschafts board of directors did not wish to welcome Schubert into their ranks. Three years later, however, there was a change in the constitution of the board, and Schuberts name can now indeed be found among the membership. From this time on, his works received regular performances in the concerts sponsored by the society. In 1825 he was elected as an alternate, and in 1827 as a regular member of the representative body which provided much of the leadership for the Gesellschaft. Members of this Reprsentantenkrpers exercised direct influence on the makeup of concert programs, and it is probably no accident that from 1825 until his death Schuberts music was second in popularity on the Abendunterhaltungen only to that of Rossini. Having been slightly overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven in the years following 1821, by 1825 Schubert had surpassed both of them in popularity, with Mozart now in third and Beethoven in fourth place. Rossinis preeminence comes as no surprise in light of the Rossini-Rummel that had swept over Vienna, but that Schuberts popularity was eclipsed only by the Italians is remarkable.

To be sure, we must ask why Schubert did not exercise the same zeal on behalf of his orchestral works. No easy answer suggests itself. We know, for one thing, that as soon as Schubert had presented and dedicated his Great C-Major Symphony to the Gesellschaft at the end of 1826, two copyists set immediately about preparing performance parts. I was fortunate in being able to locate the receipts for both copyists in the archives of the Gesellschaft. With the aid of watermarks Robert Winter was able to determine that the parts cited in both receipts are almost certainly identical in large measure with those now in the Gesellschaft library; their paper suggests a completion date during the summer of 1827. From the memoirs of Leopold von Sonnleithner we know that the C-Major Symphony received at least one reading during the rehearsals of the societys conservatory orchestraand this during Schuberts lifetime. Apparently a concert performance was never intended. When, in December 1828, a symphony had to be chosen for the memorial concert, the Sixth Symphony was selected. The widespread belief that the musicians preparing the Great C-Major for its premiere rejected it because of its unreasonable difficulties is false. The well-preserved records of the Gesellschaft make it clear that the work was never planned for an official public performance. Nevertheless, we are quite safe in assuming that Schubert heard the work in an orchestral rehearsal of the Konservatorium. The first authenticated performance of the Great C-Major Symphonyalthough in abbreviated form-took place in 1839 at the instigation of Robert Schumann, under Felix Mendelssohns direction in Leipzig. This performance, however, in no way marked a rediscovery of the work, as is so often asserted. Paper and scribal evidence make it clear that sometime in the early 1830s, and for an undetermined occasion, several duplicate orchestral parts were prepared. Moreover, the finale of the symphony was performed in a public concert in Vienna in 1836.

25 JCG Vol. 30

As regards to performances in the composers lifetime, it cannot be stressed too strongly that Schubert was inhibited by an inordinate shyness when it came to the public performance of his orchestral works. There is even reason to believe that he worked actively to discourage such performances, in any case, he did nothing to promote them. Ascertaining the reasons for this would doubtless call for a deeper psychological study. Even so, it would be a mistake to assume that Schubert never heard his symphonies. Contemporary performance materials for the First, Second, Third, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies survive in the archives of the Gesellschaft, and there is every indication that they were used then. The forum, however, was not the public concert but the so-called musical salon. The idea of musical salon is placed in better relief against the backdrop of concerts organized by individual artists. It was typical for a composer to present a sheaf of his newest works in a public concert organized by himself, largely, or even entirely, around his own works. It was not until March 1828 that Schubert was persuaded by his friends to organize just such an evening. For this purpose the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde placed its concert hall at Schuberts disposal, free of charge. The concert itself was an unqualified critical and public success. Along with the artistic acclaim, it brought him net earnings of 800 gulden. Consider that his father received 240 gulden per year as a teacher, and that a minor civil servant received around 400 gulden per year. Further concerts like this one proved impossible only because eight months later Schubert suddenly and unexpectedly contracted typhus and died. The most famous instrumental soloists of the day regularly performed works by Schubert on their programs. In light of all the publicity garnered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet with regard to its performances of Beethoven, it is important to stress that Schuppanzigh was an equally ardent advocate of Schubert. Between 1797 and 1826 Schuppanzigh premiered seven works of Beethoven, but between 1824 and 1828 alone he premiered no fewer than four works of Schubert. This violinist-conductor

clearly recognized the worth of the young composer and did everything in his power to promote him. Even after Schuberts death his chamber works remained on the programs of the Schuppanzigh Quartet. With the dedication of his A-Minor Quartet, op. 29, Schubert was partly able to repay Schuppanzigh for his support. Of the numerous other instrumental virtuosi who frequently performed Schubert, two deserve special mention. On 22 April 1827, the violinist Leopold Jansa and the hornist Joseph Lewy each presented, at the same hour but in different halls, one of their regular concerts. Lewy offered the first performance of Schuberts Nachtgesang im Walde, D. 913, for male voices and horns, while Schubert accompanied Normans Gesang, D. 846, at Jansas concert. The picture of a composer unable to attend a premiere of one of his own works may be ascribed to accidental circumstance, but it also constitutes evidence of how established Schubert was on the Viennese musical scene. But the vitality of Viennese musical life is best attested through the presence between 1780 and 1840 of musical salons, to which I referred above. Both middle classes and aristocracy sponsored such events, to which it was customary to invite acquaintances and friends who, in their turn, might also bring acquaintances and friends. In numerous families a welcome was also extended to music lovers not necessarily known to them. Such concerts, then, could be described as semi-public. The performances featured not only chamber music combinations but orchestral works as well. It might on occasion be necessary to assemble the performers in one room and the listeners in another. A number of families had their own invitations and admission tickets printed up or handwritten, though very few survive. These less formal musical evenings were the active transmitters of Viennese musical life. The public concerts put on by the three private musical societies occurred relatively infrequently. And whereas these were generally limited to the works of a single composer, or to works which showed off the abilities JCG Vol. 30 26

of a single performer, regardless of artistic merit, the repertoire at a musical salon was both varied and innovative. It was at these concerts that the most important performances of Schuberts music took place. For a salon organized by Otto Hatwig, a prominent citizen of Vienna and an important musical figure, Schubert composed his Fifth Symphony. We can also confirm that the above-mentioned orchestral parts for the First, Second, Third, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, as well as a few overtures, were used in performances at musical salons of Otto Hatwig. (I see no reason why the Fourth Symphony would not have been performed as well; we can probably assume that its parts have been lost.) The orchestra at Otto Hatwigs included Franz Schubert among its violists. In fact, we have a complete list of the participants: seven first violins, six second violins, three violas, three cellos, two contrabasses, and paired winds. This relatively large ensemble was directed by Otto Hatwig himself from his vantage point as leader of the first violins. In just these numbers we can be sure that Schubert heard his early symphonies. In an earlier paper,1 I had the opportunity to report on the size of orchestras employed in public concerts. With their fifty to sixty players they were markedly bigger than Hatwigs group; we do not really know how Schubert would have responded to a performance by an ensemble of this size. Since a number of Schuberts orchestral works are preserved in contemporaneous collections, we must assume that performances outside of Hatwigs salons among the most prestigious in Viennatook place on a fairly regular basis. That Lieder and polyphonic vocal works of Schubert were performed frequently in musical salons is one aspect of the composers musical life sufficiently well known. Yet too many observers fall into the trap of equating these salons with our present day notions of Hausmusik. In fact, critical acclaim achieved at a salon was just as significant as that earned in a public concert. Finally, since there was no such thing as royalty payments, a composer was 27 JCG Vol. 30

financially no more penalized for a semi-public performance in a salon than for our customary public concert. If Schubert was the first Viennese composer to live entirely from his musical compositions, what then were his opportunities for remuneration? In the period between 1816 and 1821 we can be quite sure that it was the goodwill and financial support of his friends that sustained Schubert. These five years mark the interval between his resigning from the teaching profession and the publication of his Op. 1. In the years 1821-22 the publication of Ops. 1-7 and 10-12 realized for the composer a profit of some 2000 gulden. Bearing in mind the annual salary of a minor civil servant, this amounted to some five years income. In this short period of time Schuberts earnings had soared almost to the level of the imperial Hofkapellmeister, otherwise the best paid musician in Vienna. To this healthy figure must be added the sums of money presented by nobility to whom Schubert dedicated compositions. The precise sums have been preserved in only a few instances, but they were certainly not inconsequential. We know, for example, that Reichsgraf Moriz von Fries gave Schubert 200 gulden for the dedication of Op. 2, half our civil servants yearly salary. From Schuberts letters we learn that for each printed opusgenerally of Liederhe received from the publisher 125 gulden until the spring of 1823, and from April on 200 gulden, neither of these small amounts. Again, a comparison with a contemporary best clarifies Schuberts position. In the year 1825, for example, the well-established composer Johann Hugo Vonsek requested an honorarium of 75 gulden from the publisher Diabelli for a collection of six songs; Diabelli found this amount too high. At the same time Diabelli had become accustomed to paying Schubert 200 gulden for opuses that generally contained three, or at most four, songs. Diabellis investment was nevertheless a sound one, for he earned a small fortune from brisk sales of Schubert songs over the years, long after the rest of his stable had ceased to attract buyers. In those days

the modus operandi was to produce a great deal of music very quickly, but in very small amounts. The growing public had a seemingly rapacious appetite for the new and the novel. That the composer might share in the profits generated by sales was completely unheard of. The publisher offered the composer an honorarium, upon acceptance of which the work became the publishers own, along with the financial riskand the profits. We have already seen that Schubert was better paid than his contemporaries because the publishers felt assured of a healthy demand. This is reflected in the size of the Auflagen. While an initial printing of one hundred was normally considered high, the first opuses of Schubert each appeared in three hundred copies, with reissues following soon thereafter. Such were the quantities in which Schubert was published that he can scarcely be compared in this regard to any of the contemporaries. Within an eight-year period from 1821 to 1828, close to ninety-eight numbered opuses of Schubert appeared, including one in Leipzig. In addition, there were twenty-eight works without opus numbers. Only three of these had appeared by 1821. In the following years, then, an average of sixteen new works by Schubert appeared annually. He had indeed assumed a position at the summit of Viennese musical life, and it is unthinkable that publishers would have rushed to engrave his works unless there was a constant and steady demand. Publishing was supplemented in Schuberts case by the widespread copying of his music, much of it done professionally and some for personal pleasure. Collections such as the Witteczek-Spaun anthology of Lieder, part-songs, and keyboard music are only later manifestations of the keen interest aroused by Schuberts music during his lifetime. Keyboard music was in no small way a participant in this success. Instruction in music was considered an essential ingredient toward the well-rounded education of a young person. Mastery of, or at least facility on, an instrument was assumed, and the fortepiano was the preferred instrument. Since the solo keyboard recital did not yet exist, it is hardly surprising that so few details about this intimate art

have come down to us, a Liebhaber in the privacy of his own home is not likely to have left a written account. The programs in public concerts during Schuberts lifetime were quite mixed. Solo works for piano occur only infrequently. Rather more common were works for piano and orchestra, and we know that Schubert received a commission in the year 1818 to compose a rondo for piano and orchestra. We do not know why it remained unfulfilled, apparently the dramatic opposition of a solo instrument with orchestra aroused little compositional interest in him. But if any proof is needed to demonstrate the popularity of Schuberts keyboard music, it lies in the numerous reprintings issued by publishers. These can be discerned on the basis of small but often highly significant corrections made in each issue. Schuberts works were favored for reprintings by other than the original Verleger. Finally, the field of dance music enabled Schubert to demonstrate yet another dimension in his mastery of instrumental music. This is evident not only from the hundreds of published works, but also from certain typical Viennese practices. A common tribute to an especially popular work was to arrange its best-known themes as a dance piece. After the highly successful premiere of Carl Maria von Webers Der Freischutz, for example, a string of Freischutz-Walzer suddenly appeared. Likewise, Rossinis greatest triumphs in Vienna found their echo in a stream of dance music. Only a few months after Schuberts very first opus, Erlknig, was published by Cappi & Diabelli, it became the rather unlikely object of a chain of Erlknig-Walzer by Schuberts friend Anselm Httenbrenner, brought out once more by Cappi & Diabelli. Other indications of Schuberts popularity are the arrangements of keyboard dances which Cappi & Diabelli regularly commissioned from anonymous journeymen. The public clamored for these works to be made available in other than a solo configurationfor example, for guitar and flute.

JCG Vol. 30 28

Another strong witness to the popularity of Schubert as a dance composer is a set of variations by Carl Czerny. Though remembered today chiefly for his pedagogical studies, Czerny was an enormously popular composer in Schuberts time. In 1821 he brought out his Variationen ber einen beliebten Wiener Walzer; the tune which forms the basis of this collection is none other than Schuberts Trauerwalzer, D. 365, no. 2, which by then had already become so much a part of the popular consciousness that it was no longer considered necessary to supply the name of its composer. A work of Schuberts, then, had been raised to the status of folk music. We ought not to forget that during Schuberts time no distinction existed between Unterhaltungsmusik and Ernste Musik, between popular and classical. Two of his most illustrious contemporariesJoseph Lanner (1801-43) and Johann Strauss Sr. (1804-49) were known only for their dance music, through which both achieved international fame. Schubert was well acquainted with both men. The first printed collection of Schuberts dance music appeared in 1821, the first of Lanners in 1825, and the first of Johann Strauss Sr.s in 1828. In this light a newspaper review for the Karneval of 1828, which evaluates the work of a dozen different composers, is especially revealing. The best dance music, reports the reviewer with confidence, has been composed by the Herren Schubert, Lanner, and Strauss. Although in some respects church music occupied a position of secondary importance, a survey of Schuberts stature in Viennese life would not be complete without mentioning it. Once more there is a dearth of written accounts of performances, partly because the semi-public nature of musical performance in churches rendered such reports unnecessary. But there are other kinds of testimony. A large number of churches in Vienna and the surrounding area, for example, possess music printed during Schuberts lifetime, all showing ample signs of use. And many occasional pieces which were never intended to be printed received widespread circulation in manuscript copies. It is only recently that systematic research has begun to 29 JCG Vol. 30

turn up these documents, and there seems little doubt that more comprehensive investigation will unearth even more treasure. Schuberts success in the field of religious music should come as no surprise. For one thing, he began his career as a sacred musician, and for another he regularly maintained close connections with the most important churches and their Kirchenmusikvereine. No longer were the priests of the congregation solely responsible for selecting the music to be used in their celebrations of the mass; now an association drawn from the membership of the church saw to it that appropriate artistic standards were maintained. The active membership in these Vereine included persons who offered musical salons or participated in the programs of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and other organizations; Schubert was well known to virtually all of them. One persistent thorn in Schuberts side was surely his inability to obtain performances at the highest ranking ecclesiastical center in Vienna: the Imperial Court Chapel. Although he had himself worked there as a boy, and in spite of repeated attempts, he was unable to gain entry into this bastion of tradition. Only in 1865 was this situation rectified. Ill luck may also be said to have plagued Schuberts efforts as an opera composer, whatever his own artistic deficiencies. To be sure, several operatic works were performed in the two opera houses of that time, the Krtnerthortheater and the Theater an der Wien. For each of these same houses Schubert also wrote works on commission. A lasting success, however, eluded him. This relative failure has achieved the status of an a priori judgement today, in a curious endorsement of contemporaneous taste. The actual reasons, however, may be more complex than the simplistic explanations generally offered. I do not believe it was Schuberts unfortunate choice of libretti, for extremely successful operas have been created from pitiful texts. It is also too easy to assert that Schubert was simply not a dramatic composer. In countless Lieder, part-songs, and settings of the Credo of the mass he shows himself to be a

highly-charged dramatist. And although he must have been frustrated with works like Die Verschworenen and Fierabras and, perhaps most of all, with Alfonso und Esstrella, for which he was unable to obtain performances, those which did reach the stage were by no means fiascos. Only against the background of Rossinis near stranglehold on the Viennese musical stage could the limited success enjoyed by Schubert be viewed in so critical a light. I believe there is another, more compelling explanation. Schubert was not only well-acquainted with the leading figures in Viennese concert life, in the musical salons or in sacred music, but many of them were members of his own circle of friends. But among the influential personages on Viennas operatic sceneand by this I do not mean singers but members of the administrationSchubert was not able to establish a single meaningful contact. Then, just as today, such contacts were essential. The sole link he was fortunate enough to forge turned out to be as much of a liability as an asset. In 1821 the Hoftheater official Ignaz von Moselwith whom Schubert was on very good termswas appointed to the position of Vice-Director. But Mosel had developed his own eccentric view of opera, and it coincided neither with Schuberts nor with the publics taste. In published writings Mosel advanced the view that opera ought to express spiritual states and not dramatic actions and events. Every expression of virtuosity was to be banned from the stage, and the plot was to be presented through commentary rather than overt action. In short, opera ought to approach the ideal of the oratorio. There is some evidence that in certain works Schubert made an effort to compose within these narrow boundaries. Yet precisely because Mosel was so out of touch with public desires, even he was not able to promote his own cause. There were really only three genres that the Viennese would tolerate: most preferred were the operas of Rossini, a genre in themselves; second the French Spiel-Opern, exemplified by Mhul; and finally the old-fashioned opera seria in the tradition of Gluck.

To this grouping might be added the German Singspiel; in any event, the operatic music of Schubert affords repeated insights into his desire to absorb from these diverse styles all that was most suited to his own. Armed with suitable allies, Schuberts potential achievement on the musical stage would have been greatly enhanced. On a more modest scale, we know that Singspiele were frequently performed in the smaller theaters of private homes. These might be viewed as the operatic wing of the musical salons, and the assumption that especially the early Singspiele of Schubert were premiered in this setting is almost certainly correct. Too little research has been carried out in this area, but for at least one Singspiel of Schuberts, Claudine von Villa Bellawhich the composer set to a text of Goethes in 1815we have unimpeachable evidence that it was intended for just such a Haustheater. If the successive bits of evidence that have accumulated throughout this essay are viewed as a whole, then, it becomes clear that our image of a penniless, threadbare Bohemian is not only highly tinted but fundamentally inaccurate. Although Schuberts continuously growing reputation was still largely confined to regional boundaries upon his death, he was, at the age of thirty-one, doubtless among the most celebrated composers living in Vienna. Large portions of his musical output were widely performed and widely published. He was paid handsome fees and offered generous honoraria for new compositions. His popularity resided not only with a few powerful arbiters of musical taste, but throughout all classes of Viennese society. How many other composers could point to two different yearsfor Schubert 1821 and 1826when two public concerts given on the same day both featured works of theirs? From Lieder to chamber music, from dance music to sacred music, Schubert enjoyed a distribution that must have been the envy of many other composers. Even today we probably underrate its extent, for many works whose first performance can only be authenticated in the decades following Schuberts death were quite probably unveiled in one of the many musical salons we know to have JCG Vol. 30 30

taken place during his lifetime. With only a single handwritten program from one of these evenings having survived, and with meager statistics, we are left only with the knowledge that such events existed, that they were held frequently, and that they were enormously popular. Schuberts commitment to composition was obviously such that he required all of his waking hours to pursue it. The choice of this path must have nevertheless required a great deal of courage from a young man whose social instincts were not particularly radical. Yet his model remains todays ideal. How many composers teaching undergraduate theory would not gladly change places with Schubert? Perhaps the only modification the 20th century might offer are the services of a good investment counselor accustomed to dealing with irregular incomes. That Schubert could have used. ***** In 1973 Otto Biba began working as a staff member in the archives, libraries, and collections of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna where he later became its director. Copyright 1979 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted from 19th-Century Music, Vol. 3, No. 2, November 1979, pp 106-113, by permission of The Regents. ENDNOTES See Otto Biba, Concert Life in Beethovens Vienna, Beethoven, Critics, and Performers, ed. Robert Winter (forthcoming).
1

31 JCG Vol. 30

Appropriate Brass Timbre: A Conductors Responsibility

(JCG Volume 5, No. 1, 1984) By William E. Runyan
The preponderance of the so-called standard orchestral repertoire was composed during the 19th century, and the instrumentation of todays symphony orchestra reached its final definition as that epoch ended. One of the hallmarks of musical Romanticism was the continuing refinement of the instrumental means that supported the search for increasingly subtle and evocative musical timbres. The infinite resources of the palette of orchestral colors are among the major achievements of Western music, and a central focus of those 19th-century developments that begat these resources lay in the changing nature of the orchestral brass instruments. Fostered by the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution, the creative abilities of makers of brass instruments were given full rein, further stimulating the imagination of composers and orchestrators with an assortment of novel and versatile instruments. Central to this phenomenon, of course, was the invention and eventual adoption of valved brass. As in any period of experimentation and rapid technological change, there were numerous, and often short-lived, solutions to musical demands. This frequently resulted in major composers creating compositions that have found their way into the permanent legacy of the time, but which unfortunately include parts for brass instruments that are now rare, obscure, or obsolete. One of the hallmarks of our culture is the increasing interest in creating performances that more closely reflect the original style and overall aesthetic intent of the composer than hitherto has been the case. This change in philosophy is reflected in the unprecedented activity in music journals, music editions, instrument manufacture, and professional and amateur concertizing. However, with a few notable exceptions, this laudable attitude is only slowly penetrating orchestral circles. Of course, there are many practical reasons why larger ensembles respond more slowly to changes in aesthetic philosophy than may chamber ensembles or soloists. On the whole, symphony orchestras in this country are institutions, and as such may be expected to maintain conservative attitudes. Furthermore, it clearly would be impractical to expect the average community orchestra, whether it be professional, semi-professional, or amateur, to revert to the use of gut strings and ophicleides. But there is an intermediate ground that respects the realities of todays musical scene, yet affords a pragmatic approach to greater musical authenticity. This is especially true of the instruments of the orchestral brass section. The standard complement consists of piston-valved trumpets, double horns of German descent, large-bore trombones, and a bass tuba (in CC or BB-flat). This is a versatile group and has become so because of its adaptability and wide availability. With these instruments, most of the standard orchestral repertoire may be performed with appropriate and pleasing results. However, there are many instances in the repertoire where the score originally called for brass instruments whose present-day rarity, obscurity, and obsolescence preclude their general usage. Today, these parts are almost inevitably given to members of the common brass section. This practice is emphatically not JCG Vol. 30 32

necessary in many instances. There are practical substitutions available for the standard instruments that yield more aesthetically satisfactory results without resorting to esoteric instruments that smack of antiquarianism. Sad to say, the issue of stylistic integrity and authenticity is often polarized between those who admit no compromise with historic correctness and those who condemn all such concerns as being merely academic. The thoughtful conductor should consider a middle ground and avail himself of these practical substitutes. Thereby, he would avoid the aesthetic limitations of an insensitive and firm adherence to the common orchestral brass, yet do so without undue inconvenience. When speaking of practical substitutions, we mean modern brass instruments available to skilled college and conservatory students, and easily played by average community orchestra trumpet, trombone, and tuba players (the horn is not included for reasons discussed below). Naturally, the reference to advanced students serves only to indicate the basic practicality of the following suggestions; the basic philosophy and its execution is even more applicable to professionals. Although discussion of most of this whole realm of instrumental history, aesthetic intent, and technical details has at one time or another appeared in public professional forums, it is painfully obvious that many conductors continue to ignore their responsibilities in this specific area. Unfortunately, conductors have often taken the attitude that these matters are the players responsibility, or that a brass players training to a high executive skill automatically imbues him with a concomitant knowledge of history and orchestral aesthetic, as well as a concern for the composers specific musical intentions. All responsible conductors are keenly aware of the magnitude and the diversity of knowledge and skills necessary for musical leadership, and the artistic decisions concerning the selection of appropriate brass tone color must not be wholly abandoned to the members of the brass section. In far too many cases they are no more qualified than anyone else. The conductor simply must arm himself with a knowledge of historical aesthetic philosophies, a concern for a 33 JCG Vol. 30

correct presentation of composers intentions, and as a means a basic understanding of the timbral capabilities of all of the modern, common brass instruments.1 The following discussion of the correct modern brass instruments for appropriate tone color is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather illustrative of the thoughtful consideration that is requisite in a variety of orchestral repertoire. The French horn is not treated, owing to the relative absence of problems stemming from a variety of instrument types, radical differences of tone color preferences, or of special scoring. *** The average present-day orchestral trumpet player usually arrives at rehearsal laden with a variety of trumpets cast in different keys. This is a remarkable change from the situation in the recent past when almost every part would be played on one instrument. And in this case, the wise conductor generally respects the players choice. However, the situation is much different with regard to the parts designed for the cornet. As every conductor knows, 19th-century orchestral literature composed by Frenchmen, and that influenced by the French musical tradition, is often characterized by two trumpet parts and two cornet parts. This scoring technique capitalized on the tonal purity of the trumpets and the chromatic facility of the cornets by assigning appropriate parts to each. Thus, the cornet parts often were more active, while those for the trumpets were simpler. The difference in tonal quality between the two instruments was pronounced, and the scoring differences often colored the compositions in ways that are lost in todays performances. Unfortunately, nearly all modern conductors simply allow the two cornet parts and the two trumpet parts to be played on four trumpets. It must be admitted that this solution of convenience is sometimes musically correct, for despite traditional theoretical usage, composers actually often wrote very similar parts for both instruments. However, this does not justify the

modern practice of assuming this is always the case. There are many instances when the cornet parts demand consideration of a darker, rounder, more lyrical sound than that produced by trumpets. Even a cursory examination of the scores of Berlioz, for example, will reveal different approaches to scoring for the cornets and trumpets. In the Symphonie fantastique there is little difference between the cornet and trumpet parts, and it would be a waste of effort to attempt to utilize two different modern instruments. On the other hand, in Harold en Italie, the treatment of the two instruments is somewhat different. In the first movement Harold aux Montagnes, the first cornet often doubles a lyric solo passage in the bassoon, harp and cellos; in the fourth movement Orgie de Brigands, the cornets often are the only brass doubled with the woodwind section in florid passages. In both of these instances it would be desirable to recapture something of Berliozs original concept of the appropriate brass tone color. In another instance Italien, the style is mixed: much of the time the four parts are similar, but occasionally there is a valuable distinction of color between the two kinds of instruments. Moving on to the 20th century, Prokofievs Lieutenant Kije Suite calls for a solo cornet, and it is imperative that its tone color be readily distinguishable from that of the trumpets. The solution to determining just when it is worth the effort to find an appropriate instrument for cornet parts, and when it is not, is simple. The conductor must not be mislead by the instrumental label on the part; rather, it is incumbent that he draw his conclusion from a close examination of the nature of the part during his score study. Having determined that some attempt should be made to distinguish the tone color of cornet parts in performance, there remains the knotty problem of choosing an appropriate modern instrument. It is simply folly to request that the player use a cornet, for the sound of the modern cornet is practically identical to that of the B-flat trumpet. Probably no other issue is as controversial in brass circles as this one. Rather than enter the fray here, it will suffice to simply point out two possible solutions. Some

instrument factories have recently introduced cornet models that are supposed to have the lyrical, dark quality of earlier models. If your trumpet players have access to these instruments, use the correct cornet mouthpieces, and possess the correct concept of cornet timbre, then success is possible. Otherwise, a very plausible solution is to simply use flugelhorns. The suggestion may seem unusual, but the increasing popularity of the instrument makes it readily available, and its range and tone color enable it to provide a distinctive contrast to orchestral trumpets. There are instances in the orchestral repertoire where the flugelhorn is the only real choice. Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 9 uses the flugelhorn in important solo and tutti passages. In the Pines of Rome, Respighi calls for an offstage band consisting of two each of flicorni soprano, tenori, and bassi. Unfortunately, these parts are occasionally given to trumpets and trombones, conductors assuming it is the only easy solution, but flugelhorns are the correct instruments for the soprano flicorni parts and, again, easily available. The same may be said for the three buccine parts in Respighis Feste Romane. In Das Klagende Lied, Mahler indicates that for the wind band in der Ferne, flugelhorns, if they are available, are preferred over trumpets. In his Symphony No. 3, the famous posthorn solo in the third movement is often played on trumpet even in the most august of orchestras. A brief consideration of the nature of the historical posthorn, its valved descendants, and the bucolic atmosphere Mahler creates in this movement suggests that the mellow tone of the flugelhorn is much more appropriate. Even an authentic cornet sound would be preferable to that of the trumpet. One must beware of making glib assumptions, though. In No. 7, Marche, of his Te Deum Berlioz calls for a petit saxhorn suraigu in B-flat, and it has been suggested that a flugelhorn would be suitable for the part. It is true that the flugelhorn is essentially a saxhorn (It. Flicorno) and is generally the instrument to use in such instances. But here, Berlioz is referring to the piccolo instrument, an JCG Vol. 30 34

octave higher than the familiar B-flat flugelhorn. Furthermore, in his famous instrumentation treatise, he characterizes the sound of this instrument as brilliant, clear, and penetrating. Obviously, the only fit modern substitute for this instrument is the piccolo trumpet in high B-flat. In contradistinction to the trumpet players, the typical orchestral trombonist uses only one instrument inevitably a large-bore B-flat tenor trombone. He uses this instrument, with its dark, rich timbre, for orchestral literature ranging in style from Mozart to Mahler, and beyond. That this application of heavy, Germanic tone color to all of the repertoire is inappropriate is unquestionable. Much of the standard literature, including most of that by French composers and all of the late classical and early romantic repertoire, should be performed with a light, clear trombone color. The heavy, sonorous quality of late-Romantic trombone style, beautiful though it may be, is simply not desirable in this music. Recent generations of American symphonic trombonists have been immersed in a philosophy that deprecates any symphonic concept but that produced by large-bore instruments, yet, the sensitive and responsible conductor can do much to alter this unfortunate attitude. Almost all symphonic trombonists have access to small-bore instruments (they probably already perform on them in other kinds of ensembles), and they should be encouraged to use them when appropriate. The music of Berlioz, Debussy, Roussel, Ravel, and many others sounds with far greater clarity, subtlety, and integrity when this concept of trombone sound is employed. For example, the trombone solo in Bolero is far more evocative of the intense, jazz-influenced Paris of the 1920s when it is performed on the smaller instrument. The same concern for authentic balance and color is every bit as important when we consider the orchestral music of Germany and Austria in the period roughly from Gluck and Haydn to Schumann. The standard trombone trio for which all these composers wrote consisted of alto, tenor, and bass instruments of small to medium bore. Today, of 35 JCG Vol. 30

course, two large bore tenors and a large bore bass are generally used for this literature. This practice completely alters the orchestral texture, balance, and timbre that the composer intended and lays on a drape of late-Romantic coloring. The symphonies and overtures of Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn regain much of their desired color when performed with alto and small or medium-bore tenor and bass trombones. Although many alto trombone parts lay quite high, any competent orchestral trombonist can execute them on the largest equipment. That, however, is not the point; the timbre and lightness of the alto is what is desired not ease of execution of the higher register. This mad rush toward ever bigger and darker trombone sound often runs the risk of endangering the important contrast between horn and trombone sections, an important aspect of the scoring of Schuberts C-Major Symphony, for example. The oratorios of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn benefit immensely from the use of the correct alto, tenor, and bass trombones. With these oratorios use of the 18th-century practice of doubling the choral parts with the trombones, it is vitally important that trombonists employ light instruments that blend with, and not dominate, the choral parts. There can be a significant difference between the doubling of an exposed d2 with the altos by an alto trombone or by a large-bore tenor trombone. There are a variety of works that would profit from the use of the alto trombone. Schumanns Rhenish is an evergreen on orchestral auditions, primarily for the difficulty of its ascent to e-flat2. Yet, the true perspective is simply that Schumann scored the trombones in this manner in order to evoke an atmosphere of traditional cathedral music; naturally the timbre of the alto trombone is the appropriate one, regardless of the capabilities of modern performers on large-bore tenor trombones. There is general agreement that the standard trombone trio for 19thcentury French repertoire utilizes a tenor for the first part, and this is correct. But the major exception is Berliozs Symphonie fantastique, where

the high tessitura (up to e-flat2) and Berliozs own original concept and designation of the part calls for an alto trombone. Finally, it is interesting to note that much later, Mahler broached the possibility of using alto trombone in a soft, chorale-like passage in his Symphony No. 7. As in the case of the cornet/trumpet parts, ultimately the determination of what is the correct instrument to use must be made by a careful examination of the score, the alto trombone must not be used simply because the alto clef is employed as is the situation in many Russian publications or because the composer designated the alto, which is the case with Brahms symphonies and Elgars Enigma Variations, although the first trombone must ascend to d2, nothing is gained by the use of the alto. Brahms and Elgar, like Strauss, may push the range upward, but the timbre of the large-bore tenor is more suitable for these late 19thcentury works. Having determined that the alto trombone is often desirable, the contemporary conductor need not face the problem of obtaining this instrument that was current in the recent past. The alto is enjoying a renaissance in this country, and increasing numbers of students and professionals play and possess the instrument. In those situations where it is not available the substitute is simple: use a small-bore tenor like that discussed previously. In passing, it may be suggested that when an alto or a small-bore tenor is used by the first player, the second should play a small tenor, and the third should use a medium-bore instrument with an F-attachment. This arrangement matches the section for a better blend. There only remains the matter of parts intended for valve trombones and contrabass trombones. Although contrabass trombone parts such as those in Wagner, Strauss, Verdi, and others manifestly sound better performed on those instruments, a very practical compromise is available. For example, in a student production of Falstaff, any proficient bass trombonist can usually creditably play the contrabass part on a double-valve bass trombone by utilizing his pedal register. Parts written for valve

trombones are uncommon, occurring primarily in the operas of Verdi, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. Except in a few instances where valve effects are essential, e.g., Otello, the technical facility of modern trombonists enables them to very adequately cope with these parts on traditional slide trombones. The last century and a half has witnessed the use of a confusing variety of instruments intended as the bass of the brass family. Ophicleides, serpents, bass horns, and tubas in a variety of keys and configurations have all taken their place in the orchestra. Most contemporary editions of orchestral music now label these parts simply tuba, and in most instances the present-day orchestral tuba player can best choose the correct instrument himself. However, there are occasions when the conductor needs to share this responsibility. Although perhaps obvious to many, it still needs to be emphasized that when one encounters parts calling for the tenor tuba, the instrument needed is the common euphonium. Found in almost any band, and the major instrument of hundreds of students in the United States, the euphonium is not merely a substitute for the tenor tuba, but literally is the tenor tuba. They are one and the same. The famous solos in The Planets, Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, and Bydlo in Pictures at an Exhibition should be played on this instrument. There are other examples of parts for this instrument in the literature, but almost never under its common name, euphonium. It should be pointed out, though, that the part for Tenor-horn in B in Mahlers Symphony No. 7 is best played upon the euphoniums brother, the baritone horn. A major problem in the wind parts of French (and French influenced) music of the first half of the 19th century lies with the ophicleide and serpent parts. In almost all cases the use of the large BB-flat or CC tuba is completely inappropriate. These standard modern tubas possess too great a depth and breadth of tone for these parts, whose tessitura is generally far too high, anyway. These parts only occasionally descend as low as AA (two octaves JCG Vol. 30 36

below middle C), and often rise high above middle C. There are only two feasible modern instruments to use for these parts: the F tuba and the small B-flat tuba (Euphonium). Every professional tuba player and many students, as well possess F tubas and may successfully use this instrument to play serpent and ophicleide parts that have important low notes. But for the many parts that ascend very high in exposed, light orchestration, the euphonium is best. A number of examples come to mind: The Overture to Rienzi, Mendelssohns Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and the first ophicleide part in the Symphonie fantastique (the second part lies better on the F tuba). The key to determining which instrument is appropriate lies in considering the tessitura of the part and its accompanying orchestration. Unless the high note is only in the vicinity of middle C, and the orchestration is relatively heavy and loud, the euphonium is the best substitute. Exceptions exist, and the serpent (not the ophicleide) part in the Overture to Rienzi is a good example. It serves as the bass to the woodwind section, and a brass instrument is inappropriate here. The perceptive conductor therefore must not trust the publishers labels on these parts and must rely upon his own knowledge of style and history to make the right choice. Finally, a word about parts designated for tenor or baritone saxhorns or flicorni. As in the discussion of the flugelhorn, the conical bore of the modern baritone horn and euphonium produces the dark, round tone quality that characterizes saxhorns and flicorni. So, for example, in Respighis Pines of Rome, the flicorni tenori parts should be performed on baritone horns, and flicorni bassi parts on euphoniums. These instruments, combined with the flugelhorns, evoke the sound of an ancient Roman band exactly the composers intent contrasting nicely with the cylindrical bore of the trumpets and trombones in the orchestra. *** A conductors responsibilities are many, not the least of which is to attempt to recreate the musical expressions of those whos aesthetic and means of 37 JCG Vol. 30

performance may be far removed from the present. It is possible to tread that thin line between a dogmatic adherence to the practice of the recent past and the impractical pursuit of bringing back the distant past. All that is needed is an open mind to new solutions and a willingness to experiment with them. ***** William E. Runyan is an Emeritus Associate Professor of the Department of Music, Theater and Dance at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. ENDNOTES highly recommended books on the subject are Robin Gregorys The Trombone (New York: Praeger, 1973) and The Tuba Family (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1978) by Clifford Bevan.
1Two

The Rationalization of Symphony Orchestra Conductors Interpretive Styles

(JCG Volume 11, No. 1-2, 1990) By Jack B. Kamerman
Introduction This article deals with one aspect (increasing rationalization) of the career of an occupation,1 the symphony orchestra conductor, in one setting, the United States. This theme will focus on the shift in interpretive style among conductors from the romantic or subjective approach, which dominated conducting in the last half of the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century, to the neoclassic or objective approach, which came into ascendancy in the 1930s and 1940s and continues as the dominant mode even today.2 I will argue that the career of conductor, from its emergence in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, has undergone an increasing rationalization, and that this rationalization and its roots underlie the shift in interpretive style from romantic to neoclassic. This rationalization has manifested itself in: 1) the standardization of interpretations, i.e., their reduction to formulas; 2) the rise of technical excellence as an end in itself; and 3) the conceptualization of the conductor as technician and historian and the increasing importance of objectivity, i.e., emphasis on the objective document (the printed score) rather than the subjective intuition and emotions of the interpreter. It will further be argued that this process of rationalization has been influenced by the following factors, related, as the numbering indicates, to the areas of rationalization mentioned above: 1) a) technical improvements in the manufacture of instruments, b) the history of the technical advances in the sound reproduction of music, e.g., sound recordings, radio, and television, c) professionalization of musicians, d) changes in the training of conductors, and 3) a) the change in repertory from a preponderance of contemporary music (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) to music of the past (in the twentieth century), b) enlargement of the division of labor in music to include nonartistic technical positions.3 The Two Styles of Interpretation Defined It is obvious that all interpretation of musical scores is in a sense subjective.4 Although composers have increasingly elaborated and refined the system of musical notation, to some extent performing any score relies on an interpretation of the composers intentions. As the musicologist Frederick Dorian has written:
Obviously one cannot expect to see an inflexible, mathematical standard in art; if ideas of composers are subjective and their directions relative (in spite of such mechanical aids as the metronome), the interpreters knowledge is likewise subjective, and therefore his way of performance is subjective too.5

In addition, the older the score, the more difficult becomes the problem of deciphering a composers intentions. Early scores, for one thing, evidenced a paucity of tempo indications.6 Also, it is not always possible to determine whether what is contained in the score was put there by the composer. Charles OConnell, writing of the reputed king of twentieth-century literalists, Arturo Toscanini, succinctly made this point: JCG Vol. 30 38

He [Toscanini] worships a Beethoven score as if it had come with the ink still wet from the hand of the great man: ignoring the fact that there is probably no Beethoven score published that hasnt been tampered with, in which dynamic and metronomic marks havent been inserted by some obscure hack in the employ of Breitkopf & Hartel or other publishers.7

where the interpreters principal attitude is that of unconditional loyalty to the script. Setting aside his personal opinion and detaching himself from his individual feelings, the objective interpreter has but one goal in mind: to interpret the music in the way the author conceived it. Logically, the objective interpreter of the Fifth will perform the opening measures according to the metronomic and other objective determinations, as indicated by the score and not by his personal feelings.9

Finally, composers often altered their own scores several times. For example, there exists a recording of one of Chopins nocturnes (op. 9, no. 2, in E-flat major) which was played from a score that had been modified by Chopin himself. The score contained several variants never included in the performances of current literal interpreters of Chopin. Those who heard Chopin agree that he rarely played the same piece in the same way. Varying his playing with his mood, he gave full scope to his imagination and fantasy. In fact he tried to preserve a certain improvisatory quality which was impossible to notate. Indeed, he often played pieces with variants from his published text. . . .8 Also, several Anton Bruckners symphonies underwent one or more revisions as he was persuaded by one friend after another to streamline his scores. Is the distinction between objective and subjective interpretation spurious? Not if the terms are taken as statements of position vis--vis a score, i.e., adhering to the composers intentions held as a desideratum rather than as an accomplished fact. Again, Dorian has neatly posed the questions:
Richard Wagners poetic and powerful interpretation of the opening of the Fifth [Beethovens Symphony in C minor, op. 67] cannot be tested by objective standards, that is to say, by musical clues provided in Beethovens score. No matter how fascinating we find his explanation, it must be classified as subjective, as it brings to the fore Wagners views on Beethoven rather than the actual interpretive criteria for the music as we understand them from reading of the script. In any case, the subjective approach reflects the interpreters individuality more than it does the world of the masterwork not only in details like those that have just been demonstrated, but also in the delineation of the composition as a whole. In opposition to such a subjective reading stands the objective treatment,

These, then, are the two interpretive traditions towards which all conductors have gravitated in varying degrees of polarity: the objectivist/neoclassic and the subjective/romantic. The Standardization of Interpretation The traditional romantic interpretation was highly personalized. To a large extent, it was made possible by the availability of long rehearsals (an innovation of the latter half of the nineteenth century). Romantic performances had to be carefully worked out with the personnel of even the finest orchestra.
Mendelssohn, Blow, Wagner and Liszt soon made another advance in that they succeeded in compelling adequate rehearsal in advance of public performance. To impose upon the orchestra or chorus ones private interpretation by means of a grueling series of rehearsals would have seemed impudent to all but a few aggressive musical authoritarians. But conditions were ripening for such an eventuality. The orchestral personnel was becoming more numerous, entrance cues less routine, and tonal balance more difficult to maintain. Rubato and other earmarks of romanticism were being developed, which . . . made coordination more and more difficult. . . .10

In addition to adequate rehearsals, a conductor tenure of sufficient duration was necessary to impose such personalized interpretations on an orchestra. Yet, it is precisely these two elements, prerequisites to the production of highly individualized performances, that have declined during the twentieth century.

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Unionization of musicians began in the United States with the formation and charter of a musicians union in New York in 1864.11 Unions eventually succeeded in limiting the importation of foreign musicians, improving wages, and most important for present purposes limiting rehearsal hours. Added to the effects of unionization was the steady increase in the number of concerts that symphony musicians were required to play each season. The figures in Table I (p. 45) clearly demonstrate that the tenure of U.S. conductors with a given orchestra has also decreased during this century. In Table I, the establishment of categories of conductors by pre- and post-1900 birthdates is somewhat arbitrary. However, conductors born in 1900 would have assumed their major posts in the 1930s and 1940s, the period of the neoclassic revival. Also, please note that conductors presently holding orchestra positions (1983) were not included, since their present tenure remains ongoing. Jet travel has made globe hopping possible; consequently, conductors can now simultaneously hold the music directorship of several orchestras. The music critic Alan Rich called attention to the growing similarity in the sounds of many orchestras and attributed this phenomenon to the lack of a permanent conductor. In a piece entitled Bigamy on the Orchestral Front, he wrote:
When his new contract becomes effective, Ozawa will be in effect the principal conductor of two major American orchestras 3,000 miles apart, the Boston and San Francisco. The same situation obtains for a great many other conductors today: Boulez in New York and with the BBC in London; Maazel in Cleveland, London, and Berlin; Zubi-bubi [Zubin Mehta] in Los Angeles and Israel; Solti in Chicago and Paris; etc. . .[Y]ou can buy the most adept orchestral players in the world, put them together on a stage in a house with the most beautiful acoustical conditions in all the world. . . and you still wont have a symphony orchestra not, that is, until a single dominant personality is put on the podium, to work with the musicians week after week, studying the strengths and weaknesses of the individual players, and gradually molding a sound that comes to represent the uniqueness of that orchestra. . . . One of the things that has disturbed

me a great deal lately is the impression that most of the worlds symphony orchestras are beginning to sound alike. You begin to suspect this after a few weeks at Carnegie Halls excellent Visiting Orchestra series; even though every conductor carries his own ideas about orchestral sound and balance, there is developing a world-wide all-purpose tone. The only orchestra I have heard lately of which this isnt true is, in fact, the Philadelphia under Ormandy. I dont much like the sound of the orchestra, or the uses to which it is often put, but theres one thing, for damn sure: you know its the Philadelphia Orchestra, even with your eyes shut. That is because Ormandy stays put.12

Harold Schonberg made much the same point where he predicted the decline of national schools of conducting:
. . . [It] is hard to tell the difference between a young American and a young English or Hungarian conductor, just as it is getting harder and harder to distinguish national styles in piano playing or composition. Even symphony orchestras are beginning to sound alike, no matter where their point of origin.13

Another aspect of the standardization of interpretation is the attempt to reduce performance to calculable rules or formulas.14 Toscanini represented the epitome of this movement toward calculability:
He [Toscanini] marks the meter so clearly that every downbeat takes on a slight stress not a pulsation or lilt, as in Viennese waltzes, but a tiny, tiny, dry accent, like the click of a well-running machine. This mechanical purring both gives to his readings a great rhythmic clarity and assures the listener that all is under control. It is also, nevertheless, a little bit lulling. One gets hypnotized by the smooth-working mechanics of the execution and forgets to listen to the music as a human communication. . . Excitement is of the essence in Toscaninis concept of musical performance. But his is not the kind of excitement that has been the specialty of the more emotional conductors of the past fifty years. Theirs was a personal projection, a transformation through each conductors own mind of what the conductor considered to be the composers meaning. At its best this supposed a marriage of historical and literary with musical culture. . . . For musicians of this tradition every

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piece is a different piece, every author and epoch another case for stylistic differentiation and for special understanding. . . . He [Toscanini] quite shamelessly whips up the tempo . . . just making the music, like his baton, go round and round, if he finds his audiences attention tending to waver. No piece has to mean anything specific. . . . The radical simplification of interpretive problems that all this entails has changed orchestral conducting from a matter of culture and its personal projection into something more like engineering. Young conductors dont bother much anymore to feel music or to make their musicians feel it. They analyze it, concentrate in rehearsals on the essentials of its rhetoric, and let the expressive details fall where they may, counting on each mans skill and everybodys instinctive musicianship to take care of these eventually.15 (emphases added) Charles OConnell also notes Toscaninis attempt to reduce matters of dynamics to simple general rules: His dynamics, though, are absolute and untempered, I think. A fortissimo is always all out and a pianissimo is always at the threshold of hearing. He himself has said that one should play an ff so strongly that he cant hear his partner and a pp so softly that his partner cant hear him. Here is a masterpiece of clear and practical definition. It is likewise wrong. Must ff always and inevitably signify the limit of ones capacity to generate tone or pp the limit of ones ability to suppress it? I do not think so, and I do not think that it is this concept of dynamic contrast that makes Toscaninis music so sharply black and white. . . . Even this kind of playing has its uses, and if I were in a position to do so I should recommend to all conductors that they study Toscaninis records as virtually perfect representations of music that sounds precisely as written, and I should further recommend that they should go on from there and interject some element of humanity and warmth.16

climate in which a Toscanini and all the little Toscaninis could flourish and prevail.17 The Rise of Technical Excellence as an End in Itself Along with the standardization of interpretation, the rise of technique also marked the rationalization of conducting in this century. Orchestral playing until the mid-nineteenth century was poor by present-day standards.
At a time when the tempo of a Beethoven scherzo depended on the technical competency of the lackadaisical habits or an underpaid musician, when first chairs were gained by seniority, and violists were recruited from superannuated and decrepit violinists, the greatest needs felt by a conductor and composer like Berlioz were discipline, accuracy, ability, and determination to stick to the notes.18

The technical improvement of instruments themselves, e.g., the invention of a new key system for woodwinds early in the nineteenth century, also allowed for more accurate playing. While the technical excellence of musicians continued to develop during the romantic era, it became the sine qua non of the neoclassic conductors. Where the script becomes central, emphasis on precision in performance (the antithesis of Pablo Casals caution to play the music not the notes) seems inevitable. The qualities that are admired in these conductors e.g., Toscanini, Szell, and Weingartner are clarity and precision. One hypothesis to explain this focus on technique was offered by the late Lester Salomon in an editorial column in Allegro (the official publication of New Yorks Local 802, American Federation of Musicians). He argued that many conductors demand an unrealistic level of technical excellence from orchestral players because they themselves have never played an orchestral instrument. Rather, they are pianist conductors.
The Pianist-Conductor Syndrome is caused by a combination of things. Its easy to produce a

That a Toscanini should have arisen is a tribute to his peculiar genius (i.e., lies in biographical details); that he should have become the symbol of the wave of the future is attributable both to public-relations men at RCA and, in a larger sense, to the circumstances outlined above, which created the 41 JCG Vol. 30

pitch on the piano anyone with or without talent or ability can do it compared to the complexities faced by woodwind, brass, string, percussion and harp players. A pianist doesnt have to concern himself with intonation: either the piano is in tune more or less or it isnt. . . . Another causative is that the piano is obviously a percussion instrument and the ordinary pianist-conductor usually cant get it through his skull that an orchestra doesnt respond with percussive attacks all the time. The pianist doesnt have to face the problem of creating a pitch on each and every note.19

experiences as a concertgoer to performances led by composers, or by sharing a common world. His lineage as a student is now four, five, or more generations removed from the composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whose works comprise the bulk of the current orchestral repertory. Treating the score as the definitive source of limitless information and insights is further evidence of the rationalization of conducting. The score is seen as an objective account of the composers intentions; performances are renditions of some objective truth, not personal and affective statements of the conductor. Again Toscanini offers a particularly pointed example. In discussing the romantic conductor, Willem Mengelberg, Toscanini said, Once he came to me and told me at great length the proper German way to conduct the Coriolanus Overture. He had got it, he said, from a conductor who supposedly had got it straight from Beethoven. Bah! I told him I got it straight from Beethoven himself, from the score.20 That scores (as was pointed out earlier) do not in fact ever have this essential quality is not as important as the fact that they are perceived as having it. For most of this century musicologist (i.e., specialists) have been called upon to research, annotate, and publish authentic scores.21 The conductor is no longer the singular definitive authority he was in the romantic era. Consequently, the contemporary performance is no longer viewed as an expression of his personality; rather, it is a rendition of the letter of the score. So crucial does the objective document become that in performances composers tamperings with their own scores are disregarded as though the truth contained in the original score transcended even the wishes of the composer. Such an attitude abrogates the composers right to alter and make improvements in a score.22 In addition to the mediation of the musicologist, the work of the conductor during recording sessions or broadcasts is encroached upon by audio and video engineers and technicians, so that, to some extent, JCG Vol. 30 42

The fact that fewer and fewer conductors come from the ranks of the orchestra or from careers as instrumental soloists (other than pianists) becomes important, consequently, as a partial explanation for the focus on technique (see Table 2). The recording and broadcast industries have contributed to raising the expectations of audiences for technical excellence in two ways. First, huge audiences are exposed to the best orchestral playing in the world, creating a sophistication through exposure such as few people could claim before. Second, technical adulteration of performances can create in Virgil Thomsons phrase, process music, a perfection where none existed in the original performance. Master tapes can be spliced and respliced, deleting single wrong notes until a technically perfect performance is achieved. Of course, the interpretive continuity may be sacrificed in return for this artificial level of technical perfection. To a listener, however, such a flawless facade will be perceived as the level of technical perfection of which an artist should be capable. Consequently, subsequent live performances may be something of a letdown. The Conductor as Historian and Technician: the Score as Document As the repertoire of orchestras is removed further and further from the present, the conductor, of necessity, becomes a kind of interpretive historian. His interpretations are less and less informed by conversations with composers, by experiences as a player in orchestra led by composers, by personal

performances are modified on purely technical considerations. Commenting on the role of the radio engineer, Frank Black, a conductor associated with radio station WNBC, wrote:
If your crescendo threatens to upset the equilibrium of that needle [on the control panel] well, its too bad for your crescendo. It simply never reaches its intended climax. On the other hand, the engineer can achieve a fake crescendo from his control panel that would make Rossini green with envy. Yes, he is a very important person.23

***** Jack Kamerman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Kean College (Union, NJ). He is Co-editor of Performers & Performances: The Social Organization of Artistic Work(1983), a collection of studies in the sociology of the arts. Mr. Kamerman last wrote for the JCG on the artistic and financial goals of the New York Philharmonic, 1922-36 (Vol. 9, Nos. 3 & 4). ENDNOTES
1 Rationalization is the trend, epitomized by bureaucracies, that makes work and other activities subject to rules or formulas which make them predictable and, consequently, brings them under greater control. Henry Ford, for example, rationalized the production of the automobile by breaking down the production process into smaller tasks. This action allowed him to predict with greater accuracy how many automobiles his factories would produce in a given period of time and to standardize the quality of the automobiles produced. . . . the career of an occupation consists in changes of its internal organization and its place in the division of labor of which society itself consists. Everett Cherrington Hughes, Men and Their Work (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), p. 195. Division of labor is the way occupations in a particular field are organized into a system, e.g., the way all of the occupations connected with the staging of an opera are related to one another, or alternatively, the way one of those occupations or that system of occupations is related to society in general. 2 There were signs of a romantic revival in the 1970s, but presently the romantic approach is more the exception than the rule. 3 These factors overlap to some extent, e.g., a style leader such as Toscanini had an unparalleled exposure because of the advent of the radio concert and mass-media hard sell. (See Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini: How He Became a Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987].)

And on the role of the program director:

You need to have confidence in the director. You may interpret Beethoven, but the director (with the help of the engineer at the controls) interprets your interpretation of Beethoven. Your ear tells you what goes on in the studio, but the directors ear is also at work in the control booth and, as the name indicates, he controls what goes on the air.24

Given the above, the conductor must to some extent become a recording technician, experimenting with different seatings to produce effects, especially for recordings. Once learned, however, the skills can be misused. The highly touted phenomenon of quadraphonic sound, which briefly was hailed as the final step in replicating the concert-hall listening experience, quickly degenerated into sophisticated gimmickry when its primary use became the creation of effects specific to quadraphonic record listening. Conclusion In this article I have examined some of the determinants of conductors interpretive styles. I have attempted to point to developments in conducting that are confluent with rationalization in other areas of society, which embody, in Schillers oft-quoted phrase, the disenchantment of the world, and which make less and less comprehensible a critics characterization of a Furtwangler performance of the Franck Symphony in D, he burns incense at a mystic shrine.

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4This was not as salient a problem before the nineteenth century because much music was written for specific occasions with little thought given to posterity. And the performances of that music were often supervised by the composer; consequently, the matter of interpretation, i.e., a subjective vs. an objective approach to the score, rarely arose. 5 Frederick Dorian, The History of Music in Performance: The Art of Musical Interpretation from the Renaissance to Our Day (New York: W. W. Norton, 1942), p. 30. 6 Dorian, p. 28. 7 Charles OConnell, the Other Side of the Record (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), p. 133. 8 Edward Blickstein, The Lost Art of Chopin Interpretation, Reprinted on the jacket of the recording The Great Chopin Interpreters, VM-115 (New York: Veritas Records, Inc., 1967). Electronic music may solve this problem by eliminating the interpreter altogether. 9 Dorian, pp. 26-27. Another clear statement of the distinction is contained in the essay, About Conducting, by the eminent conductor Felix Weingartner, an objectivist. He criticized the followers of Hans von Blow (the major subjectivist or romantic conductor of the last half of the nineteenth century: . . . it was in the end regrettable that by the behavior, artistic and personal, of some new-modish Blows so much attention was directed to the person of the conductor that the audience even came to regard the composers as the creatures, as it were, of their interpreters, and in conjunction with the name of a conductor people spoke of his Beethoven, his Brahms, or his Wagner. (Felix Weingartner, Weingartner on Music and Conducting [New York: Dover, 1960], p. 110.) Or later in the same essay, The conductor must before all things be sincere towards the work he is to produce, towards himself, and towards the public. He must not think, when he takes the score in hand, What can I make out of this work? but, What has the composer wanted to say in it? (Weingartner, p. 116.) 10 John H. Mueller, The American Symphony Orchestra: A Social History of Musical Taste (Bloomington, IN: Indiana

University Press, 1951), pp. 316-17. 11 For the source of much of this information and a history of the American musicians unions in general, see Robert D. Leiter, The Musicians and Petrillo (New York: Bookman Associates, 1953). 12 Alan Rich, Bigamy on the Orchestral Front, New York, 28 February 1972, p. 56. 13 Harold Schonberg, The Great (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), p. 358. Conductors

14 See also footnote 1. The objective discharge of business primarily means a discharge of business according to calculable rules and without regard for persons. . . Its [bureaucracys] specific nature. . . develops the more perfectly the bureaucracy is dehumanized, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from the official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. (Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills [New York: Oxford University Press, 1958], pp. 215-16.) This drive to reduce artistic activity to the form of a calculable procedure based on comprehensible principles appears above all in music. (Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. Don Martindale and Johannes Riedel [Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958], p. xxii.) From the same introduction: In the dynamics of Western musical development lie many tensions between rational and affective motives. The value of musical rationalization is the transformation of the process of musical production into a calculable affair operating with known means, effective instruments, and understandable rules. Constantly running counter to this is the drive for expressive flexibility. (p. xii.) 15 Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene (1945) (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. 54-55, 0-62. 16 OConnell, pp. 134-35. 17 Another source of standardization may be the availability of canned interpretations for imitation, i.e., the recorded

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performances of famous conductors that short-cut the knowledge previously acquired through studying the score extensively or playing the score on a piano. (Dorian, pp. 34243.) Irving Kolodin coined the phrase the phonographic memory to describe the same situation. In a review of the conducting prodigy Ferruccio Furco, he wrote: It is far simpler and more direct to hear the music so often from a recording that its sound becomes a mere device for recalling the arrangement of symbols involved [emphasis added]. . . It cannot be a mere coincidence that such prodigies have emerged in a time when mechanical reproduction of orchestral music has been accessible as never before. . . Did any of this make Burco a conductor? Does driving a car make one a mechanic? His performance suggested a new kind of musical phenomenon a backseat driver, rather than a leader or conductor. Given an orchestra in good order, with ample artistic gas and technical oil to expend, he could drive along with it comfortably, perhaps even sense when the speed limits were being exceeded and call for a little caution. Should it stall, however, or, what is more to the point, stop functioning altogether, he would no more be able to get it going than you or I on the highway. (Irving Kolodin, The Musical Life [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958] pp. 53-55.) I find his metaphor interesting in itself. 18 Mueller, p. 325. 19 Lester Salomon, The Pianist-Conductor Syndrome, Allegro, October 1973, pp. 3, 11. 20 Schonberg, p. 254. As Schonberg also commented, In romanticism the ego was all-important, the performer on the level of the creator, and ones aspirations were much more important than any such vague thing as scholarship or fidelity to the printed note. Nobody in the nineteenth century thought about fidelity; he thought about self-expression. (Schonberg, p. 173.) 21 Musicology, one of the newest of the scholarly disciplines, has been conditioning all performers and critics to a greater or lesser degree since World War II. For the past fifty years, musicologists have been attempting to codify musical thought

and performance practice of the past [emphasis added] and in the last twenty years a tremendous amount of material has been published. (Schonberg, p. 365.) 22 Mueller has called the score at best an awkward and incomplete symbolization of the creators intention. . . Indeed there is some evidence that Beethoven, himself, was not a calm interpreter, but rather indulged in exaggerated extremes of emotional expression and rubato style while performing before the Viennese nobility. (Mueller, p. 324.) Also, recall the case of the Chopin Nocturne cited earlier. 23 Frank J. Black, Conducting for Radio, in Music in Radio Broadcasting, ed. Gilbert Chase (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), pp. 68-69. 24 Black, pp. 68-69. This view was supported by an officer of the Arturo Toscanini Society in a conversation I had with him a few years ago. I commented on the dry thin sound Toscaninis orchestra had in the recordings I had heard. He said that this was attributable to the acoustics of the recording studio RCA used and, more importantly, to the engineer who happened to be on duty. To illustrate his point he played a rehearsal recording made during the same period as one of the commercial recordings I had heard, but with a different engineer. Although the orchestral sound was not exactly opulent, it was considerably richer than the sound accorded by the other engineer. Note: Statistics in Table 1 (pg. 46) are given for six orchestras: Boston and Chicago Symphonies, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra (formerly the Minneapolis Symphony), Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Sources for Tables 1 & 2: Bloom, Eric (ed.), Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th Edition, New York: St. Martins Press, 1954. Sabin, Robert (ed.), International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 9th Edition, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964. Sadie, Stanley (ed.), New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Washington, DC: Groves

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Dictionaries of Music, 1980. Wooldridge, David, Conductors World, New York: Praeger, 1970. *Includes conductors trained as conductors only and conductors for whom no information was available. (Statistics for both tables current through 1983.)

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Oral History, American Music

(JCG Volume 11, No. 3-4, 1990) By Vivian Perlis
The composers presence and advice can be of great help to a conductor during the preparation and rehearsal of a new piece. Furthermore, orchestra players are likely to be more open and audiences less hostile to new ideas with the composer in attendance. But what can be done about the many performances in which the composer cannot be directly involved? The conductor may search in vain for biographical information and recordings, particularly if the composer is young and the piece new. But all is not lost! Consider making use of the tape-recorded interviews that comprise a unique and valuable collection called Oral History, American Music. The composers voice on tape or his person on video tape can serve as an introduction and may convey a sense of immediacy and spontaneity similar to his actual presence. This unusual project, Oral History, American Music, is part of the Yale School of Music and Library. By now, into its twenty-first year, the collection includes over 700 tape-recorded and videotaped interviews with major figures in American music. While the archive contains interviews with performers and others in the world of music, the main focus has been on composers. Is this project of use to conductors? If the conductor is interested in American contemporary music and composers, the answer is an emphatic Yes! Perhaps you plan to conduct an unusual score by a contemporary composer such as John Harbison, Steve Reich, or John Adams. You could get to know the composer by listening him tell his life story or by reading the transcript; even more useful 47 JCG Vol. 30 would be that segment of the interview dealing specifically with the music you are about to conduct. Are you programming a complex orchestral work by Charles Ives? It might be enlightening to hear what the great Ives scholar and performer John Kirkpatrick has to say about Ivess characteristic multi-layering or how Nicolas Slonimsky handled the conducting of polyrhythms in his early presentations of Ivess music. You are playing a complicated jazz-inspired piece by Anthony Davis and the composer is coming to your town for the premiere? You could prepare yourself in advance by reading the transcript of his interviews in which he discusses his innovative music and ideas. If the late Aaron Coplands Appalachian Spring is scheduled for next season, hearing the composer talk about his own conducting of the piece might stimulate fresh insight. And so on, through hundreds of examples from the tape-recorded and videotaped oral histories included in the archive. I am frequently asked how and why a concert harpist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra turned to a new career of oral historian. In the late sixties, I became intrigued with the Charles Ives Collection of music manuscripts and correspondence at the Yale Music Library where I worked as part-time reference librarian. When I visited Ives insurance partner, Julian Myrick, to receive some materials for the Library, I brought along a tape-recorder. Little did I know that the act I was about to commit was called oral history! Mr. Myrick told some unique stories about Charlie, and when Myrick died soon after our interviews, the urgency of searching out others who had known and worked closely with Ives

became apparent. Family, friends, neighbors, musicians, and insurance colleagues contributed to the first documentary oral history on an American composer. This kind of Multi-level view was particularly appropriate for the complex and paradoxical personality of Charles Ives. After the Ives project was completed (its final total was fifty-four interviews), a book of reminiscences edited from the interviews followed (Yale University Press, 1974). I am told that the publication has been effective in making the iconoclastic and controversial Charles Ives more accessible to potential listeners and performers. Despite an oral history boom following the invention of the tape recorder, with projects proliferating in many and varied fields, music, the art of sound, had done little to collect and preserve source materials from creative musicians by means of tape-recording. During the Ives Project, several significant composers had been interviewed, and since it is never wise to approach one talented composer solely about anothers work, each composer was interviewed on his own life and music, as well as about Charles Ives. The result was a nucleus of valuable materials derived from conversations with such composers as Arthur Berger, Elliott Carter, Lou Harrison, Bernard Herrmann, Darius Milhaud, and Nicolas Slonimsky. I was aware of a project in the visual arts called The Archives of American Art that systematically collected oral history from major figures in the art world: Why not an archive of American music along similar lines? In theory, it seemed simple and logical to establish such a project; in practice, it proved to be rather involved and challenging. In the early 70s, the Yale librarian, a conservative gentleman who came from a time when library materials were literary and nothing else, was suspicious of the tape recorder as a library tool. What was this newfangled machine doing at Yale! Sponsorship was refused by the library, and the traditional musicologists were also reluctant to take oral history methodology seriously. The School of Music, however, offered a home for Oral History, American Music, with the

understanding that funding had to come from outside the University. Added to my new career of oral historian was a less welcome one of fund-raiser. Times change, and so do university librarians. Oral History, American Music became a well-known and highly praised archive, with award-winning publications and productions deriving from its holdings, earning the respect of librarians, musicologists, and historians. We now have a commitment from the Yale Library, and although fund-raising continues (and becomes increasingly difficult), the collection is assured of preservation and accessibility in the future. It is possible to give only a brief description of Oral History, American Music in this space, but for those interested in more detail, a descriptive brochure is available on request. The project is divided into various units of research, with a central core unit of about 250 interviews dealing with living subjects, primarily composers. Two other units include oral histories that are similar to the Ives Project, in that they contain interviews with many people about one subject. These are the Paul Hindemith and the Duke Ellington units. The former (seventy-five interviews) was undertaken for two major reasons: first, Hindemiths Yale connection and the many people still surviving from his Yale years in the New Haven area; second, the interesting (and much neglected) documentation of an migr composer who came to the United states as a result of World War II (the Hindemith Project functions as a prototype for future studies with migr musicians). The Ellington Project (eighty-eight interviews) was initiated because of the composers status as one of the major creative artists of twentieth-century America and for his wide-ranging influence on many major figures in the jazz world. Use of this jazz project exceeds any single unit in Oral History, American Music. (An adjunct series is concerned with Ellingtons associate, Billy Strayhorn.) An unusual oral history unit, also with many interviews about a single subject, is not about a composer: it is an oral history of the Steinway piano company. Undertaken at the time when the great piano manufacturer ceased being a family-owned JCG Vol. 30 48

enterprise, we decided to use oral history methodology to document an institution that had enormous impact on the world of music over a long period. The Steinway Project (120 interviews) with family, factory workers, technicians, business people, and performers has been of interest not only to musicians, but to a wide range of people, including scholars of New York history and of immigration demography. Pianists compose the largest number of musicians who use the materials, but conductors have also been tantalized by the opportunity to hear the great Steinway artists discuss their relationships to Steinway & Sons and to piano technology. To name a few: Claudio Arrau, Arthur Balsam, Alfred Brendel, Gary Graffman, Lorin Hollander, Lili Kraus, Moura Lympany, William Masselos, Murray Perahia, and Artur Rubenstein. The core unit, interviews with living figures in the world of music, is national in scope and wide-ranging in styles. The first targets were necessarily the oldest and most highly recognized composers, such as Virgil Thompson, Aaron Copland, Otto Luening, William Schuman, Harry Partch, and Leo Ornstein. Several major publications and productions have derived from these collections, the most ambitious being the two volume autobiography of Copland, co-authored by the composer and Vivian Perlis (Copland: 1900 Through 1942, and Copland: Since 1943, St. Martins, 1984 and 1989). Coplands text is drawn from the interviews made for Oral History, American Music in 1975 and 76. Several television documentaries deriving from the material in the archive have been broadcast on PBS and are available as educational aides. These include video biographies of Eubie Blake, John Cage, and Copland. After securing extensive interviews with the older generation of composers, Oral History, American Music turned to those in mid-career, such as Ned Rorem, George Perle, Ellen Zwilich, and many others. A young composers series has also been initiated, as well as the updating of all interviews with active composers every four or five years. The 49 JCG Vol. 30

addition of video-tapes has moved ahead slowly due to costs, but we hope to add to the fifteen accomplished to date. One example of use from the video archive will demonstrate the kind of value these materials can have to the conductor: Leonard Slatkin chose excerpts from the Copland collection to project on large screens at an outdoor festival in the summer of 1990 in connection with performances of Coplands music by the Pittsburgh Symphony. Oral History is not simply the act of placing a microphone, pushing a button, and saying, Now, tell me about yourself. Readers of this journal (who are frequently interviewed themselves) are aware that the level of response depends on what the interviewer knows about the subject no professional will talk for long on a professional level to an amateur. While interviewing is the most exciting phase of oral history the time when the performers arts of timing and projecting come into play what makes the difference between surface interviewing and a systematic scholarly approach is the depth and detail involved, and the successful result can be achieved only by careful advance research and study. In addition to the importance of pre-interviewing preparation are post-interviewing procedures. The processing turns the raw materials into an archive that insures accessibility to users. All tapes in Oral History, American Music are transcribed, except for acquired materials. Transcripts are duplicated, checked for errors, reviewed again in order to prepare tables of content, and sent to the interviewee. Since most people do not like the way their spoken style translates into the written word, far too many changes are usually made by the interviewee, which then must be incorporated. The transcript is finally labeled, catalogued, filed, and ready for use. A question has probably entered the minds of several readers: What oral history interviews have been done with conductors and why not more? Oral History, American Music includes an extensive series on conductor Maurice Abravanel, and many

of our interviews contain segments about composer-conductors, interpretation, and orchestral premieres and other performances. Brief interviews with several famous conductors are included in a collection of 400 tapes of the Great Artists Series that were recently acquired from radio station WQXR, New York City. One extensive project in progress (for which I am the consultant) is with colleagues, friends, and orchestra players who worked with Eugene Ormandy; it is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Music Library. However, these efforts do not constitute a systematic oral history project based on interviews with conductors. If you are interested in pursuing the matter, we will offer assistance and expertise. There should be such a project! For oral history is a particular way of preserving history one that retains the intimacy of those who have made our musical history. It is a method of relaying the sounds and sights of history, as well as its content. The qualities of immediacy and spontaneity that characterize oral history interviews will be attractive to any conductor interested in carrying the composers message to his audience.
*****

Vivian Perlis is a historian in American music, specializing in the music of twentieth-century American composers. She is founding director of Oral History, American Music. She is known for her writings and productions, among them books on Charles Ives and Aaron Copland and film biographies of Copland, Eubie Blake and John Cage. She was recently named Educator of the Year by Musical America. * Inquiries about the oral history project may be addressed to: Oral History of American Music Yale University PO Box 208307 New Haven, CT 06520-8307 (203) 432-1988 oham@yale.edu

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Medicine in the Service of Music; Health and Injury on the Podium

(JCG Volume 12, No. 1-2, 1991) By John J. Kella
That unfortunate occupational injuries can intrude into the lives and careers of conductors is no more clearly demonstrated than by a recent headline which appeared in The New York Times on July 7, 1992: Tanglewood Festival Opens Despite Weather and Illness. As James R. Oestreich reported, Dismal weather was only one of the wet blankets thrown over the opening weekend of Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Tanglewood Festival here [in Lenox, MA]. A few days before the first concert on Friday evening, the orchestra announced that its music director, Seiji Ozawa, would be unable to conduct because of tendinitis.1 Of course, all who love music wish Maestro Ozawa a timely return to the podium, and none more than the medical specialists who are assisting in his recovery. Just how pervasive is the problem of occupational injury in the field of music? A general overview can be found in a recent survey sponsored by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM). The survey results were reported in the periodical, Medical Problems of Performing Artists, whose editor, Alice Branfonbrener, M.D., is medical director of the Medical Program for Performing Artists at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Of the 2,212 musicians in the forty-seven United States and Canadian orchestras that responded to the 1987 survey, 82% reported experiencing a medical problem (physical or psychological), and 76% indicated at least one problem that was sufficiently severe to affect their performance. Unquestionably, instrumental musicians suffer from a wide range of 51 JCG Vol. 30 medical ills. Survey respondents reported problems such as musculoskeletal pain syndromes in the following percentages: shoulders (20% of those surveyed), neck (22%), lower back (22%) and fingers (16%). Non-musculoskeletal problems included eye strain (24%), ear aches and other ear disorders (20%). Psychological stresses were manifested in stage fright (24%), depressions (17%), sleep disturbances (14%) and acute anxiety (13%).2 But what about conductors? To some, they may seem to fall into an altogether different category, since conductors have the unique task of recreating musical masterpieces not through physical effort applied to the wood and metal of musical instruments or the vocal folds of the human voice, but rather through soundless gestures transformed by ensembles into audible form during rehearsals, performances or recordings. To many audiences, this may seem an immensely rewarding and satisfying profession, since conductors are seen as the embodiment of the highest level of artistic achievement. In fact, one study related occupational success among conductors to life expectancy, and suggested that conductors have a much better chance of living to an advanced age than do other musicians. In a twenty-year follow-up study 437 active and former conductors of major, regional, community and opera orchestras in the United States, it was found that the mortality rate of conductors was 38% below that of their contemporaries in the general population.3 In addition, the relative mortality rate was lower for each age group, from age 40 to age 80 and over.

Of particular interest was the finding that musicians as a group generally have a distinctly higher mortality rate that the population in general. A study across different occupational groups revealed that the mortality rate of male musicians and music teachers is actually 62% higher than that of all men in the United Statess general working population.4 This was corroborated by another study, done in England and Wales, in which the mortality of musicians, stage managers, actors [and] entertainers was 25% above that of all working men in that region.5 Women are also affected. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that in a study of prominent women, the mortality rate of performers and entertainers was 43% above that of their contemporaries in the United Statess general population of women.6 Male conductors, however, with their significantly longer life expectancies, were found to be comparable to top corporate executives, whose mortality rate was much more favorable than that of business executives at all levels of accomplishment.7 What are the factors accounting for the longevity of male conductors? The people at Met Life who make detailed studies on how, when and why we pass from this mortal coil attribute longevity to the idea that symphony conductors are generally:
...gifted, energetic, and productive leaders in the world music. The professional activities of such men are vast and varied. In addition to their work on the podium during a musical performance, they found and organize orchestras in cities and communities throughout the country, initiate special types of concerts, and are active in musical education, as well as in the administration of music centers. They also train apprentice conductors and help to launch the careers of composers. Just as the corporate executive seems to be able to cope with and even thrive on stressful situations, conductors seem to turn the stresses of their profession to productive use. The exceptional longevity enjoyed by symphony conductors lends further support to the theory that work fulfillment and world-wide recognition of professional accomplishments are important determinants of health and longevity.8

Given the good news of increased longevity, why should conductors be concerned about occupational problems? Because, though their life expectancy may be long, the quality of life and health is an issue for such high achievers. Interviews with great conductors, for example, reveal many behind-theproscenium demands some self-imposed that can impart mental and physical tolls on those who wield batons. To be successful, conductors must cope effectively with the physical and psychological demands of wearing many hats. This process includes but is not limited to changing ones role from inspiring music leader to critical orchestra rehearser, to supportive psychologist, to knowledgeable music analyst and historian, to proficient recording specialist, to convincing fund raiser, to compelling social activist for the arts, all performed with unflagging energy during nonstop schedules. James Levine, conductor and artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, relates:
What I think people are not aware of is... [that being a conductor] is a little bit like being a dancer, or being an athlete. The work that a conductor does is a tremendous strain on the nervous system, on the muscles, on your body physically and on your psyche. And in order to stay in the kind of shape to do it properly, one has to do it rather continuously.9

Some conductors have gone so far as to study the physical effects of their craft somewhat scientifically. Herbert von Karajan established the Karajan Foundation, one mission of which was to explore the complicated process of how music influences the mind and body. Von Karajan himself became a subject for some of the research by measuring his own brain activity, heartbeat, and level of static electricity while conducting the last section of the third act of Siegfried during a closed dress rehearsal. Though no public was present at the rehearsal, von Karajan reported that:
Now you would think if there is no public you cannot be nervous. Why should you? The piece begins very softly and there is no risk at all. [But]...you know that my heartbeat, from the moment before I started, went up from I have a

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very low heartbeat 67 or 68 to 170 for three seconds. Then it went down. The tension which is in yourself, which you dont feel, makes you do this. We can see where there is a danger if it remains. If you stop breathing, for instance. And we found that what we called energetic phases where you wave your arms and so forth is not tiring at all for your body. The most difficult things are very slow with intermittent pauses, where you always have to wait. Waiting is an enormous strain on your brain and on your body. I know for myself, being in the later part of my life, if I develop tension suddenly, I start to breathe very freely [in order to relax], and I didnt do this before. This is why, sometimes, after a performance, I was just dead. Today I can tell young conductors, Dont forget to breathe.10

Performing Arts Medicine To understand the many stresses and strains involved in the performing arts, a new medical subspecialty has been created called performing arts medicine. The primary goal of this new field is to prevent the occurrence and reduce the severity of occupational problems in instrumental musicians, conductors, vocalists, dancers, and other arts performers. Several medical centers dedicated to the treatment of performers have been established in such major cities as New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Detroit, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Hamilton (Ontario, Canada), and Victoria (Australia), among others. One of the largest performing arts medicine centers is the Miller Health Care Institute for Performing Artists, which opened in 1985 and is located within limping distance of New Yorks Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Under the leadership of medical director Dr. Emil F. Pascarelli, the forty-three health practitioners at the Miller Institute have seen over 7,000 performers in over 20,000 rehabilitation sessions, treating a wide range of medical and psychological problems. As coordinator of the Music Rehabilitation Program at the Miller Institute, the author has personally seen over 1,000 injured patients in over 3,000 rehabilitation sessions. Treated musicians have included string players, woodwind and brass players, percussionists, pianists, guitarists, harpists and, of course, conductors. From such extensive experience, the centers professionals have identified specific problems that afflict musicians and conductors. However, to understand stress-related physical problems, it is necessary to define a few important medical terms. Contemporary names for the cumulative physical effects of stress on muscles, tendons and tendon sheaths, ligaments, joint surfaces or cartilage, nerves and other soft tissues of the body are: Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTD), Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) and Repetitive Motion Injuries (RMI). All of these syndromes refer to painful or functionally

Jonathan Sternberg, who frequently conducts the Vienna State Orchestra, spoke knowledgeably of both the physical problems and the psychological stresses that conductors experience. If a conductor is new to an orchestra, the orchestra players may test his or her knowledge of the score by playing notes other than those in the musical score, or playing at times in a manner not authorized by the composer. Once this test of wills has been passed, Maestro Sternberg experiences a mutual bond of respect with these exceptional players. In other situations, knowing details about the lives and careers of the orchestra musicians may provide valuable insights that can improve their performance. Sternberg says, If I know that a musician is going through a difficult time I feel concerned for his welfare and concerned about his ability to get through a performance. This is especially true if a lead player is a wonderful musician, but has an unfortunate drinking problem.11 Von Karajan would agree:

There was a part [in an opera dress rehearsal] where the leading singer had a very delicate note to attack. There, I was emotionally involved, because I said to myself, If she doesnt sing it well, she will have nervousness, and will not sing it well in the premiere. It went wonderfully, but my heartbeat went up to a very high level anyway.12

53 JCG Vol. 30

limiting problems that result from repeated or continuous physical stress over time, resulting in tissue damage. Specific types of CTDs that conductors experience are: overuse syndrome; sprains or strains; tendinitis or tenosynovitis, particularly of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist; ganglion cysts, typically at the wrist; nerve entrapment syndromes, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and thoracic outlet syndrome; and focal dystonia. Each is described below. Overuse Syndrome Overuse syndrome in conductors is frequently characterized by pain, weakness, and loss of function in muscles and tendons of the upper extremities. The affected areas include: shoulder and upper back muscles such as the upper trapezius (which elevates the shoulder), the rotator cuff muscles (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and teres major/minor), and the deltoids (which extend the upper arm outward); the forearm extensor and flexors; and the intrinsic muscles of the hand involved in gripping and moving the baton. It is hypothesized that overuse syndrome results from direct self-injury of muscles, generated through their own vigorous and repeated contractions, resulting in acute micro-tears in the muscle fibers. This in turn can lead to tissue edema (swelling) and hemorrhage, and a subsequent inflammatory response. Chronic overuse may also result in deposits in the muscle tissues of a fibrous protein called fibrin. In time, fibrin can organize into a matrix, causing adhesions of the muscular fibers and elastic tissue. Through this process of fibrin deposition, organization and adhesion, muscle mass can become fibrotic, leading in some cases to loss of fine motor control. The incidence of overuse syndrome is generally associated with increases in the duration and intensity of repetitive motions (such as conducting brisk marcato or other strongly accentuated passages of music), in weight-supportive postures and movements (such as conducting adagio passages, but with weight and tension in the movement), or a modification in technique which almost invariably places an additional load on new,

unprepared muscles and other body structures. It should be emphasized that the location and pattern of overuse syndrome is frequently unique to each style of conducting, so that a marching band director using extensive elbow and shoulder movements to conduct vigorous forte passages is likely to experience a completely different location of pain syndromes than would a choral conductor whose technique features wrist and finger motions. Dr. Hunter Fry, a plastic surgeon and pioneer in research on the occupational injuries of musicians, identified five grades of severity in overuse syndrome, ranging from mild pain in only one localized body area while performing a particular occupational activity (grade 1) to severe and continuous pain, with total loss of functional muscle use (grade 5).13 Rehabilitation of musicians suffering from overuse syndrome varies according to the severity and location of the injury. The treatment of mild to moderate grades of overuse injury (grades 1-3) may require: (1) relative rest or a significant reduction of rehearsal and performance duration and intensity, including increased length of rest periods; relative rest also includes the reduction of conducting activities to reduce the risk of reinjury; (2) slight modification of conducting style to avoid extremes of movements or positionings that aggravate the condition. These may include a reduction in the intensity of whip-like movements that force the soft tissues of the shoulder, arm, elbow and wrist to absorb the kinetic energy of conducting, especially the use of excessively large or effortful conducting gestures during strongly accented musical phrases; (3) body stretches and conditioning exercises to stretch habitually contracted muscles, and to strengthen and increase the endurance of the unaffected muscles, especially those of the upper body. JCG Vol. 30 54

For more severe levels of injury (levels 3-5), the rehabilitation will most probably be longer and more involved, and include such strategies as: (1) complete rest from even the non-conducting activities of daily living that aggravate the condition, such as twisting, turning or lifting movements; (2) a regimen of monitored conducting exercises of graduated difficulty performed over an extended period of time undertaken in order to avoid too rapid a return to full professional responsibilities; (3) re-evaluation of the conducting style to modify exaggerated joint flexion or extension, to reduce overly forceful or intense postures and gestures, even if these are executed for musical expression. If over time serious injury occurs or reoccurs while conducting, then clearly a change in ones physical conducting style may greatly increase career longevity and reduce the chances of chronic problems; (4) supervised physical and occupational therapy to reduce inflammation and increase range of motion, strength and endurance of unaffected musculature around the injury, as well as use of appropriate modalities such as cryotherapy (application of cooling agents to the inflamed area), ultrasound, iontophoresis or phonophoresis (non-invasive electrical methods to induce corticosteroid medication into the affected area) for tendinitis, deep tissue massage and stretching; (5) psychological support from family, friends and colleagues to avoid reactive depression associated with cessation of professional activities; (6) gradual return to professional activities with regular alternation of work and rest cycles to avoid over-stressing rehabilitated body areas; (7) following full recovery, continued physical conditioning exercises, especially in upper body and back, to increase muscular endurance and avoid reinjury due to lack of proper muscle tone and strength.14 55 JCG Vol. 30

Sprains and Strains The diagnosis of sprain refers to damage or tears of ligaments (fibrous tissue that link bones), while a strain is an injury or tear to muscle fibers or tendons, which connect muscle to bone, or connect one muscle to another. Sprains or strains can be mild (grade 1), moderate (grade 2) or severe (grade 3).15 A grade 1 sprain is caused by microscopic tearing of the ligament, accompanied by pain or swelling but no loss of function. Mild injuries, which frequently result in tenderness or swelling, can be treated with cryotherapy (cold compresses). In moderate levels of sprains or strains (grade 2) a partial disruption or stretching may result in increased laxity or mobility of a joint or limb. In these cases cryotherapy is often supplemented by rest and support of limbs to reduce the risk of complete tears. In grade 3 sprains a complete tear may result, producing joint or limb instability and loss of function. Treatment for severe sprains or strains may require surgical intervention, followed by closely monitored post-operative physical or occupational therapy. Sprains and strains in conductors are usually associated with back-stage or podium falls, or other traumatic occurrences which, like all other physical ailments described here, require the attention of a skilled performing arts medical practitioner. Tendinitis and Tenosynovitis Tendinitis, according to Dr. Richard Lederman, medical director of the Medical Center for Performing Artists at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, refers to inflammation of the tendon itself, while tenosynovitis involves the synovial or lubricating sheath surrounding the tendon.16 Both tendinitis and tenosynovitis are generally related to a direct trauma to or the excessive use of the affected musculotendinous units. In time the synovial surface can become dry and fibrotic. Subsequent motion of the tendon through its non-lubricated sheath causes irritation, or, in severe cases, can produce grating or clicking sounds (crepitation).

Common sites for tendinitis among conductors are the elbow, shoulder and wrist. The site of elbow pain may beat the lateral epicondyle (outer point of the elbow), often referred to as tennis elbow, or at the medial epicondyle (inner point of the elbow), sometimes called golfers elbow. Shoulder pain can be the result of inflammation of the tendon of the biceps, frequently resulting in discomfort in the front part of the shoulder when trying to lift the arm against resistance. Indications of tendinitis are pain, swelling, weakness, or redness about the affected area. Severe forms of tendinitis include de Quervains Disease, caused by inflammation of the thumbs extensor tendons, and trigger finger, which refers to the formation of a nodule or swelling on the tendon of a finger as it passes through a thickened or constricted synovial sheath. The unfortunate trigger action occurs when the afflicted performer attempts to flex or extend the finger, causing the nodule to suddenly escape from its restricted canal, occasionally accompanied by an audible snap. Enlarged tendons may no longer be able to pass through the sheath, resulting in finger-locking in some cases. Mild or moderate levels of tendinitis can be relieved with rest of the afflicted area, avoidance of irritating movements, and application of cold compresses to reduce inflammation. Deep tissue massage and gentle or passive movements of the afflicted areas may also be necessary to avoid adhesion formation and to avoid muscle de-conditioning or even atrophy. Severe cases may require temporary splinting and rest until acute symptoms have subsided, or even local injection of corticosteroids around the affected areas. Another set of tendon-related problems are ganglion cysts, which are small, cystic or sac-like swellings overlying a joint or tendon sheath. In many cases the swelling is tender, tense to the touch, and fixed to deep tissue rather than surface skin. Ganglions are fluid-filled and frequently found on the wrist. They are thought to be caused by a compromise of the tendon sheath, which permits protrusion of

synovial tissue, creating the cystic swelling. As with tendinitis, ganglion cysts are frequently occupation-related, and are associated with extreme wrist positioning and effortful finger gripping or extension. Treatment consists of compressions (which externally causes the cyst to rupture) or aspiration of the cysts fluid. Surgical excision is a course of last resort. Nerve Entrapment Syndromes (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) Nerve entrapment syndromes are associated with compression of nerves, frequently where they pass between relatively unyielding body structures such as ligaments or bones, or close to body surfaces where the nerves are susceptible to external compression. Typical sites of nerve compression for musicians include the hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder and clavicle. Understandably, with so many sites of possible compression, many examples of nerve compression syndromes exist. They include carpal tunnel syndrome (involving the median nerve), cubital tunnel syndrome and Guyons Tunnel Syndrome (involving the ulnar nerve), radial nerve syndrome at the Arcade of Frohse in the forearm, and thoracic outlet syndrome which includes compression of not only nerves but also veins and arteries as they pass through the narrow space between the upper ribs and clavicle. There are several symptoms common to virtually all nerve compression syndromes: aching, diffuse or poorly localized pain, numbness, tingling, burning, pins and needles sensation, sensory hot or cold, or weakness. One or more of these symptoms will be experienced at the site of the nerve compression. In cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, the symptoms are caused by compression of the median nerve within its tunnel of transit between the bones of the wrist and the relatively rigid volar carpal ligament or flexor retinaculum along the underside of the wrist. The compression may be due to medical situations, such as polymyalgia rheumatica, hypothyroidism, or hormonal factors in the case of pregnancy or the menstrual cycle in women. Carpal tunnel syndrome JCG Vol. 30 56

may also be related to swelling of the flexor tendons in the wrist due to tenosynovitis, thus secondarily causing medial nerve compression. In this case the reduction of tendinitis-related swelling may lessen the compression in the nerve, thereby relieving the painful and limiting symptoms. Other causes of carpal tunnel syndrome are stressful occupational positions and movements. This is particularly true if the wrist is held in a non-neutral position, such as when the wrist is strongly elevated or depressed (hyperflexion or dorsiflexion), or when the wrist is laterally angled to one side or the other (ulnar or radial deviation). Treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome begins with rest and avoidance of extreme, stressful occupational activities. In moderate cases treatment can consist of immobilizing and splinting of the wrist, particularly at night when the sleeper may not be aware of pressure on the hand or extreme wrist angling while in fetal sleep positions. In severe situations local injections of steroidal anti-inflammatories may relieve the symptoms, while chronic cases may require surgical release of the transverse carpal ligament to relieve severe pain. Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) among musicians is a somewhat controversial diagnosis. This nerve compression syndrome refers to the compression or irritation of the brachial plexus (the large nerve that branches out from the neck to innervate the shoulder, arms, and hands) and the subclavian artery as they pass over the top of the lung through the costoclavicular space and the thoracic outlet (between the clavicle or collarbone and the top of the ribcage). Symptoms of thoracic outlet syndrome include arm pain, paresthesia (usually along the ulnar aspect of the forearm and hand) and motor dysfunction of the arm, hand or fingers. Of interest to conductors is the concept that aberrant arm positioning and posture directly affect the occurrence and severity of the symptoms. Dr. Lederman reports that a substantial percentage of patients with symptomatic TOS have a characteristic neck and upper trunk appearance which has been called the droopy shoulder configuration. 57 JCG Vol. 30

This consists of long, relatively thin neck and shoulders which slope downward and forward at rest,17 indicating that the lowered clavicle can compress the brachial plexus within the narrow space of the thoracic outlet. Of course, not all who have this posture have TOS symptoms, but it does seem to be a predisposing trait. TOS symptoms can be similar in some ways to the symptoms of other injuries and illnesses, making an accurate diagnosis a matter of considerable importance. Treatment is similarly controversial. For musicians, it is probably advisable to begin with conservative treatment consisting primarily of posture reeducation and exercise by physical therapists, all designed to strengthen the shoulder elevators and reduce sloping, i.e., a forward positioning of the shoulders. In the unlikely situation that conservative treatment is unsuccessful, surgical interventions are available. It is however strongly advised that conductors and other musicians who suspect the presence of TOS symptoms seek the diagnosis and advice of an experienced performing arts medical professional. Focal Dystonia or Occupational Cramp Perhaps the most severe occupational illness that could afflict any musician is focal dystonia, also referred to as occupational cramp. Focal dystonia is defined by Dr. Mark Hallett, one of the clinical directors in the National Institutes of Health, as a generally painless localized disturbance of fine motor control, which is frequently accompanied by involuntary twisting, flexing or extending movements caused by muscle spasming or cramping.18 The unfortunate aspect of focal dystonia among musicians is that it is generally task-specific: it occurs only when attempting to do a frequently employed movement or posture, such as octave playing in pianists, left finger placement in violinists, etc. Musicians with focal dystonia report experiencing feelings of loss of coordination, stiffness, clumsiness or slowness of response, and involuntary curling or extending of the fingers, wrists, wind embouchure or other body area that

becomes active while playing their instruments or conducting. The origin of focal dystonia is not known precisely. Some researchers believe it is primarily of neurological origin, specifically as a brain lesion in the basal ganglia or brain stem. Others identify peripheral injury such as physical trauma, or some of the above-mentioned musculoskeletal or neurological problems as the possible cause or trigger for the onset of focal dystonia. Various forms of treatment may be useful. They include: (1) retraining the musicians postures and movements to alter abnormal patterns and avoid the use of the dysfunctional muscles; (2) drug treatment centering on the use of clonazepam, lorazepam and others; and (3) the injection of a muscle relaxant (botullin toxin or botox) into the affected muscle fibers to reduce the severity of the undesired spasming. Dr. Frank Wilson, medical director of the Health Program for Performing Artists, University of California at San Francisco, has reported examples of musicians with focal dystonia who have regained some degree of motion control through careful postural and movement retraining.19 Postures and Movements of Conductors The preceding description of the etiology and treatment of the physical occupational problems affecting musicians may be seen as a prelude to the more important aspect of this article: how to prevent these problems from occurring in the first place, particularly among conductors. One of the ways to reduce the incidence of occupational problems is to examine the postures and movements of conductors, and to suggest where called for more biomechanically efficient and non-injurious movements, without effecting a reduction in musical effectiveness and expressivity. Some of the most common problems of conductors including voice overuse are described next.

Problem 1: Forward Lean of the Back and Shoulders, with Forward Head. Some conductors frequently lean forward from the waist, either to emphasize their musical intentions to the orchestra or chorus, or to observe the score more closely. Unfortunately, the forward lean of the body with the upper torso and head cantilevered over the hips and legs places considerable strain on the back. Tilting of the pelvis in the forward lean is also frequently associated with the forward head, which in many instances is forward to compensate for increased thoracic kyphosis or rounded shoulders and forward-set head can lead to strain in the neck, thoracic (middle) back, and lumbar (lower) back. If you, the reader, continue to find yourself doing the forward lean while conducting, you must consider possible musical reasons for this over-involvement of the back. For example, are you leaning forward to compensate for the ensembles frequent tendency to play behind the beat, or play without appropriate attention to your musical directives? Or, are you leaning forward in an effort to conduct excessively large beat patterns for musical effect? In such cases the solution may require addressing these musical issues, along with the responsiveness of the orchestra players or chorus singers, during rehearsals. Once resolved, you may then feel less inclined to break the alignment of the back during performances. The goal of postural retraining in this case is to maintain upright alignment of head, neck, upper back, lower back and pelvis, so as to place ones center of gravity in a straight line over the lower extremities. A prime target during retraining is the problem of shoulder tension, in which the shoulders are held at a higher position than necessary. With shoulder elevation, a triangle of tension of the head, neck and shoulders is unfortunately created, leading over time to severe upper-body muscle spasming and pain. To reduce shoulder, neck and back tension, it is very useful to perform:

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(1) full shoulder circles, both individually and simultaneously; (2) head and neck stretches, including head turns to each side, head tilts to the right and left, and head nods to stretch the upper back; and (3) slow forward back-bends, with the hands touching the waist, the knees, and finally the feet or floor. Problem 2: Side Twist. Another back-related problem of conductors is turning to face one side of the orchestra (first violins) or the other (cellos), but leaving the lower body in a forward-facing position. This can lead to considerable back, neck and shoulder strain. If it is necessary to turn the entire upper body towards a section of the orchestra, then by all means turn with the whole body, and avoid a rotational twist, which can result in upper back and thoracic spine stress. [Leon Barzin, recipient of the CGs 1990 Theodore Thomas Award and renowned conducting pedagogue, directs his students to make body turns only after initiating the turn with a gesture of the arm. Through a natural hierarchy of movement, a rotation of the upper torso (shoulders/chest) would then follow and function as a reaction to the initiating arm movement. In sequence, and depending on the distance traveled by the rotating shoulders, a reactive pelvic rotation would occur, followed by a knee rotation of the leading leg and a knee flexation and raised heel of the trailing leg. At the moment of maximum upper-torso rotation most of the bodys weight will be carried by the leading leg, and for purposes of balance and grace the ball of the trailing foot should remain in contact with the floor. In this manner each level of the body would avoid muscular strain, since at the point when strain might become a factor, a lower area of the body releases and joins the rotation process, thus protecting the immediate higher area that had reached its individual point of maximum stress-free rotation. Ed.] Problem 3: Knee Locking. If you tend to be double jointed, or experience back-curving of your 59 JCG Vol. 30

knees while standing, then you may be at risk for tension in the legs, thighs and lower back. In this case, it is important to release tension in the legs and knees by periodically placing your feet shoulderwidth apart, then slightly bending knees two or three times. As you do so, try to experience your lower back elongating and your pelvis rotating to a more backward position, thus placing your back into a more straight, upright, balanced and aligned position. This slight backward rotation of the lower back and pelvis helps reduce lower back strain due to swayback positioning or spinal lordosis, and helps release knee and leg strain due to locked knees. Problem 4: Stool Tilt. The conductors stool is generally a useful support and can help relieve the stress of standing for long rehearsals, such as when you are conducting the first act of Parsifal. However, one should avoid long periods of time spent with one leg on the floor, the other wrapped around the stool legs. This may result in pelvic obliquity or lateral tilt of the pelvis, which in turn can cause asymmetry in the lumbar spine, with resultant sagittal disc nuclei protrusion of the lumbar vertebrae, and back strain. Instead, try sitting comfortably on top of the stool, with both legs slightly flexed and placed on a supporting rung. The resulting spinal alignment will not only help the back, but also help avoid shoulder and neck pain due to side leaning. Problem 5: Elevated Shoulders. Another postural problem of conductors relates to shoulder positioning. If the elbows are placed at an excessive distance from the body, or if the hands are continually held higher than shoulder level, then the shoulders are frequently elevated beyond their comfort zone, leading to upper back and shoulder strain. In this case, it is important, when possible, to place the elbows at a lesser angle in relation to the body, and become aware the instant the shoulders are excessively elevated. High hand positions may require a change in podium height to accommodate a more comfortable hand and arm position. If the hands are held high in an endeavor to command performers attention, then it may also be necessary to train the

ensemble to respond more quickly or effectively to your beat patterns and expressive gestures. Also to be avoided is one-sided shoulder elevation, which can lead to left-or right-sided upper trapezius (muscle which elevates the shoulder) spasming with the resulting upward directional displacement of one scapula over its neighbor. This most frequently happens when: (1) the amplitude or vertical stroke of the baton arm is particularly expansive or too large, possibly due to using a table (lowest horizontal plane of the beat pattern) level that is too high; and (2) the conductor is using the right and left arms independently but with excess tension while cuing, changing dynamics, or conducting two different beat patterns simultaneously. Problem 6: Excessive Elbow Extension, Flexion or Rotation. As with the wrist, the elbow serves both as an arm joint and as a conduit through which pass many important soft tissues of the body, including the ulnar, medial and radial nerves, and the venous and arterial systems. The elbow also serves as an anchor for the origin and insertion of muscles that move the forearm, hand and fingers. Movements that particularly cause elbow distress are those that forcefully carry the elbow into extremes of positioning, either in rotation, flexion or extension. Typically, these involve vigorous movements of the hand and forearm that are abruptly stopped during staccato or strongly accentuated passages, thus causing whip-like snapping of the elbow at the extremes of extension, flexion, or rotation. Forceful gestures and staccato articulations are obviously an important part of the conductors repertoire. It should be kept in mind, however, that the enormous kinetic energy built up in fast, strong upper-extremity movements can cause self-injury if, in order to absorb the shock, the movements are suddenly frozen by a stiffly held shoulder, elbow or wrist. Instead and regardless of the size of the

beats rebound one should learn to quickly loosen the joints immediately following the ictus of each forceful beat. The rebound movement itself no matter how small or quick then becomes a momentary release of joint tension or muscle cocontraction, even if one is only doing a light click beat for staccato phrases. [To minimize muscular damage that can occur when marcato conducting is undertaken, Leon Barzin recommends that the muscles surrounding the operational joint in question (usually the elbow) be called into use just prior to the acute change of forearm direction needed to create the marcato effect, in order to soften or reduce somewhat the shock of kinetic energy to the affected joint. As to the kinetic energy that is produced, he feels that the wrist, upper arm, shoulder, clavicle and spine must act as transducers of the energy, thus diffusing the impact via radiation to the adjoining joints and limbs. In order for this practice to be successful, all muscles and joints involved in the transduction process must be free of tension, or the damage avoided at one relaxed point will simply transfer to the next point of tension. The most frequent and obvious example of this phenomenon is the creation of shoulder tension inherited from actions of the wrist and elbow. Ed.] Problem 7: Non-Neutral Wrist Angles. Some of the most common but injurious malpositionings among conductors occur in the wrist, where either hyperflexion or dorsiflexion (wrist elevated or lowered excessively), or ulnar or radial deviation (twisted toward the fifth finger or thumb, respectively) may occur. Excessive or repeated bending of the wrist can lead to frictional strain of the tendons whenever they attempt to move back and forth through the break in the wrist. These malpositionings can also cause excess strain on the muscles in the forearm since those muscles must work harder to drag the tendons through the angled tendon sheaths. In addition, excessive wrist angling has been associated with nerve compression syndromes. Common locations include the medial nerve where it passes through the carpal tunnel, and the ulnar nerve where it traverses the Tunnel of Guyon on the lateral side of the wrist. Choral conductors, who frequently do JCG Vol. 30 60

not use a baton, are particularly susceptible to the strains of wrist hyper-angling and finger extension/flexion, especially if the hand, wrist and finger movements are executed with force, such as in cut-offs which employ repeated forceful closures of the hand and fingers. The least injurious wrist position is termed position of function or neutral positioning. Neutral position can be simulated in a very easy drop: drop your hand at your side; the straight, flat position that your wrist assumes as it hangs loosely at your side should be the position you emulate with the hands raised. This does not suggest that the wrist be held stiffly or tensed to maintain straightness. Instead, the wrist is meant to be an extension of the forearm, so that movements involving the fingers and hand need to include a slight degree of forearm follow-through to avoid repetitive, whip-like or stressful bendings, or continuous twistings of the wrist. Problem 8: Excess Muscle Tension During Travel of the Conductors Beat. The control of travel, or the movement from ictus to ictus, is particularly important for communicating the desired style of articulation, tone color, and other aspects of the musical phrase.20 However, in long, sustained forte passages, some conductors in an effort to create a powerful legato sound retain such a high degree of upper back, shoulder, upper arm, forearm, wrist and hand/finger tension that muscle strain and spasming occur. To create the long sustained line in music, it is indeed helpful if a conductors quality of movement mirrors the quality and intensity of sound desired from the ensemble. However, it may be useful for the conductor to avoid internalizing the musics intensity to such a degree that the body becomes overly tense and rigid, even if this is a strong aspect of the musics expressive power. The slowness and smoothness of the travel may indeed be enough to communicate the musical message, and one may not literally have to emulate the stretching of a strong elastic band, or pulling strongly through a viscous medium. As with all postural and movement suggestions, this one is not meant to deprive the music 61 JCG Vol. 30

of its expressive potential, but rather to look towards efficiency and effectiveness of motion as an element in occupational health and career longevity. Problem 9: Excess Baton Gripping and Twisting. This may be too obvious a problem to bring to the attention of professional conductors. However, in our work with younger musicians (and some more experienced as well), we find that the use of the baton is frequently associated with some pain syndromes. The first concern may be the baton itself. Too long or heavy a baton or handle should be avoided; it can lead to excess hand and shoulder tension, particularly among students. The baton grip is a very personal aspect of conducting, and the comparison of one style over another is beyond the scope of this article. But, by way of general advice, these suggestions may be useful: (1) avoid excess arm pronation, with the palm of the hand continuously facing downwards and outwards, particularly in strongly articulated passages, or while firmly gripping the baton. Excessive pronation of the arm can lead in time to bicipital tendinitis or to pain syndromes of the rotator cuff muscles in the shoulder; (2) avoid stiffness or tension in the elbow, wrist and fingers while holding the baton during strongly accented passages. Allow some degree of flexibility in each joint of the arm to avoid excessive co-contraction of the agonist and antagonist muscles on either side of the joint in question. This will help reduce general arm and hand tension and increase endurance during rehearsals and performances. (3) Fingers that are not used to hold the baton should be gently flexed and not held out in extension for long periods of time. The continuous stretching out of the fingers can lead to excessive hand and finger strain. (4) Avoid effortful wrist flexion and extension, or excessive lateral wrist twisting. When conducting primarily with the wrist, try to allow a slight degree of forearm or arm follow-through during the rebound of the beat, even when conducting smaller

beat patterns. This should help reduce wrist tendon strain which can arise when the wrist is used exclusively. Problem 10: Vocal Overuse of Conductors. Though this problem is not related to the back, arms or hands, it is a problem that plagues many conductors, particularly those involved in teaching young people. Vocal problems can occur for many reasons. [For an article dealing at length with the diagnosis and treatment of vocal problems in musicians, see: Medical Care of the Professional Voice: The Conductors Responsibility (Part 1) written by Dr. Robert Sataloff, a leading otolaryngologist, which appears on pp. 30-44 in the present JCG issue.] Frequently a conductor forces his voice to be heard during rehearsals over the sound of talking, singing or playing musicians. Excessive background noise invites the Lombard Effect, the tendency to increase the intensity of ones voice in response to increased background noise; over time this usually leads to voice strain. Effortful, forceful speaking and singing may also lead to misuse of the voice, often manifested by excessive tension of the tongue, neck or larynx, or inadequate abdominal support.21 Conducting may also require both singing and speaking during rehearsals, with the conductor trying to assist each musical line by singing it, even if it means singing beyond ones vocal range and above the level of the ensemble. Other environmental problems may also lead to difficulties, especially when the rehearsal environment is dusty, dry and noisy. Humidity is a particular problem during the winter months in some locations, since home, school, and concert hall heating systems tend to become quite dry without adequate humidification. Symptoms of vocal overuse include: a change in vocal quality, such as hoarseness or breathiness; a change in vocal range, typically with loss of the upper tessitura, indicating edema of the vocal folds; pain in the various areas of the neck or the throat; or, in severe cases, vocal nodules, hemorrhage, or contact ulcers or granulomas. Treatment frequently involves relative rest for the voice. Those who suffer from chronic vocal overuse might consider

Punts advice: Dont say a single word for which you are not paid.22 This is particularly important for the gregarious conductor, who may engage in prolonged pre-rehearsal and post-concert discussions in noisy, smoky green rooms adjacent to concert halls. Steam inhalators can deliver moisture and heat to vocal cords, and are frequently helpful. If resistant respiratory tract infections occur, your physician may prescribe erythromycin or tetracycline for a full course of seven to ten days.23 Conductors with chronic vocal problems are strongly urged to see an otolaryngologist, and to seek the help of a speech and language pathologist familiar with the problems of musicians. In summary, what is clearly apparent to those in performing arts medicine is that many of the occupational problems of conductors are to a large extent preventable, if one can make appropriate changes in behavior. Also apparent is the fact that performing arts medicine has indeed begun to make significant contributions to the lively arts by understanding how to diagnose, treat and prevent occupational problems in arts performers. But perhaps the most positive contribution that medicine could make to the arts is a more affirmative concept: that using ones body efficiently in the service of music can not only avoid overstraining psyche and soma, but can also enhance artistic performance and creativity. ***** Dr. John J. Kella is Music Professor at St. Georges College and Ergonomics Specialist in Occupational Health at The New York Times. He was Coordinator of the Music Rehabilitation Program at the Miller Health Care Institute for Performing Artists in New York City and President of Performing Arts Health Information Services, Inc., also based in New York.

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ENDNOTES
1 Oestreich, J.R., Tanglewood Festival Opens Despite Weather and Illness, in The New York Times, July 7, 1992, Sec. C, p. 11. 2 Fishbein, M., Middlestadt, S.E., Ottati, V., Strauss, S., and Ellis, A., Medical Problems among ICSOM musicians: Overview of a national survey, in Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Vol. 3, March, 1988, pp. 1-8. 3 Longevity of symphony conductors, in Statistical Bulletin, Vol. 61, Oct-Dec, 1980, pp. 2-4. 4 Guralnick, L., Mortality by occupation and industry among men 20 to 64 years of age, United States, 1950, in Vital Statistics Special Reports, Vol. 53, National Vital Statistics Division, 1962, pp. 51-92. 5 Registrar Generals Decennial Supplement, England and Wales, 1970-72, Occupational Mortality. (London: HMSO, 1978). 6 Longevity of prominent women, in Statistical Bulletin, Vol. 60, Jan-Mar, 1979, pp. 2-9. 7 Longevity of corporate executives, In Statistical Bulletin, Vol. 55, Feb, 1974, pp. 2-4. 8 Longevity of symphony conductors, p. 4. 9 Chesterman, R., Conductors in Conversation (New York: Proscenium Publishers, Limelight Edition, 1992) p. 149. 10 Chesterman, p. 26 11 Private communication with Jonathan Sternberg, July, 1992. 12 Chesterman, p. 27 13 Fry, H.J.H., Occupational maladies of musicians: Their cause and prevention, in International Journal of Music Education, Vol. 2., 1986, pp. 63-66. 14 Kella, J.J., A musicians guide to performing arts medicine: Musculoskeletal, neurological, and dermal ailments of musicians, in International Musician, Vol. 87, No. 7, 1988, pp. 18-19. 15 Rothstein, J.M., Roy, S.H., and Wolf, S.L., The Rehabilitation Specialists Handbook (Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Co., 1991), p. 59. 16 Lederman, R.J., Calabrese, L.H., Overuse syndrome in instrumentalists, in Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 7-11. 17 Lederman, R.J., Neurological problems of performing artists, in Sataloff, R.T., Brandfonbrener, A.G., and Lederman, R.J., Textbook of Performing Arts Medicine (New York: Raven Press, 1991), p. 187. 18 Cole, R., Cohen, L.G., and Hallett, M., Treatment of musicians cramp with botulinum toxin, in Medical Problems of

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19 Wilson, F.R., Acquisition and loss of skilled movement in musicians, in Seminars in Neurology, Vol. 9, 1989, pp. 146-51. 20 Hunsberger, D., Ernst, R., The Art of Conducting (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). 21 Bailey, N.J., Bailey, L.L., Acute vocal cord hemorrhage in singers, in Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Vol. 3, 1988, pp. 66-68. 22 Punt, N.A., Applied laryngology singers and actors, in Proc R Soc Med, Vol. 61, 1968, pp. 1152-56 23 Sataloff, R.T., Care of the Professional Voice, in Sataloff, et al., Textbook, pp. 229-86.

This is a story about a very old cello, a young boy named Richard, and his Uncle Sal

Dedicated to Salvatore Silipigni

Uncle Sals Cello

(for Orchestra & Narrator)
by

Richard Chiarappa (listen and purchase at www.cmpub.com)

JCG Vol. 30 64

From Classroom to Podium: Teaching All of the Craft

(JCG Volume 13, No. 2, 1992)

By Jonathan D. Green
Introduction Leading an ensemble through a successful concert performance is a conductors highest profile responsibility. Perhaps an even greater task is convincing conducting students that the fundamental duties and rewards of the conductor are outside of the concert hall, i.e., either leading rehearsals or, more mysteriously, in private study. For conducting pedagogues it is imperative not only to inform students of the entire spectrum of conductor responsibilities, but also to instill in them a sense of musical priorities as they prepare to lead their own ensembles. Although one accepted role for a director of ensembles is as guarantor of the composers intentions, the perennial issue of whether such fidelity implies a strict adherence to the printed page or permits some personal, interpretive reading between the lines has become a well-worn argument. Of course, each approach is valid, given the myriad contexts available to modern music-making: surely Josquin did not expect his music to be performed without dynamic variety, nor should one consider metronome markings in the music of Pierre Boulez as careless suggestions. Between such black-andwhite examples lies a vast spectrum of gray compromises and artistic decisions. Choices must emanate from an informed blend of stylistic knowledge and score-reading acuity. Teachers of conducting should remember that their primary goal is not to endow students with a marketable skill, but rather to enumerate the skills 65 JCG Vol. 30 and knowledge that they must learn, and then to provide them with the necessary tools and resources to grasp and assimilate it all. Developing musical literacy and instilling artistic values should serve as the foundation of undergraduate conducting classes. A fluency in reading scores is absolutely necessary for the competent execution of the conductors duties. Surely no one would argue this point, yet numerous rudimentary conducting classes slight or entirely neglect this aspect of the craft. Within many curricula, the conducting class may be the only academic forum for the study of performance practice. Clearly it could serve as an ideal arena for the logical integration of musical analysis and performance. Unfortunately, many college and university teachers do not avail themselves of this opportunity. The conducting class(es) within an undergraduate music curriculum could well function as the capstone to the music major. No other course within traditional music curricula so thoroughly combines the apparently diverse (to the student musician) fields of music history, theory and ear-training. Better ways to coordinate eye, ear and viscera are certainly not legion. My own undergraduate conducting classes were taught as a segment of the music theory program. The rationale for this arrangement was offered by the chairman of the theory department. In his opinion, conducting was the ultimate stage of ear-training study. His motto was, Okay, you say

you can hear, now prove it. Admittedly, it was a wonderful concept; unfortunately, my conducting sequence began in the fall of the freshman year. Perhaps I could hear, but at that point I was somewhat at a loss to apply terminology to what I was hearing. Like so many others, this curriculum never merged the learning that occurred in other studies with related activities on the podium. Please understand that my criticism is not sour grapes: the quality of instruction was excellent. We all had substantial podium time conducting good repertoire with complete ensembles, and we had the luxury of four to six semesters of study. Nevertheless, apart from a few single-note transposition tests and an occasional discussion of ensemble deportment, few of our efforts deviated from making effective physical gestures. This format is representative of conducting courses in many fine educational institutions. The benefit of applying practical gestural skills before a live ensemble is invaluable; however, all-too-often the celebration of this activity unintentionally eclipses other equally critical skills, the introduction/instruction of which are also the fundamental responsibility of the conductor/ educator. The old adage, only ten percent of a conductors time is actually spent conducting, possibly constitutes an exaggerated estimate. The bulk of a conductors time isor should bespent studying scores, marking parts, doing research, and with the day-to-day administration of his/her ensembles activities. How many of these processes are ever introduced into the conducting classroom? Active conductors often bemoan the lack of sufficient rehearsal time. Do conducting teachers prepare students for this inescapable condition by demonstrating how to compensate for rehearsal short-fall with proper and thorough preparation? Within a schools ensembles, students either play under or attend concerts directed by faculty conductors; perhaps students do recognize in general terms the level and scope of a

faculty directors preparedness. One must not assume, however, that they clearly understand the processes and procedures (and hard work) that got the director to that point. When one advances to graduate conducting programs and professional workshops, score analysis and performance practice play a significant role in study and discussion. Nevertheless, it must be understood that the majority of undergraduate students who study conducting are preparing to become music teachers. Their most conspicuous duty will be leading student ensembles. Normally, most of these young conductor/teachers will not have had the benefit of such advanced training opportunities before entering their own classrooms and auditoriums. What is needed in their undergraduate training, then, is sufficient exposure to all aspects of the conductors art so they may successfully grow in the early years of their first teaching position. Since many music schools currently require a two-semester conducting sequence, the following two-semester plan of undergraduate study is offered for consideration. For programs that require more than two semesters, the plan could easily be expanded and enriched commensurate with the available time. In the opinion of this writer, music schools that presently require only one semester of conducting are performing a serious disservice to their students, especially the prospective music educators whose success will depend on the effective administration of their ensembles. Such one-semester programs must allot more time to conducting and related skills, especially if conducting is viewed philosophically as a capstone course. Possible arrangements that could expand conducting instruction time might include conducting in the final semester of theory, as discussed earlier, or in conjunction with form-andanalysis and orchestration courses. This proposed curriculum would best serve the students if vocalists and instrumentalists were not separated. Each should have the opportunity to study and conduct music for a variety of ensembles. All JCG Vol. 30 66

musicians must sing, and isolating choral music deprives instrumental students of a rich ensemble repertoire. Likewise, vocalists, especially those who wish to teach, should not be deprived of an opportunity to become aware of performance styles and techniques indigenous to instrumental music. Vocal students should also be challenged with the reading of transposed or C clef material and large open scores. Moreover, since choral singers are accustomed to reading and performing from a full or condensed score, the coordination of an ensemble that reads extracted individual parts will enhance their understanding of the conductors role in such ensemble integration. The proposed two-semester course detailed below presents the course content in an organized sequence. Following most of the topic discussions is a list of representative texts that should provide appropriate source materials for that specific area of study. These texts were judged and selected on the basis of their content and relevance to the teaching model. Unfortunately, a number of them are out of print but remain readily available within academic libraries. First Semester (Introduction Of Concepts) History Of The Art The course begins with an introduction to the history of conducting that includes major treatises and historical developments, as well as a survey of the outstanding practitioners of the craft. This need not be a dry and lengthy musicological pursuit; the rise in the importance of the conductor and his changing role in music clarifies many issues surrounding the changing role of music in society. In a seminar format, each student can be asked to research one conductor and one significant document on conducting that could be distilled for presentation to the class. Here, the history of gestures can be presented and the current repertoire of hand signals introduced.

Sources of relevant material Bamberger, Carl. The Conductors Art. New York: McGraw Hill, 1965. Carse, Adam. Orchestral Conducting. London: Augener.1935. Galkin, Elliott. A History of Orchestral Conducting in Theory and Practice. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1988. Schoenberg, Harold. The Great Conductors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Instruments The students proceed to a survey of instruments and voices, exploring nomenclature, notational practices and transpositions. Students can be tested traditionally on this information. If a student scores poorly on such a test, a make-up exam should be administered until the crucial facts of this component are mastered. Sources of relevant material Carse, Adam. The History of Orchestration. New York: Dover, 1964. Del Mar, Norman. Anatomy of the Orchestra. New York: Taplinger Books, 1985. Forsyth, Cecil: Orchestration (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan, 1935. Heffernan, Charles. Choral Music: Technique and Artistry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982. Peinkofer, Karl and Fritz Tannigel (Kurt and Else Stone, traps.). Handbook of Percussion Instruments. New York: B. Schtts Sohne, 1969. Piston, Walter. Orchestration. New York: W.W. Norton, 1955.

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Read, Gardner. Thesaurus of Orchestral Devices. London: Piman and Sons, 1951. Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W. W. Norton, 1940. Bowing Such a component should be a revelation for all music students. It also can be informative for string players, since ideally orchestral bowings are chosen first for sound and second for ease of execution. As an assignment, a student may be given string excerpts to which he would apply bowings. Since there will be some differences among the student versions, comparisons may provide productive discussion. Sources of relevant material Green, Elizabeth. Orchestral Bowings and Routines (11th ed.). Ann Arbor: American String Teachers Association, 1991. Rabin, Michael and Priscilla Smith. Guide to Orchestral Bowings through Musical Styles. Video tape produced by the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Continuing Education in the Arts, n.d. Choral Technique As unified string bowings help create a cohesive sound within an orchestra, unified breathing and diction do likewise within a choir. Good choral tone is the result of synchronized breathing, pitch and vowel production. General vocal technique and issues peculiar to vocal music should be demonstrated and reinforced by class participation. Here too, exercises for developing healthy vocal production and consistent pronunciation should be collected by the students. General concepts regarding standard diction practices can conveniently be presented here; however, those students who expect to be leading performances of works in languages with which they are unfamiliar should be encouraged to enroll in a separate diction

class for singers. The students should also be made aware of the need to build sight-reading skills in the choirs they will be directing. Sight reading is a valid concern for all ensembles, but singers, who have no external physical reference for pitch and often have less training in reading music than their instrumentalist classmates, must develop musical literacy on a day-to-day basis. Sources of relevant material Boyd, Jack. Teaching Choral Sight Reading. West Nyack, NY: Parker Publishing, 1975. Cox, Richard. Singing in English, A Manual of English Diction for Singers and Choral Directors. Lawton, OK: American Choral Directors Association Monograph Series, 1990. Gordon, Lewis. Choral Directors Rehearsal and Performance Guide. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989. Haasemann, Frauke and James M. Jordan. Group Vocal Technique. Chapel Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 1990. May, William V. and Craig Tolin. Pronunciation Guide for Choral Literature. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1987. Sheil, Richard F. A Manual of Foreign Language Dictions for Singers (3rd ed.). Fredonia, NY: Edacra Press, 1984. Swan, Howard (Charles Fowler, ed.). Conscience of a Profession. Chapel Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 1987. Yarbrough, Julie. Modern Languages for Musicians. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1993.

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Score Reading At this point in the course, students should be ready to undertake exercises in score reading. They could begin with basic two-part and three-part exercises at the keyboard that introduce a variety of clef combinations. These could be followed by simple transpositions exercises, to be presented at the keyboard, and through solfeggio. Written assignments include transposing excerpts of full scores to all sounding pitches (C scores) and then to completely transcribe full-score excerpts to closed score. Work in clef and score reading can and should continue throughout the remainder of the course. Sources of relevant material Bernstein, Martin. Score Reading. New York: M. Witmark and Sons, 1947. Dandelot, Georges. Manuel Practique pour letude des cls de sol, fa et ut. Paris: Editions Max Eschig, 1928 (available through Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, PA). Fiske, Roger. Score Reading, 4 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. Gal, Haas. Directions for Score Reading. Vienna: Wiener Philharmonic Verlag, 1924. Jacob, Gordon. How to Read a Score. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1944. Melcher, Robert A. and Willard F. Warch. Music for Score Reading. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Morris, R. O. and Howard Ferguson. Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading. London: Oxford University Press, 1931, reprint 1991. Rood, Louise. How to Read a Score. New York: Edwin Kalmus, 1948.

[Rarely does one encounter an undergraduate student with muchif anyfluency in C clef reading; it must be taught and drilled. However, during the teaching process, the instructor must be aware that, left to their own devices, students invariably will choose to identify a pitch on a newly introduced C clef by relating it to the already familiar treble or bass clef. The instructor can counter this inclination by starting a students clef study with Georges Dandelots clef exercises, beginning with alto, tenor, etc. By refusing to allow the relative approach to take hold, the instructor should be able to nurture steady growth in clef and score reading. Ed.] History Of Ensembles The history of large ensembles (choir, orchestra, and band) is often slighted in many academic music programs but would certainly pertain to this class and contribute to the development of an understanding of style. For this reason the study of performance practice should now be emphasized. By integrating instrumental and vocal music, musical style can effectively be studied from the Middle Ages to the present. Sources of relevant material Carse, Adam. The Orchestra. Chanticleer Press, 1949. New York:

Bekker, Paul. The Orchestra. New York: W.W. Norton, 1936. Fennell, Frederick. Time and Winds: A Short History of the Use of Wind Instruments in the Orchestra, the Band, and the Wind Ensemble. Kenosha, WI: Leblanc Publications, 1964. Terry, Charles Sanford. Bachs Orchestra. London: Oxford University Press, 1932. Young, Percy. The Choral Tradition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1971.

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Second Semester (Introduction Of Skills) Gestures Students practice basic gestures such as conducting patterns, cues, cut-offs, etc. Such exercises may be introduced, clarified and reflected as empirical, abstract exercises without a specific musical context. Additionally, exercises in psychological conducting may be explored. For example, students could be asked to conduct a short phrase, known only to them and the instructor, using hand gestures to lead the ensemble (playing a unison pitch) to an accurate execution of the rhythm, dynamics and articulation. Such a process helps a student develop the ability to convey to the ensemble what is in his mind. It also helps improve the ensemble skills of those who are interpreting these gestures in sound. Sources of relevant material Green Elizabeth. The Modern Conductor (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1991. McElherhan, Brock. Conducting Technique for Beginners and Professionals (rev. ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1989. Rudolf, Max. The Grammar of Conducting: A Practical Guide to Baton and Orchestral Interpretation (3rd ed.). New York: Schirmer Books, 1992. Analysis Throughout the semester students should be assigned for analysis a number of pieces of diverse styles. The selections should be drawn from all historic periods and include instrumental and vocal music. Throughout the term, students submit a prescribed analysis for each work which examines the characteristics of melody, harmony, texture or form, or the characteristics of a combination of these elements. The goal of such exercises in analysis is the development of memory skills (useful for all musical pursuits) and the demonstration of an

intellectual understanding of the score. Additional assignments may include essays that analyze performance concerns and offer methods for addressing them in rehearsal. Most analysis work can be done outside of class, with a brief consultation between student and instructor scheduled on an as-needed basis. Sources of relevant material Cone, Edward T. Musical Form and Musical Performance. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968. Goetschius, Percy. The Structure of Music. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser, 1934. Green, Douglass. Form in Tonal Music: an Introduction to Analysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1965. Score Marking When students develop a richer sense of the components of each studied score the methods of marking a score should be addressed. For decades this subject has been a controversial one among leading conductors and pedagogues, and ultimately each student will have to draw his or her conclusions and develop a personal practice. In any case, bowings and the placement of final consonants and breaths should be preplanned and consistent. For the student conductor, making those decisions and entering them into the score is a crucial process, because it requires the development of informed conclusions. Indications for cues and cut-offs, demarcation of phrases, or labels for specific musical events within scores are more an issue of musical taste; however, for many, the process of entering markings into the score constitutes an effective part of the learning process. The impact of the activity becomes greater than the value of the product. For others, the process may border on gimmicky or intellectual indigence. At the very least, a number of approaches should be introduced to conducting students; ultimately they will draw their own conclusions. JCG Vol. 30 70

Sources of relevant material Green, Elizabeth A. and Nikolai Malko. The Conductor and His Score. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Prausnitz, Frederik. Score and Podium: A Complete Guide to Conducting. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983. Rehearsal Throughout the term, as works are studied, learned and, where possible, memorized, they should be rehearsed by the students on the podium, as is the case in most traditional conducting courses. The practical value of such sessions, which should absorb the bulk of available class time in this semester, can be greatly enhanced if the repertoire is scheduled by genre or historic period, or both. Issues of rehearsal techniques and performance practice can be effectively discussed within the context of live rehearsals. Elements of style and solutions to performance problems can be successfully presented within the framework of actual execution. The use of a Socratic approach to the issue of problem-solving within the ensemble will help to strengthen the students musical independence and wisdom. By focusing on the production of quality rehearsals, the true test of the conductors art, effective rehearsal techniques-and not merely elegant cheironomybecome the key to podium success. In the teaching of conducting, I find it easy to neglect exploring why, when showing how is so much easier and quicker. When students understand the underlying reasons that solve a musical quandary, they become better equipped to address similar problems on their own. Clear and effective gestures are certainly a valuable and important tool, but a profound musical understanding and efficient coordination of the ensemble are the touchstones of good musical leadership.

Sources of relevant material Dart, Thurston. The Interpretation of Music. New York: Harper and Rose, 1963. Donington, Robert. Baroque Music: Style and Performance, A Handbook. New York: W.W. Norton, 1982. ____________The Interpretation of Early Music (rev. ed.). New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Rehearsal Procedures And Teaching Techniques Each meeting in the second term could begin by addressing a few specific rehearsal techniques which may or may not apply to the works rehearsed that day. If this course is indeed to be considered a capstone for musicianship studies, rehearsal procedures may be culled from the entire conducting faculty. Together with providing the students a broader spectrum of musical perspectives, the aspect of the program would create a healthy forum through which a faculty may share pedagogical concepts with each other as well as with the students. At every stage of the program students should maintain a portfolio of teaching and learning tools with which to experiment. Sources of relevant material Holmes, Malcolm Haughton. Conducting an Amateur Orchestra. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951. Kohut, Daniel. Instrumental Music Pedagogy, Teaching Techniques for School Band and Orchestra. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Labuta, Joseph. Teaching Music in High School Band. West Nyack, NY: Parker Publishing, 1972. Simons, Harriet. Choral Conducting: A Leadership Through Teaching Approach. Champaign, IL: Mark Foster Music Co., 1978.

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Organization And Repertoire Selection During the final term of conducting study (which ideally could be beyond the second semester), practical aspects of administration are discussed. They should include: hiring musicians, writing contracts, methods of purchasing and renting performance materials, printing programs, understanding copyright laws, creating a rehearsal schedule (long-term and daily), selecting repertoire, and compiling sources that list repertoire. Students should be givenor helped to compilea phone and address list of music publishers and distributors. Perhaps the most important skill is to develop a time-line detailing how far in advance of a concert one should secure the performance space, contract the performers, acquire the music, mark and distribute parts, print programs, et cetera. Although not all of these issues will apply to all of the students real-life encounters, some or most of them will. Needless to say, the importance of good organization is pervasive in all professional undertakings. Sources of relevant material Daniels, David. Orchestral Music; A Handbook (2nd ed.) Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982. Daugherty, F. Mark and Susan H. Simons, eds. Secular Choral Music in Print, 2 vols. Philadelphia: Musicdata,1987. Eslinger, Gary S. and F. Mark Daugherty, eds. Sacred Choral Music in Print, 2 vols. Philadelphia: Musicdata, 1985. Farish, Margaret. Orchestra Music in Print. Philadelphia: Musicdata, 1979. Garretson, Robert L. Conducting Choral Music (7th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993. Grosbayne, Benjamin. Techniques of Modern Orchestral Conducting (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Hawkins, Margaret. An Annotated Inventory of Distinctive Choral Literature for Performance at the High School Level. Norman, OK: American Choral Directors Association monograph series, 1976. Kjelson, Lee and James McCray. The Conductors Manual of Choral Music Literature. Melville, NY: Belwin Music Corp., 1973. Neidig, Kenneth. The Band Directors Guide. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Wallace, David and Eugene Corporon. Wind Ensemble/Band Repertoire. Greeley, CO: University of Colorado School of Music, 1984. White, J.P. Twentieth-Century Choral Music. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984. Summary The course outlined above could significantly improve the relevance of the conducting offerings in colleges and conservatories across the country, because it prioritizes aspects of the conductors work in a manner reflective of the actual task. The premise of this teaching approach is to build a foundation of musical independence and literacy for life-long learning, so that students will be able to continue professional growth while fulfilling the conducting component of their job description. As collegiate curricula increasingly insist on courses that unify elements drawn from the entire spectrum of study, the course proposed here would do exactly that by integrating historical and theoretical studies with the practical element of performance. Perhaps most importantly, it would allow students to gain a realistic understanding of all elements of the craft of conducting as it is or should be practiced. ***** Dr. Jonathan D. Green is Provost of Illinois Wesleyan University (IL). He has held the position of Dean of the College and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Sweet Briar College (VA). He is also an active composer and author. JCG Vol. 30 72

Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Forgotten Giant

(JCG Volume 15, No. 1, 1994)

By William R. Trotter
When Dimitri Mitropoulos died, on November 2, 1960, there were more than one hundred Mitropoulos-led performances in the American record catalogues; a decade later, only a dozen remained. At the time of his death, Mitropoulos was regarded, both in America and Europe, as one of the most important and influential interpretive musicians ever to work in the United States. Yet seven years later, when critic Harold C. Schonberg published his book entitled The Great Conductors, Mitropoulos rated two lukewarm paragraphs, no more. And when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated its 150th birthday in 1992, and every newspaper and magazine in New York devoted lots of ink to describing that orchestras long and distinguished line of music directors, Mitropoulos was mentioned if indeed he was mentioned at all only as Leonard Bernsteins mentor. None of the many articles I read in 1992 mentioned that in the early 1950s Mitropoulos was regarded as the savior of the Philharmonic, the perfect choice to modernize its repertory and energize it from the doldrums into which the orchestra had sunk during the years following Toscaninis departure. Yet in 1957, tormented by chronic misbehavior on the part of many Philharmonic musicians, excoriated by an endless barrage of attacks by the critics, he resigned, almost in a state of disgrace, and was replaced by Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had idolized Mitropoulos in his youth, yet for several years worked behind the scenes to get Mitropoulos fired and himself instated as head of the 73 JCG Vol. 30 Philharmonic. With his heart broken, his health ruined, Mitropoulos shifted the main focus of his activities to Europe, where he died three years later while rehearsing Mahlers Third in Milan. Thus it has come about, on the eve of the centennial of Dimitri Mitropouloss birth, that he has been almost totally forgotten, relegated to the status of a footnote in the very land where he scored his greatest triumphs, and whose musical life he enriched beyond measure. That is certainly not the case in Europe, where he is remembered with the same awe as Toscanini and Furtwngler, and where his memory has been honored by the release of many splendid live performances on compact disc. To measure this fall from grace a process that has caused not only the mans reputation but the very record of his achievements to become only the dimmest wisp of cultural memory and to understand how a man once spoken of as the next Toscanini could suffer such a fate, it might be best to briefly outline his American career. He became music director of the Minneapolis Symphony in 1937, following two sensational guest appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and remained in that post until 1949. He tranformed a decent provincial orchestra into an ensemble that ranked just below the first tier of American symphonic organizations; and in the process often to the bewilderment of his good-natured but basically conservative mid-western audiences he made Minneapolis an internationally recognized center for contemporary music. John Sherman, the

Twin Cities best music critic and author of a very fine history of the Minneapolis Symphony, summarized the Mitropoulos era in these words:
More than any other conductor before him, he regarded a concert performance as an act of faith and a spiritual necessity, a high and holy rite whereby the public was not so much entertained as led to the mountain top. And while some of the public, as time went on, did not always want to climb the peak, being of shorter wind than Mitropoulos and much less eager for the heights he had charted, they were acutely aware of musical experiences the like of which they had never undergone. There was a compulsion in this conductors music that could be accepted or resisted, as the case might be, but never, ever, ignored.1

music director, but maneuvers by Ormandy in Philadelphia and Koussevitzsky and others in Boston prevented any such appointment. And so it was his fate to finish his American career in New York, where the very qualities that made him such a unique and radiant spirit his stubborn refusal to play the publicity games both management and the public seemed to want the Philharmonics conductor to play, his nave belief in his mission to champion difficult and neglected music, no matter what the box office consequences might be, his inability to secure disciplined behavior and eventually even disciplined playing from the long-suffering, truculent, unruly members of his orchestra were the very qualities that finally caused his downfall. Yet those who plotted against him, when interviewed about the matter many years later, often admitted that, in the words of Isaac Stern, there was an immense scope to him that even his enemies recognized.2 Very well, then: what sort of a conductor was Dimitri Mitropoulos? An intensely kinetic and physical one, to begin with. Music historian Roland Gellatt described him this way: ...he conducts with his entire body. When the music soars, he is a bird in flight; when it droops, he huddles as though broken in spirit.3 This mirroring of the music score and its changes by means of constantly shifting physical analogies was, for Mitropolous, spontaneous and natural, an irrepressible function of the tremendous internal dynamism that possessed him when he conducted. On a strictly analytical level, though, Mitropoulos candidly admitted that while I wouldnt recommend that a conductor deliberately make his gestures with an audience in mind, nevertheless it is easier for the audience to understand the meaning of the music if the conductor is a bit of an actor.4 Until his doctor urged him to start using a baton, after his first heart attack in 1954, as a means of conserving energy, Mitropoulos always conducted bare-handed. The baton can achieve ensemble, he would say when interviewers questioned him about the matter, but it cannot be as expressive as the hands and body.5 JCG Vol. 30 74

From his very first season in Minneapolis, Mitropoulos supported, not only morally but in many cases, financially, dozens of musicians who have since become major figures in their profession. They included composer David Diamond and conductor Leonard Bernstein, whose subsequent professional efforts profoundly changed and immeasurably enriched American musical culture. For a decade, beginning in 1949, he was either music director or principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and was also, for several seasons, the most important conductor to appear at the Metropolitan Opera. He gave either the world or the United States premieres of more than one hundred works, some of them now regarded as among the most significant of the century: Mahlers Sixth, Shostakovichs Tenth, Samuel Barbers Vanessa, the symphony of Anton Webern; the list is both long and distinguished. Against monolithic inertia and occasional outright hostility, he modernized the repertory of the New York Philharmonic and made it, for the first time in decades, an institution of immediate and powerful relevance. And when he guest conducted in Boston and Philadelphia, he not only electrified audiences but also won the passionate devotion of the hard-toimpress musicians in both orchestras. Indeed, for a time the personnel of both the Philadelphia and Boston orchestras wanted Mitropoulos for their next

Reviewer after reviewer commented on his podium forming an intensely personal physical response to style as being odd, highly unorthodox, the information contained in the score. Watch me 6 disturbingly individual or simply strange. closely, he said to the Boston Symphony players, What made it so was the involvement of when he first rehearsed them in 1936, and I will Mitropouloss entire body. Whereas the conductor give you everything.8 most like him in style, Leopold Stokowski, made it After observing Mitropoulos during that rehearsal, a rule never to move from the waist down, focusing Boston Globe critic Rudolph Elie wrote: all his powers through his hands, He will live every part, arms, and face, personally direct the entrance of every voice, Mitropoulos used shape and focus every his head, eyes, phrase, build up every shoulders, fists, climax, underscore legs, waist, every every rhythm and blend part of himself, all elements of music together in unanimity to contribute and concord, using something to the every part of his body visual analogy he from his head to his was creating. For feet, and everybody listeners unused to who sees him knows precisely what he such an athletic means.9 style, their first sight of Mitropoulos On the night of in action was his debut with an occasion for the Minneapolis amazement. Many Symphony, January 29, of the verbal 1937, the usually descriptions tend phlegmatic Twin Cities toward the comic audience turned into (like a Greek what one eyewitness bartender frantically described as an excited shaking cocktails, mob. wrote Winthrop Sargent in The New Heres what critic John Dimitri Mitropoulos rehearsing Krenek's Third Piano Concerto in Yorker7), or lapse Sherman wrote in his Minneapolis, c. 1943 into caricature, (photo from the collection of Oliver Daniel) morning-after review: as though a Mitropoulos appeared to be a fanatic who Mitropoulos performance were some sort of gran had sold his soul to music and conducted the mal seizure. Nevertheless, when one was sitting in the orchestra, or even today, watching Mitropoulos on archival video footage, one could see the music passing through his body as if by some process of superconductivity; you could see his conception of the music come into being, dynamic, organic, recreative, flowing powerfully from his intellect and 75 JCG Vol. 30
orchestra like a man possessed. Bald, lithe, and rawboned, he exploded from the wings, walked to the rostrum with the loose-limbed lope of a professional hiker, spread his long arms and tapering fingers in a mesmeric gesture.

With the first downbeat he started punching the air barehanded, unleashing a weird repertoire of frenzied gestures and scowls and grimaces that registered every emotion from terror to ecstasy.

His quivering frame and flailing fists gave the picture of a man quaking with a peculiarly vital and rhythmic form of palsy. It was as if the music were an electric current that passed through his body to make it jerk and vibrate. This was music so full of blood, muscle, and nerves as to seem alive and sentient, and bearing unmistakable overtones of great thought and abiding spirit.10

Needless to say, this vibratory, sometimes wild style took some getting used to, even by the most willing of orchestral musicians. In a Minneapolis rehearsal of one especially tricky and rhythmically complex modern score, one of the players raised his hand and said: Maestro, tell me, at this point do we come in on the fourth beat is that an upbeat sign youre giving us or is it a sideways motion of your head?11 Mitropoulos honestly couldnt answer the question. He scratched his head for a moment, then responded: Look, never mind how my beat is. If you dont come in, its my fault, and you shouldnt worry about it. The conductor has to do it by telepathy, and if that telepathy doesnt work, then its the senders fault, not the receivers.12 Sometimes, he would move beyond an especially troublesome passage by saying: Never mind well understand each other when this time comes during the performance,13 and more often than not, they did. It must be admitted that for all the excitement of his best concerts, there were times when Mitropoulos over-conducted. Seldom was a piece of music, however modest its scope or uncomplicated its historical style, simply allowed to speak for itself. Everything was focused through the lens of the conductors personality in Mitropouloss case, through his very soul and that could at times result in performances that were so violently personal as to prevent the original intention of the music from coming through on its own terms. This was what made him a superb conductor of modern and late-Romantic music, a quirky, eccentric and often inadequate conductor of Mozart and Brahms. But then, the musical world is and always has been full of sporadically interesting Brahms conductors, but Mitropoulos virtues were much, much rarer and more precious.

There was one additional attribute that distinguished Mitropoulos from other conductors: he memorized every score, not only before he led the performance, but before the first rehearsal whether it was the 200,000 notes in a Mozart symphony or the more than one million notes of a Mahler symphony. This self-imposed discipline required enormous extra effort and time, and the cumulative strain of forcing himself to do this undoubtedly contributed to his declining health during his New York tenure. To casual interviewers, Mitropoulos had a glib answer as to why he did this: You dont expect an actor to come on stage to play Hamlet while still carrying the script.14 Maybe so, but no one would have thought twice about it when it came to works of the length and complexity of Wozzeck or Elektra. The reason for this compulsion to memorize even the most difficult scores came from some place deep in the conductors psyche: when he led a successful performance, he never spoke of the accomplishment by saying simply, Yes, that was a good performance. Instead, it was a great moral victory, a spiritual triumph, or even a gift from God. Considering the staggering amount of time and mental energy required to memorize a score such as Wozzeck, one encounters in Mitropoulos a deep current of self-abnegation, perhaps even of masochism. It was not fun to memorize those scores. But for him, the act of performing music was not just a symbolic mountain climb, a simple act of achievement. It could also be an act of expiation. It seemed to those who knew him well that the more difficult and demanding the score, the more sleepless hours of study demanded of him to master it, the greater the sacrifice required to do justice to the music, the more satisfaction Dimitri derived from the purging rite of actual performance. After observing Mitropoulos for twelve years, both personally and professionally, critic John Sherman concluded that this entire memorization ritual constituted a kind of willing self-immolation, a duty the gifted must assume, as payment for being gifted, and as an example to the world around them.15 JCG Vol. 30 76

Dimitri did not, as was sometimes said, have a photographic memory it was simply a matter of training his mind, over decades of struggle, the way an athlete would train his body. Over and over again, the composers interviewed for my book remarked on the fact that, by the time Mitropoulos began the first rehearsal of one of their compositions, the conductor knew the score better than they did. To understand how Mitropoulos viewed the conducting profession and his role as a successful conductor, it is necessary to refer to a spiritual crisis that occurred during his adolescence. The Mitropoulos family was intensely religious two of his uncles were respected prelates in the Greek Orthodox hierarchy and the young Dimitri was the most devout pilgrim of the lot. As a youth, he spent much time in retreat among the monastic communities on Mt. Athos, he sought out hermits and mystics, he even became the pastor of a group of neighboring children, to whom he would give impromptu sermons. He slept on stone floors, ate course black bread with the monks and hermits, and talked incessantly about spiritual matters. Part of what made a monks life so appealing to him was, in fact, these denials of creature comforts. Mitropoulos was intensely mystically drawn toward an early Christian ideal of self-sacrifice that tended to embrace even the extremes of self-denial and discomfort, a medieval proposition that ones spiritual strength grows greater in direct proportion to ones denial of the flesh. There is no question but that this same impulse, when it manifested itself in later decades, sometimes verged on outright masochism. But for the adolescent pilgrim seeking a purer existence and feeling himself inexorably drawn toward a very personal vision of God, the ideal of monastic life was quite romantic in its appeal especially in the setting of Athos, so isolated from the outside world that it might as well have been in an alternative universe. So the young Mitropoulos was at a crossroads. In one direction lay music, which fulfilled him as no other human activity could; in the other direction lay either the priesthood or the life of a monk. So before wholly committing himself once more to the Athens 77 JCG Vol. 30

Conservatory, he attempted to find out if there were not some way to combine the two callings. At the climax of this internal crisis, Mitropoulos had what must have been a truly Dostoyevskian dialogue with a member of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. This person was not one of his uncles, or at least was never identified by Mitropoulos as such, but he may have well been a trusted spiritual advisor to whom the uncles directed this young pilgrim. Mitropoulos gave identical accounts of the event in dozens of interviews:
He opened the dialogue by describing his love for music and his belief in its spiritual power; yet he also confessed that he was drawn, with equal force, toward the ideal of monastic life. He sought some assurance that this might not be an either/or choice, that the Church might steer him to a religious career that could accommodate both of his passions. No, said his advisor. Although the Greek Orthodox Church has a heritage of vocal music that is vast and glorious, it permits no musical instruments in its services. Surely the Church would not mind if he pursued music on his own, in his free time, Mitropoulos countered. That, too, would not be possible, replied the priest. The Church allows no musical instruments on sacred ground. Mitropoulos responded that he would be content if he could just have a little harmonium in his cell. Not even a harmonium, said the priest. I knew then, the conductor later recalled in numerous interviews, that I just could not do it.16

But he did find a way to combine these seemingly contradictory choices. He brought to the podium a sense of religious dedication, a fierce and uncompromising zeal on behalf of music he deemed unjustly neglected or that others deemed too difficult; and over the years, as he strove to fulfill this mission, he pared down his lifestyle to the severe and essential, seldom partaking of the

comforts and perquisites his status and salary entitled him to. And if commentators or colleagues chose to refer to him as monkish, he did not mind in the least. During a trip to Rome in the summer of 1912, Dimitri discovered his ideal and lifelong aspiration: St. Francis of Assissi perhaps the one man in the history of Christianity who came close, for a time, to turning the Christian ideal into a reality. In the stories about the young Francis, who was a minstrel, a party-goer and a rake before he got religion, Dimitri recognized the same tension between flesh and spirit that tormented himself. Both men had a strong streak of carnality, which both suppressed. This tension became the dynamo that fueled Dimitris accomplishments: for most of his adult life, he channeled everything into his music-making, even as Francis learned to subordinate everything to faith. Already, by mid-adolescence, Mitropoulos had acquired a bedrock Franciscan belief in the value of sacrifice and the comparative worthlessness of worldly goods, the same ideal of a dedicated and therefore necessarily austere lifestyle. Dimitri gave himself to music, allowed himself to become possessed by it, in much the same way as Francis gave himself to Christ. And there would be many occasions, when he was fired with zeal to communicate the essence of some new and difficult composition, that the conductor must have envied St. Francis preaching to the birds. This conductors manner of working with an orchestra also derived from his study of St. Francis, particularly the eighth Franciscan precept set down in 1215 in a letter to the faithful, and entitled: How Those Who Command Should be Humble. It reads, in part:
Anyone who has the right to give orders should remember that the greater should be as the lesser; he should be a servant to his brothers and deal with them mercifully, as he would wish to be treated if he were in their place. Nor should he rage against a brother who sins, but patiently and kindly counsel him and help him.17

In a 1956 interview, the conductor expounded on his Franciscan creed:

I have always found peace of mind and soul to whatever extent we can achieve this state by likewise striving at all times as I would have others strive, by acting as I would have others act. Francis taught me that to cajole or threaten is never as effective as to set an example yourself.[18]

Neither Mitropoulos nor Francis was an especially practical man, but Francis at least lived in an age when such impracticality could be valued on its own medieval terms. Dimitri, however, reached maturity in an era in which true humility and open spiritual commitment made some orchestral personnel uneasy and drew from them scorn and ridicule, especially from the hard-bitten and frequently ill-used men of the New York Philharmonic, who tended to take gross advantage of any conductor who did not tyrannically threaten and cajole them. It was easier to be Gods fool in twelfth-century Umbria than in twentieth-century Manhattan. When young musicians asked Mitropoulos for advice about how to become a conductor, his answer was often not to their liking: by all means study conducting, he would say, but only because it will make you a more complete musician. If you are consumed by ambition to become a famous conductor, you are embarked on a quest for power, rather than a quest for musical excellence, and that, he said, could be a devastating thing. Not many conductors are needed, really, he admonished one young supplicant, but good musicians, on the other hand, are always needed.19 The philosophical foundation from which the Greek conductor operated, his very deepest principles, precluded treating any orchestra, even the Philharmonic at its surliest and most intractable, in a tyrannical manner. For Mitropoulos, such a posture would be patiently hypocritical, unsustainable, and eventually would be recognized as such by his musicians. For better or worse, he was trapped within his own philosophical principles no less than JCG Vol. 30 78

within the innate gentleness of his character. That his beliefs and personality could leave him terribly vulnerable was something he understood early in his career and accepted without reservation.

are only two types of conductor: they tyrant and the colleague. For myself, I choose to be the second type.20

When Mitropoulos spoke of an obeisance full Indeed, throughout of love to every his professional life, musician, he was Mitropoulos carried two venturing into metaphor quotations in his wallet. as well as metaphysics. One of course was from In numerous interviews, St. Francis: God grant Dimitri revealed the that I may seek rather to repressed sensual side of comfort than to be his nature in his often comforted, to understand startlingly explicit rather than to be references to the understood, and to love sublimated sexuality of a rather than be loved. conductors relationship The other was from with an orchestra that Socrates: If I must the leader and the choose between doing an musicians engaged in a injustice and being form of intercourse, unjustly treated, I will which in effect produced choose the latter. a child, in the form of the musical performance How this philosophy itself. Each must give to related to the daily routine the other, he would say; of conducting a major like a skillful lover, the orchestra was addressed Dimitri Mitropoulos backstage prior to a New York conductor attempts to by Mitropoulos in an Philharmonic concert, c. 1956 (photo by Aram Avakian) draw forth the innermost interview given soon after responses of the ensemble, and the players respond he moved to New York in 1949: with music-making that surpasses their ordinary A conductor does not stand alone on the podium level of commitment. From the procreative heat of he can move his listeners only if he has this exchange springs a great interpretation. previously comprehended each musician as an
individual human being, at the same time he leads the orchestra as an entity. I believe he can do this only if he steps down from the podium and communicates to his musicians the feeling that he is not a dictator but an apostle. A great interpretation represents a communal effort, and in no case does it move from the conductors baton to a pack of subjugated slaves. Only when the conductor makes an obeisance full of love to every musician, only when he shows an open hearted interest in each musicians psychological and personal situation, can he make the orchestra the true medium for the composers message. Only in this manner can he hope to carry the audience along with him and establish communication. In the history of music, there

By working with his orchestra from these moral and philosophical bases, Dimitri believed he was not only being true to his own nature but also that he was furnishing an example of total commitment, total devotion. He took it as a given that intelligent, sensitive musicians would understand this and respond in kind. For the most part in Minneapolis, they did. In New York, even among the many Philharmonic players who understood full well what Mitropoulos was trying to do and why, the response was often grudging and tainted with tough-guy contempt.

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Mitropoulos was never, ever, a hypocrite. In a profession noted for the inflated egos of its practitioners, Mitropoulos was capable of writing these words to composer Leon Kirchner:
I wish you good luck in your new conducting assignments and that you also get the delight of that unusual and cowardly profession to lead other people to play for you and perform compositions that are written by others. That is why most people prefer to be conductors rather than composers or instrumentalists. In spite of everything that you may muster as an argument, there will always remain this one thing: that with a little personality and salesmanship, it is the easier way out to be a conductor. I always realized this fact. That is why I never denied my embarrassment at being promoted by the fates or destiny to follow this profession. One cannot be humble enough before such a privilege of getting glory and acclaim, not only from using someone elses emotions, but also from having someone else to express them for you.21

their conductor was a missionary, not an entertainer, and most were agreeable to the situation because of the high drama Mitropoulos brought to whatever he conducted. But friction occurred on different nights for different people. Mitropoulos was always on, but there were nights when even the most tolerant of listeners simply did not feel like following him to the mountaintop, when even listeners with broad taste and high intelligence just wanted to sit there and be diverted, taken out of themselves for two hours. In New York, the friction between the conductors compulsion to be a missionary on behalf of neglected music ran head-on into the realities of the box office and the impossible-to-please attitude of an audience more spoiled and fickle than any on earth. By the mid-1950s matters reached such a point that patrons would approach the Carnegie Hall box office and inquire about the length of the new or novel composition on the program that evening. If the piece were more than ten minutes long, most of them turned away. To assess just how fickle and hard-to-please the Carnegie Hall audience truly was, or how recalcitrant the Philharmonic could be, consider the tale of Mitropouloss performance of Weberns Symphony, Op. 21, in January of 1950. When word got out in the music community that Mitropoulos was going to have the Philharmonic learn the Webern piece, a large number of composers and academics, John Cage included, attended the open rehearsals as well as the performance. According to Milton Babbitt, nearly half the orchestra section of Carnegie Hall was full of listeners at the start of the first rehearsal. Everything went well until Mitropoulos started working on the Webern piece. When asked to begin, many of the players made faces and rude noises, and some minutes into the score, the Philharmonics cantankerous harpist picked up his part, walked forward to the podium, flung the music angrily at the conductors feet, then stalked off the stage. In the icy silence that followed, Mitropoulos turned to the dark auditorium, his shoulders slumped and an JCG Vol. 30 80

Interestingly enough, however, there were times when Mitropoulos spoke of his profession in the most down-to-earth manner. In one interview, given during the late 1940s, he remarked: Well, the conductors job is not really that much different from a prostitutes. It consists of performing to make other people happy, no matter how you feel yourself. . . .and then passing the hat.22 Given the conductors philosophical stance, it follows that many Mitropoulos concerts were sometimes challenging for his listeners. A concert is not a place to relax, he often said; a good audience listens hard.23 In Minneapolis, the intense relationship between the community and the conductor was so strong that Mitropoulos was able to program numerous challenging works in spite of opposition from some members of the board and management. Except for the truly calcified reactionaries, the Minneapolis audience learned to accept the experience of hearing new and challenging music. They took pride in their citys international reputation for being culturally progressive, even if the price for that stimulation was occasional bafflement or irritation. The audience generally came to terms with the fact that

expression of bewildered pain on his face. He spread his hands imploringly and said: What can I do? The harpist was persuaded, for the good of the orchestra, to put up with the Webern piece all ten minutes of it and the performance went on as scheduled. In a monumental exercise in bad psychology, however, the author of the Philharmonic program notes warned the audience that it probably has never been asked to listen to a more exacting composition, in the whole 180-year history of the Society.24 Not surprisingly, there was much fidgeting and grumbling in the audience during the performance one man yelled No! so loudly that hundreds of heads turned in his direction. At the end there were hisses and boos aplenty, which only caused the more progressive pockets of listeners to applaud more vigorously. When this demonstration calmed down, Mitropoulos came out and tried to clear everyones palate with the lush melodies and billowing climaxes of the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances. After the final tam-tam crash that ends the work, composer Milton Babbitt rushed backstage to congratulate the conductor on his Webern performance. Babbitt was startled to realize that the applause for the Rachmaninoff was scarcely fuller or more enthusiastic than that which had greeted the Webern exactly, and perversely, the opposite of the effect he would have predicted. Backstage, he found Mitropoulos in a state of icy rage, drawing tight-lipped on his cigarette and gesturing furiously in the direction of the audience. You see? he cried to Babbitt, They dont even like that s!25 There can be no doubt that, from time to time and increasingly in New York as the years of burdensome routine took their toll, the conductors internal compass lost its bearings, and he offered programs that amounted to ill-judged pot-pourris rather than coherent concepts. A case in point was a concert on October 29, 1953. The programs second half began with Schoenbergs long, tumescent tone poem Pelleas und Melisande a work that needs all 81 JCG Vol. 30

the help a conductor can give it. Then, for some unfathomable reason, Mitropoulos chose to segue into some tacked-on excerpts from de Fallas La Vida Breve! The effect was to dilute utterly the impact of the Schoenberg by throwing in what thoughtful listeners might have regarded as a quick, cheap sop to the hoi polloi. The entire program, which would have been perfectly proportionate if Mitropoulos had just stopped with the Schoenberg composition, was rendered unbalanced and compromised. On another occasion, he chose to preface a performance of Mahlers Sixth with Morton Goulds flashy and colorful Showpiece for Orchestra, and the critics blasted him for it. Not only did Goulds frothy diversion get perceptually crushed by the Mahler juggernaut, but by juxtaposing it against the Austrian composers apocalyptic seriousness and lofty metaphysical content, Mitropoulos unfairly made a well-crafted piece of light music seem incredibly tacky. Part of the problem was that Mitropoulos seemed to regard each composition as a discrete entity to be performed and digested by the audience as a thing-unto-itself, not necessarily related to what came before or after it, either on the same evening or within the context of a whole season. He did not sit down and methodically plan a whole season around a single theme, a single school, a single composer. His programs could be didactic, lopsided, even hectoring in their weight and juxtaposition. If three obscure or neglected works happened to take his fancy on a given week, then the audience would hear all three, bim-bam-boom. If the majority of his listeners happened to be on the same wavelength as the conductor, so much the better. If not, too bad. But there was a missionarys purpose in this scattergun approach, one which perhaps today we can appreciate more than his contemporaries. Mitropoulos was fighting against the ghettoization of the new and the unfamiliar. He instinctively saw where it could lead where in fact it HAS led in todays boring, abysmal, self-defeating emphasis on the tried and true and he felt morally obligated to oppose the phenomenon.

For all their eccentricity, his programs were driven by a coherent purpose: to present a cross-section of all the different musical styles of his time. Lacking precognition as to which styles and individual works would make the historical cut, and lacking the arrogance that presumes ones personal aesthetic taste will coincide with the verdicts of history and consensus, Mitropoulos knew that inevitably some of the music he conducted would be marginal or ephemeral. But at least it would have a hearing. Too many conductors and orchestra managers had already adopted the circular, self-defeating attitude that the public wants to hear only the proven canon of masterpieces or the relatively small number of contemporary works that had, through dint of repetition, gained acceptance. An outgrowth of the Masterpieces Only syndrome of Toscanini, this attitude holds that if a piece of music is not already listed in the circumscribed canon, it must not, ipso facto, be any good, so therefore why waste time and energy performing it? By the mid-1980s, the arguments against Mitropoulos erratic but enthusiastically open-armed programming philosophy had triumphed, and the effects of the Masterpieces Only syndrome were clear for all to see: aging, dwindling concert audiences, and a possible terminal decline, not only in the cultural importance of the overplayed masterpieces, but in the level of inspiration and vitality that characterized their interpretation. Ironically, todays music lovers can only feel great envy for the listeners in Minneapolis and New York. What a contrast Mitropoulos provides to the bland, predictable programs that are todays norm! What a contrast his zeal and advocacy pose to the music directors who, whether through intellectual laziness or capitulation to the know-nothingism of their local boards, seem to have infinitely less knowledge of accessible twentieth-century repertoire than does any moderately experienced record collector. Whats more, if Dimitri Mitropoulos gave his audiences heavy doses of Krenek, Schoenberg, Sessions and Boris Blacher, he also gave them new and unfamiliar works by Vaughan-Williams, Mahler, Gould, Diamond, Malipiero, Respighi, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Milhaud and a host of

other eminently listenable composers, music which requires, when you come right down to it, no more from an audience than the willingness to stretch ones taste buds, the same spirit of adventure that makes Chinese restaurants so popular. Can anyone today seriously maintain that Dimitris programming philosophy, for all its fretful asymmetry and restlessness, was not better for the institution of music as a whole than todays suffocating emphasis on the same One Hundred Masterpieces, with its gradual effect of debasing both the masterpieces and the very act of concert-going itself? In the time allotted in this forum, I cannot cover more than a few aspects of this fascinating mans tragic career. A full discussion of Mitropoulos would have to expound on his incredible generosity to others, his numberless and always private acts of charity and support, his soaring post-war reputation in Europe (ironically somewhat concomitant with the deterioration of his situation in New York), the venom and spite of many of the critics, his strangely skewed and disappointing legacy of studio recordings, and the torment and vulnerability he endured because of his sexual orientation. For a full discussion of those matters, as well as a season by season chronicle of his triumphs and failures, I refer you to my book, Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos, which will be published in October by Amadeus Press. Let me close, instead, by offering three snapshots taken from the hundreds of hours of taped interviews that formed the foundation for the research. To illustrate his missionary role at its finest, here is violist Harry Zartzians description of how he compelled the Philharmonic to understand a work that virtually every player hated on first acquaintance. The occasion was his triumphant 1951 concert performance of Wozzeck.
He astonished everyone by showing up for the first rehearsal with the whole thing memorized. At that first rehearsal, I hated it. What sort of piece was this? What was so great about it? How

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can you tell if youre playing the right notes? I thought the score was crazy and I thought I was going to go crazy trying to play it. My God, why do we have to learn this stuff? And then, it gradually began to happen. Dimitri began to explain how it was all put together, what each detail meant, just patiently untying the knots in the score. By the third rehearsal, I was really starting to understand it and I could tell the other players were going through the same process. And by the time we actually performed it, I thought Wozzeck was one of the greatest pieces ever composed. Dimitris ability to explicate and de-mystify these complex modern scores was just unbelievable.26

William R. Trotter is a writer, editor and music critic.He has published 4 critically acclaimed novels: Winter Fire (E. P. Dutton, 1993), a novel based on the life of Jean Sibelius, Sands of Pride (2002), Fires of Pride (2003) and Warreners Beastie (2006). His non-fiction works include Frozen Hell: The Story of the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-1940 (Algonquin Books, 1991) and Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos published in October, 1995 by Amadeus Press. ENDNOTES
1 Sherman, John, Music and Maestros: The Story of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1953), p. 277. 2 Isaac Stern, tape-recorded interview by Oliver Daniel, August 25, 1985. 3 Gelatt, Roland, Music Makers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 37. 4 Gelatt, p. 37. 5 Trotter, William R., Priest of Music: the Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1995), p. 70. 6 Trotter, p. 71. Quotes excerpted from numerous reviews. 7 Sargent, Winthrop, Review, The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 1953. 8 Trotter, p. 78. 9 Elie, Rudolph, Review, Boston Globe, July 7, 1944. 10 Sherman, John, Review, Minneapolis Journal, January 8, 1938. 11 Sherman, John, Music and Maestros, p. 237. 12 Sherman, John, Music and Maestros, p. 237. 13 Trotter, p. 108. 14 Trotter, p. 112. 15 Sherman, John, Music and Maestros, p. 277. 16 Trotter, p. 29. 17 Trotter, p. 32. 18 Mitropoulos, Dimitri, What I Believe, Hi-Fi Music at Home, May-June 1956.

Here is what soprano Frances Greer recalled about one concert she sang under his leadership:
The first time I actually looked at Mitropoulos during a performance, during a passage in which I was not active, it was as though he had been transformed. He wasnt the same man I knew socially or in rehearsals or backstage. His demeanor, his aspect, all of him, was transcendental. It seemed to me that he was exposing his spirit, his very soul, and it was so compelling and so personal that I could not continue to look at him. It was like staring at the sun.27

And finally, after a concert in Minneapolis, an elderly woman came backstage and grasped Mitropoulos in a familiar hug as he was on his way to his dressing room. After a moments hesitation, the conductor returned her embrace with a smile of recognition. It transpired that this woman was from Greece and had been a longtime friend of the Mitropoulos family. Dimitri, she said happily, you recognized me! Turning to the room-at-large, she gestured expansively and announced: I havent seen him since the days of the priests! You know that as a young man he went and lived on Mount Athos! Turning back to the conductor, she wagged her finger remonstratively at him. Look at you now! And you were supposed to become a priest! What happened? Mitropoulos smiled broadly and pointed to the podium: Well, here I am, and there is my pulpit.28 ***** 83 JCG Vol. 30

19

Mitropoulos, Dimitri, The Making of a Conductor, Etude, January, 1954.

Mitropoulos, Dimitri, quoted by Apostolios Kostios in Der Dirigent Dimitri Mitropoulos, Ph. D, thesis, University of Vienna, 1983.
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Dimitri Mitropoulos to Leon Kirchner, October 31, 1955. Sargent, Winthrop, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Life Magazine, February 2, 1946. Sherman, John, Music and Maestros, p. 281. Trotter, p. 293. Milton Babbitt, interview by Oliver Daniel, March 18, 1985. Harry Zaratzian, interview by Oliver Daniel, December 12, 1984. Francis Greer, interview by Oliver Daniel, October 15, 1983. Trotter, p. 171.

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Are Our Audiences Skeered to Clap?: A Brief Survey of Applause Practices

(JCG Volume 16, No. 2, 1995) By Robert Ricks
About two years ago, a letter to The Washington Post sparked a public controversy that raged for more than a year. The letters content attacked the boorish practice of Washington audiences who, it seems, had developed a habit of applauding at inappropriate times during the course of a concert or opera. The Posts response to the letter, which appeared on the editorial page, suggested that concertgoers inside the Beltway should be granted more freedom in deciding when to express their appreciation of a well-rendered symphony or concerto movement, opera aria, etc. The Posts rationale for this position derived from its apparent disdain of the tradition which obligated classical audiences to sit with hands folded...listening to people cough. The editorial went so far as to suggest that Leonard Slatkin might consider extending to the Kennedy Center faithful a directorial dispensation from this antiquated tradition by turning to the audience before a particularly promising movement and announcing If you like this part, dont sit on your hands.1 As might be expected, the Post was deluged with letters both praising and denouncing its position. A pro-applause letter pointed out the unfairness of Domingo or Pavarotti...[getting] almost instant gratification at the end of an aria while Perlman or Brendel have to wait and wait for applause. Another letter accused the Post of promoting lowbrow yahooism.2 Even after the letters had stopped (or at least were no longer being published by the newspaper), echos of the debate continued in the Posts reviews and articles. In November of 1995, a Post review noted that a performance of a violin concerto was interrupted by applause at the 85 JCG Vol. 30 end of the first movement, an occurrence judged to be quite appropriate, given the excellence of the playing. Later, however, in the Posts Great Moments in Music segment of its annual Year in Review, the opening night audience of Der Rosenkavalier was congratulated for allowing the first-act curtain to close completely before breaking the mood with bravos. In a subsequent article about the Lyric Opera of Chicagos Ring cycle, the Post noted that the Lyric Operas program book contained the entreaty, The audience is respectfully but urgently requested not to interrupt the music with applause.3 Judging from the program book directive, it would appear that the propensity to interrupt music with applause is not unique to our nations capital. Therefore, in order to shed some light on the history of the applause phenomenon, the following article is tendered. Hopefully, it will assist conductors in coping with those unexpected or unsolicited audience sounds and silences by expanding conductor knowledge of when at least some of the worlds great composers encouraged or discouraged manifestations of audience approval. It is not the intent of this survey to offer a solution to the problem. Nevertheless, in due course I will offer an opinion regarding its source. In the Classical era, rendering applause after each movement of a symphony was a common practice that has been copiously documented. Perhaps not so well-known is the fact that at Haydns London concerts, symphony movements were not only applauded but even encored. The London Diary, as cited by H. C. Robbins Landon, reported that at the initial concert of the series, the second movement of

Haydns Symphony No. 96 was encored; the third movement was vehemently demanded a second time also, but the modesty of the composer prevailed too strongly to admit a repetition.4 Haydn, nevertheless, was not so modest as to refrain from writing forte chords at the conclusion of some of his soft, slow movements to ensure applause, a practice evident in Symphony No. 97.5 After the middle movement of Symphony No. 100 (presumably the second), shouts of encore! encore! encore! resounded from every seat: the Ladies themselves could not forebear. ...6 A decade earlier, Mozarts Paris Symphony had received applause from the Parisians after each movement, but, as Mozart wrote his father, because the applause that followed the second movement was deemed insufficient, Wolfgang decided to compose a new movement to appease Le Gros, the concert manager. It should be noted that when writing the original version of the symphony, Mozart had anticipated applause during the first and last movements and deliberately composed to allow for it.
In the middle of the first allegro was a passage which I knew could not fail to please. All in the audience were charmed by it, and there was great applause, but as I knew when I wrote it what an effect it would make, I brought it round an extra time at the end of the movement, with the same result, and so got my applause da capo.7

beautifully that he was often interrupted by general applause.9 Especially ardent applause occurred during the first performance of the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, presumably at the startling entry of the timpani at the ritmo di tre battute, where the listeners could scarcely restrain themselves, and it seemed as if a repetition then and there would be insisted upon.10 According to Louis Spohr, who played in the premiere performance of the Seventh Symphony, the second movement of that work had actually been encored after its first hearing.11 Applause after movements of a symphony was still occurring in Brahmss day. Conducting a performance of the Brahms First at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1882, Hans von Blow noticed that the third movement had received less applause than had the two previous movements. Demonstrating the impulsiveness for which he was well known, von Blow promptly repeated the third movement.12 Applause during the music was still common at the beginning of this century, according to Joseph Szigeti, who witnessed it in performances by such players as Sarasate, Ysaye, and Jan Kubelik.
I can testify from personal experience that in former days, before music appreciation reared its unlovely head and made purists and pedants out of too many music-lovers, the end of the 32nd-note variation in Beethovens Kreutzer Sonata was invariably the signal for an outburst of applause.13

As he had in the first movement, Mozart was expected to begin the last movement with the famous grand coup darchet, that great stroke of the bow on a unison figure that would clearly demonstrate the Parisian orchestras ability to produce a clean attack. In the third movement, however, Mozart began piano and delayed the tutti for eight bars, at which point the audience broke into delighted applause.8 In the Vienna of Beethovens day, applause was also being heard during the playing of a movement. In a performance of the Septet, for instance, Beethovens friend, the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, played so

Szigeti also wrote about one of his performances with Richard Strauss:
At one playing of a Mozart concerto...the Master and I exchanged happy glances at the conclusion of the serenely joyous first movement. Naturally we expected a similarly happy reaction from our audience and when we met with polite and stoney silence instead, Strauss turned to me and muttered in his thick Bavarian dialect: The so-and-so newspaper scribblers and commentators! This is their workmaking people skeered to clap when I know they feel like doing it.14

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In placing the blame for skeered audiences on newspaper scribblers, one can almost hear the trumpets of Heldenleben gearing up for yet another battle between Strauss and his critics. Nevertheless, some composers apparently preferred that the applause for their works be postponed until the end of the entire composition. The connected movements of Schumann and Mendelssohn are surely designed to eliminate post-movement applause, but audiences were not always cooperative. As late as 1921, Sir Donald Francis Tovey wrote that untimely applause so frequently covered the transition between the first two movements of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto that he had never heard this remarkable passage without it being virtually obliterated by applause.15 Although he is remembered for his model program notes, Tovey was no mere teacher of music appreciation, to use Szigetis pejorative term. He was the pianist for the Joachim quartet until Joachims death, having performed with Uncle Jo since the age of eighteen.16 He also frequently accompanied Casals, for whom he wrote a cello concerto. Toveys piano concerto was first conducted by Hans Richter.17 Known as an orchestra builder, Tovey was the founder of the Reid Orchestra in Edinburgh, of which he wrote in jest to Sir George Henschel (first conductor of the Boston Symphony): We are making good progress. The difficult passages go well, and even the easy ones are beginning to sound quite decent.18 Given his musicianship, training and erudition, when Tovey labelled the impulsive applause during the Mendelssohn transition a disaster, and when he told his Edinburgh audience of Mozarts ploy to seek his applause da capo, admonishing them not to follow the lead of the Parisians, he was signalling that the days of uninhibited appreciation were almost over. What musical personality could have been powerful enough to challenge the long-established tradition of spontaneous applause? An examination of operas performance and response traditions, where singers, via the encore, could receive instant gratification from the audiences instant adulation, will be instructive. 87 JCG Vol. 30

Mozarts Figaro had been so well-received in Vienna that many arias and other segments had been applauded and encored at the first three performances, compelling the Emperor to limit encores in subsequent performances to just the arias.19 No such restrictions applied in 19th-century Paris, however, where audiences were urged to applaud and encouraged to demand encores by members of what Berlioz called the Success Bureau. This Bureau, of course, was a claque, a practice which could trace its origins to the Emperor Nero, who had set up a guild of men to applaud his singing. Accordingly, Berlioz refers to the Parisian claque as Romans and to its leader as the Emperor. In his Evenings With the Orchestra,20 (which informs us that bored orchestra players would talk freely amongst themselves during the performance of second-rate operas), Berlioz recounts a conversation between the self designated Emperor and the theaters manager. It reads:
[Emperor:] Sir, you are at the head of a dramatic concern of which I know the weak and strong points. So far you have no one in charge of Success: allow me to take it on. I offer you a cash down-payment of twenty thousand francs and a royalty of ten thousand. [Manager:] I want thirty thousand in cash (the usual managers reply). [Emperor:] Ten thousand shouldnt spoil a bargain between us. Youll have it by tomorrow. [A Musician:] What are you talking about? Its the manager who is paid? I had always thought it was the other way round. [Emperor:] No indeed; those positions are bought, just like seats on the stock exchange....

Once an agreement was reached, the Emperor would go forth and recruit his claque from among students and the stage-struck. They would pay the Emperor a small fee for tickets and in return, were trained to

applaud on cue. But how did the Emperor recover the money he paid to the concert manager? A performer who wanted to be sustained by the claque would offer free tickets to the Emperor who would respond, you see, I dont need any. What I need tonight is men, and to get them I have to pay them. The hint was taken and the performer would render unto Caesar five hundred francs.
The performer who ranks above the one who has just let himself be bled, soon hears about this generous deed, and the fear of not being taken care of according to his merit and relative to the extraordinary care being lavished upon his inferior, induces him to offer the promoter of success an unquestioned thousand-franc note, sometimes more...and so on from the top to the bottom of the whole theatrical personnel. You can now understand why and how the theatrical manager is paid by the chief of the claque and how easily an Emperor gets rich.

Certainly, this is vintage Berlioz. He goes on to define the applause from families of the performers as the claque which Nature supplies. Who among us has not benefitted from the applause of our relatives? Nevertheless, in such a scenario in Paris, an Emperor would convince us that amateur applause has a poor attack,...no technique, no ensemble, and hence no power. Better to leave the clapping to him who can rouse his Roman troops with such signals as:
Brrrrr! ! when this sound comes from the lips of the Emperor...it is a signal...that the hand-clapping must be executed with great speed and accompanied by stamping. It is the order to dent the lid. Caesars two hands, brought together in one vigorous slap, then raised in the air for the space of a second, give the order for a sudden burst of laughter. If the two hands remain in the air longer than usual, the laughter is to be prolonged and followed by a round of applause. Hum! uttered in a particular way should stir tender emotion in Caesars soldiers; on hearing it they are to melt, shed a few tears, and murmur their approbation.

Berlioz goes on to relate how he originally believed that his Mass of 1825 had been well received, but was subsequently convinced by an Emperor that its success had been less than it might have been.
[Emperor:] Why the devil didnt you let me know? Wed have gone in a body. [Berlioz:] I didnt know you were so fond of sacred music. [Emperor:] We dont like it at all, what an idea! But we would have warmed up your audience to the Queens taste. [Berlioz:] How do you mean? You cant applaud in church. [Emperor:] I know. But you can cough, blow your nose, shift your chair, scrape your feet, hum and lift your eyes to heaventhe whole bag of tricks, dont you know. We could have done a sweet job for you and given you a real success, just as we do for a fashionable preacher.

If the reader has not already equated the claques inducement of applause to televisions use of canned laughter, we might point out that Berlioz saw fit to confess that some performers sank so low that if the living could not be hired to applaud them, they would make do with the applause of a set of dummies, even of a clapping machine, for which they would not be above turning the crank themselves. (The only applause the performers might disdain was that coming from a string player tapping the back of his instrument with the wood of the bow: in such cases, the singers could not be certain whether the applause was prompted by admiration or ridicule.) It is not surprising to learn that Richard Wagner (whose Die Meistersinger concluded with Hans JCG Vol. 30 88

Sachss resounding praise of Holy German Art) reacted to this Parisian excess. In 1876, when he opened the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, he attempted to control the audience as thoroughly as he controlled the musicians. Because it was Wagner and because it was Bayreuth, I am reasonably convinced that the manners imposed on the Bayreuth audiences eventually became the accepted behavior of all audiences, not just for opera but for all classical music. The force needed to stem the tide of audience spontaneity was now in place. One of Wagners first innovations to ensure the quiet attention of his audience was to have them sit in darkness. Although a darkened house was not revolutionary at the time of the founding of Bayreuth, the idea was so unusual that it was noted in newspaper accounts of the festival and by such figures as Tchaikovsky (darkness reigns in the auditorium), Edward Hanslick (auditorium is completely darkened), Felix Weingartner (impenetrable darkness), and Sir George Grove (dark theater).21 Mark Twain, an astute opera lover, wrote that in New York, patrons sit in a glare and wear their showiest harness: they hum airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. Of the Bayreuth scene he wrote that the listeners dress casually and sit in the dark and worship in silence.22 Just so today. When the house lights are lowered in our own halls, we take for granted what that Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw, called the Bayreuth hush.23 Controlling the applause of the audience, however, was not as simple a matter as turning off the house lights. Shaw (who in his young days was a professional music critic, writing under the tongue-in-cheek nom de plume Corno di Bassetto) noted that prior to Wagner, the separate numbers in operas had been arranged to catch the encores that were then fashionable.24 By abandoning the sequence of independent, self-standing pieces and replacing them with music that was constantly in the process of becoming, Wagner, as he revealed to Matilde Wesendonk, created a new musical form, the secret of which was his art of transition.25 One section of music flows without break into the 89 JCG Vol. 30

next, leaving no place for the audience to applaud or for encores to be inserted. It appears, however, that Wagners Bayreuth audience had to be carefully trained to withhold its applause. Edvard Grieg, who attended the first Ring as a correspondent for a Norwegian journal, reported that applause had occurred during Das Rheingold. However, before the next days Walkre, Wagner had arranged for placards to be put up to tell the audience not to interrupt the performance with applause while it was still under way because it interfered with the continuity of the work.26 Because the restriction of applause was such a new concept, Grieg wrote that if Wagner had wanted no applause during the performance, he should have sent out his rules for conduct in the theater well before it all started, for he must have known that people would break in with their applause.27 After the 1876 Ring, no performances were given at Bayreuth until the premiere of Parsifal in 1882. Once again, Wagner was faced with the task of training an entirely new audience. Angelo Neumann, a director of the Leipzig Opera who had already taken the Ring on tour, reported that after the first performance of Parsifal, Wagner appeared on stage and
... begged the public not to applaud again as they had during the course of the performance. So the second performance passed with a calm and reverent silence. This called for another speech from the Master. He must explain, he said, that it was only during the performance itself that he objected to applause; but the appreciation due to the singers at the fall of the curtain was quite a different matter. So, at the next performances, the people expressed their enthusiasm at the close of each of the acts.28

After Wagners death in 1883, his wife, Cosima, gradually but firmly assumed dictatorial powers at Bayreuth, becoming what Shaw called the chief remembrancer of Wagners staging and tempos.29 Lilli Lehman, the original Woglinde, who had returned to sing Brunnhilde in 1896, said that to get her way, Cosima would say, You remember,

Siegfried, do you not, that it was done this way in 1876. Siegfried, who had been just six years old at the time, would dutifully respond, I believe you are right, mamma.30 In addition to the Ring and Parsifal, other works by Wagner were added to the Festival and performed in such a mood of solemnity and quasi-religious sanctity31 that Mark Twain called his trip to Bayreuth a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Wagner. 32 It goes without saying that the darkened theater and deferred applause survived Wagners death. Such a radical change in audience behavior could not have been sustained without a strong esthetic premise: the longer applause is delayed, the more intense it becomes when it is finally unleashed. A fine description of this effect is given by Mark Twain, who heard Tannhuser, his favorite opera, along with Tristan and Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1891. To fully appreciate Twains assessment quoted below, it should be remembered that, in addition to being a great writer, as a popular figure on the lecture circuit, he became a great performer as well, with substantial first-hand audience experience.
I have seen all sorts of audiences...but none which was the twin to the Wagner audience at Bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depth; that there are times when they want to rise and wave their handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet, you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded out and died, then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause.33

Twains description makes it amply clear that at Bayreuth, every note penned by the composer was heard without interruption. Applause restrictions caused the emotions of the audience to build like the pressure within a pre-eruption volcano, to erupt only at the end of an act in a spectacular explosion of applause. We know from our own experience that Wagners darkened house and deferred applause were effective because they are the conditions under which we usually work. But was this set of conditions imported from Bayreuth? Were the productions at Bayreuth prestigious enough to influence the rest of the musical world? Apparently so. By 1891, Festival tickets were being scalped at three or four times their face value,34 and the audience had become so international that, except from the stage, hardly a word of German was to be heard there!35 In the words of todays travel agents, Bayreuth had become a major destination to be visited by anyone of cultural inclinations or pretensions. Many Americans went to Bayreuth simply because it had become the summer in thing to do. They were derided as Wagnerized Yankees and were thought to be mere philistine poseurs.36 Such people could have been relied upon to brag of their cultural achievements when they returned home and may well have shown what Shaw called connoisseurship in the display of their Bayreuth manners. Despite the obvious social prestige that derived from a Bayreuth visit, some people still came for musical reasons. Although he is supposed to have joked that Wagners music is better than it sounds, Mark Twain had been an admirer of Tannhuser for many years, writing that it was music to make one drunk with pleasure, music to make one...beg his way round the globe to hear.37 In 1892 Shaw wrote that an intermezzo in an opera by Bantock had been encored, not because the audience had particularly liked it, but because the frequently encored intermezzo in Cavalleria Rusticana had put it into its head that to recognize and encore an intermezzo showed connoisseurship.38 The crowd had found a JCG Vol. 30 90

safe place to interject its applause and, in doing so, they had shown that they were connoisseurs of the new etiquette which allowed applause only at appropriate places. There are, of course, no intermezzi in the Ring or Parsifal, but can we not imagine that those who had made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth and had learned the new rules of conduct might have shown off their erudition back home by stifling the applause of their churlish neighbors who dared to applaud at the wrong time? Wouldnt the uninitiated have become skeered to clap? Professional musicians, of course, continued to travel to Bayreuth, and, to continue our speculation, they surely would have disseminated Wagners concert deportment. Henry (later Sir Henry) Wood attended the Festival many times and became friendly with Felix Mottl, a name familiar today from his notations in the Dover editions of some of Wagners operas. After being assistant to Hans Richter for the first Ring, Mottl eventually became a prominent Bayreuth conductor, also conducting Wagner in London, where he caused Wood to be named musical advisor for a series of Wagner concerts.39 Wood began his famous Promenade Concerts in 1895 and, as reported in this journal, he allowed no applause between movements.40 And is it not possible that such a practice by a conductor of Woods stature could have caused Tovey (who himself attended the Festival in 1897) to call the spontaneous applause that occurred after the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto a breach of concert manners? Another assistant to Richter in 1876 was Anton Seidl who later conducted at the Met and who was to lead the New York Philharmonic in the premier of Dvoraks New World Symphony. Wagner had praised Seidl to Angelo Neumann, and when Neumann took the Ring on tour throughout Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, and Italy, Seidl was his conductor.41 From Szigeti we learn that the Italian audiences, not yet attuned to the new etiquette, invariably applauded the Rhine Maidens. To Neumann, called by Szigeti an over-awed disciple of Wagner, this was sacrilege. But Seidl snorted in reply, Sacrilege? 91 JCG Vol. 30

Just you wait and watch the old mans eyes light up when I tell him! Sacrilege indeed!42 If this contradictory reaction between Neumann and Seidl, both echt Wagnerians, is not confusing enough, Robert Gutmann reports that during the original run of Parsifal, the Flower Maidens were received with clapping and bravos. This uncouth behavior was angrily suppressed by the faithful who, because of the darkened house, did not know that the Philistine was Wagner himself.43 Felix Weingartner confirms this and writes that he had been warned of it, given that Wagner was accustomed to showing his approval at that point in the opera.44 Although our own conventions of proper audience comportment seem to have come from Bayreuth, and despite Wagners Rules for Conduct in the Theater and his detailed directives to the audience, Wagners personal concert practices are of little use when it comes to deciding when it is proper to applaud. Currently, faint reverberations of the exchange of opinions concerning applause referred to at the beginning of this article may still be read in the Post. Last July a review of Yo Yo Mas performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto said that he received a well-earned round of applause after the first movement. This occurred at Wolf Trap Farm, where the refreshing spontaneity of the outdoor audience recalled concerts of an earlier era.45 In November, on the other hand, a review chided a Kennedy Center audience for an awful lot of ill-timed and inappropriate applause during a performance of the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony.46 Both the pro and con aspects of the applause at these two concerts can be defended. The end of the first movement of the Dvorak is so exciting that applause seems almost necessary, while an outburst of applause does shatter the serenity of the end of the Vaughan Williams On the Beach at Night Alone. Perhaps the most important thing to note in these reviews is the mere fact that applause was mentioned at all. Some consensus on the timing of applause seems necessary, but lacking Mozarts Emperor to decree it or Berliozs Emperor to prompt it, our audiences remain confused. It was stated earlier that this article would not presume to

solve the problem. It indeed has not, but hopefully it has demonstrated that most of the pre-twentiethCentury composers expected (can we say endorsed?) more uninhibited applause than is deemed proper today. ***** Robert Ricks was Professor Emeritus at The Catholic University of America (DC) and Conductor Emeritus of the University Orchestra, which he conducted for over 2 decades in concerts at the Kennedy Center, Philadelphias Academy of Music and Carnegie Hall. ENDNOTES
1 Close to Home, The Washington Post, 23 April 1995; Music and Manners, 30 April 1995. 2 Music and Manners, The Washington Post, 15 May 1995. 3 Music, The Washington Post, 17 November 1995; Classical, 31 December 1995; Opera of the Big Shoulders, 31 March 1996. 4 H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn Symphonies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), p. 50. 5 Robbins Landon, p. 51. 6 Robbins Landon, p. 59. The reviewers middle movement is, of course, confusing, but since the second movement ends with such dynamic strength, my feeling is that it was at this point that the Ladies lost their ability to forebear. 7 Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis, vol. 6, Supplementary Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 22. 8 Tovey, Supplementary Essays, p. 23. 9 Donald W. MacArdle, Beethoven and Schuppanzigh, The Music Review, vol. 26 (1965), p. 9. 10 Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Life of Beethoven, ed. Elliot Forties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 908. 11 Louis Spohr, Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p.187. 12 Johannes Brahms, The Herzogenberg Correspondence, trans. Hannah Bryant (New York: Da Capo Press, 1987), p. 150.

13 Joseph Szigeti, With Strings Attached (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1947), p.194. 14 Szigeti, p.195. 15 Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis, vol. 3, Concertos (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p.178. 16 Mary Grierson, Donald Francis Tovey (London: Oxford University Press, 1952) p. 31. 17 Grierson, p. 108. Tovey liked to repeat to soloists at rehearsal Richters remark to him at rehearsal: Have you a vish? Come on, I am not touchy! 18 Grierson, p.186. 19 Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980), s.v. Mozart, by Stanley Sadie. 20 Hector Berlioz, Evenings With the Orchestra, trans. Jacyues Barzun (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), pp. 76-90, and 95-98. N.B.: Quotes cited in the body of this article have been freely paraphrased.
21 Robert Hartford, Bayreuth: The Early Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 54, 74, 129, and 139.

22 Hartford, p.154. 23 Hartford, p.162. Not everyone was ready to grant Wagner full attention. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who painted Wagners portrait, writes, The cries of the Valkyries are all right for a bit, but when they last six hours at a stretch they are enough to send you mad. I shall always remember the scandal I caused when, at the end of my tether, I struck a match before I left the hall. [Edward Lockspeiser, Music and Painting (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p.161.] 24 George Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Music, ed. Eric Bentley (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1955), p. 30. 25 Robert W. Gutmann, Richard Wagner (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), p. 381. 26 Hartford, p. 67. 27 Hartford, p. 68. 28 Hartford, p.129. Parsifal, of course, is a special case due to its religious aspect and the custom gradually grew at Bayreuth to allow applause only after the second and third acts. Robert Gutmann writes that many who applaud a Bach Passion maintain an ecclesiastic silence throughout and after Parsifal out of a naive sense of propriety. (Gutmann, p. 444.)

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29 Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth, A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p.106. 30 Spotts, p.116. 31 Spotts, p. 99. 32 Hartford, p. 149. 33 Hartford, p. 154. The audiences desire to wave their hankerchiefs in appreciation is not something that Twain just imagined. Nineteenth-century audiences had apparently been used to doing just that. At the first performance of Beethovens Ninth, either after the Scherzo or at the end of the Symphony, while Beethoven was still gazing at his score, Fralein Unger, whose happiness can be imagined, plucked him by the sleeve and directed his attention to the clapping hands and waving hats and handkerchiefs. (Thayer, p. 909.) 34 Spotts, p. 110. 35 Spotts, p.113. 36 Spotts, p. 25. 37 Hartford, p.153. Twains daughter, Clara, was a soprano who gave recitals with her husband, pianist Ossip Gabrilowich, conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 1919 to 1935. 38 Shaw, p. 170. 39 Eric Blom, ed., Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: St. Martins Press, 1954), s.v. Wood, (Sir) Henry, by H. C. Colles. 40 Henry Bloch, Books in Review, Journal of the Conductors Guild, vol. 15, no. 2, p.128. 41 Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 6 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 683. 42 Szigeti, p.196. Szigeti had said that he wasnt sure of the conductor, suggesting that it might have been Richter. In addition to spontaneous applause, we note that in Italy (so that the audience could follow the libretto) the house lights were left on until Toscanini, a Bayreuth conductor, insisted otherwise. (Marcello Conati & Mario Medici, traps. William Weaver, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p.106. 43 Gutmann, p. 444. 44 Hartford, p.131. Gutmann (p. 444) believes that Wagner wanted to treat Act II as Italian opera, but Frau Wagner may have had a different opinion regarding her husbands breach of his own rules. One of the Flower Maidens was the young Carne Pringle with whom Wagner may have been having an affair. In any case, the announcement of a visit from her

appears to have provoked the furious row between Wagner and Cosima that led to his fatal heart attack. (Barry Millington, The Wagner Compendium (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992), p.121.) 45 Slatkin in Control, The Washington Post, 29 July 1996. 46 Oratorio Societys Sea Symphony, The Washington Post, 12 November 1996.

93 JCG Vol. 30

Benjamin Brittens WAR REQUIEM: Notes on Conducting

(JCG Volume 23, 2002) By Paul Vermel
The War Requiem was commissioned for the consecration of the Cathedral of St. Michael in Coventry, which took place on May 30, 1962. The cathedral, the first to be built in England in many years, was on the site of (but not directly upon) the original medieval cathedral, which had been nearly completely destroyed by bombs during World War II. In the preface to the full orchestral score, published by Boosey & Hawkes in their Masterworks Series, Malcolm MacDonald says this about the work:
Inspired by the acoustical space in which the premiere was to take place, Britten conceived the War Requiem for three spatially and instrumentally differentiated groups, needing two conductors. The Latin text is set for soprano, chorus and orchestra; [Wilfred] Owens poetry is set for tenor, baritone and a separate chamber orchestra of 12 players; while a choir of boys voices sings Latin hymns with organ accompaniment.

In conducting this work I experimented with the placement of the Chamber Orchestra, and settled on a rectangular space to the left of the podium, with the tenor and bass soloists in front of the podium.
Example 1 Perc. Bass Horn Bsn. Ob. Vc. Vln II Timp. Harp Cl. Fl. Vla. Vln I Chamber Orchestra Barit. Tenor

Conductor

This placement permits the use of the left hand for warnings for the Chamber Orchestra to be ready, given a certain number of measures before their entrances. These warnings are given while conducting the large forces with the right hand/baton. The suggestion for dealing with problems connected with conducting the boys choir, particularly in the final movement, is given in the Appendix. 1. REQUIEM AETERNAM (chorus seated) I suggest beating the 5/4 measures in a four pattern, with an extra beat in the center (Ex. 2). This gesture shows only one downbeat per measure, which is less confusing than conducting 3 + 2 or 2 +3. The Boys Chorus stands two bars before 3, and it is helpful to have the harmonium or organ, which accompanies the boys add a C (Ex. 3) to the chord
Examples 2 and 3

At the first performance of the War Requiem in the Coventry Cathedral, Benjamin Britten conducted the Chamber Orchestra and two male soloists, and Meredith Davies conducted the full orchestra, soprano soloist and chorus. Having two conductors certainly makes life easier for each. The physical setting in the Cathedral must have made this arrangement feasible and practical; however, on a normal concert stage using two conductors is neither convenient nor visually or dramatically convincing. One single conductor is less distracting, more efficient and can work very well, but the technical and gestural problems for a single conductor are considerable. I hope that these notes that address the various conducting problems in the War Requiem are helpful.

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before 3 to help the boys hear their entering pitch in the correct octave. Conduct quarter notes to begin the boys music, and conduct quarter notes in the 3/4 measures. Conduct the 4/4 measures in 2. In the 6/4 bars combine patterns to communicate the music accurately: dotted quarter in one gesture, followed by quarter-half, as at the second part of the 5th bar after rehearsal 3. Conduct the 3/2 measures in 3, and conduct the 5/4 measures in quarter notes, 3 + 2 (as at 4 before rehearsal 7). The Boys Chorus director could sit nearby, whether the boys are placed on stage or off, and warn them of upcoming entrances, particularly later in the work. At four measures before rehearsal 9 warn the Chamber Orchestra with the left hand, indicating the passing measures with four fingers, then three, two and one. Cue the Chamber Orchestra on the last beat before 9. Cue the chimes, and release the Chorus on beat two of rehearsal 9. Give a clear cut-off to the orchestra at the second bar after 9, while conducting the Chamber Orchestra with the left hand. The tenor soloist stands on the downbeat of 9. In this section conduct the 5/4 measures as before, in a four pattern, with an extra beat in the center (see Ex. 2). At 13 (always animated) conduct the 6/4 measures in 2, the 3/4 in 1 the 5/4 in two (with division of 3 + 2 or 2 + 3, according to the needs of the music) and the 3/2 measures in 3. The 7/4 bar before rehearsal 15 should be conducted in 3 (2 + 2 + 3). The 3/4 bar before 16 should be conducted in quarter notes, with slightest stretch of tempo with the diminuendo. The Chorale at rehearsal 16 requires a subtle beat. The gestures should not be a clear two or four, but a smooth tenuto beat, like a broken beat that simulates a subdivision of the half note which leads each chord change separately but with a connecting gesture. (Its easier to demonstrate than to describe!) A pause for latecomers to enter the hall could come at the end of the first movement. 2. DIES IRAE (Chorus stands) The fermata over a whole note equals approximately 6 beats. Conduct the bar before 17 95 JCG Vol. 30

in 2 to set up the as three pattern for the 7/4 (2 + 2 + 3). This meter is difficult for everyone, including the conductor. It requires small, sharp beats and absolute metronomic precision. The tendency for the chorus and orchestra is to rush the three quarter notes (that usually fall at the end of the measure) there may be a subconscious leftover feeling of a triplet. It is not necessary to dictate each of the three quarter notes with equal emphasis, as this can become too busy. Choose the most appropriate gesture to fit the music and the text (which are perfectly wedded)some patterns will be quarter-half, some half-quarter and some will be in one. At two before 18 follow the text and beat 3 + 2 + 2. Be very clear and careful with this change! Conduct three bars before 19 in 4, but one bar before 19 in 2, for the same reason as given for one before 17. Conduct two before 20 3 + 2 + 2 (same reason at two before 18). At four measures after 20, cue the contrabassoon, timpani, and bass drum on two, and then show the diminuendo. Cut the brass on the fourth beat (on the tied 8th note), and then hold the fermata. However, at 7 after 20, beat four through the diminuendo, and cut off on the downbeat of the 2/4 bar. The situation with the fermatas is similar at five before 21, but here you cut the brass on 4 and stop your gesture on the downbeat of the 2/4 measure. Conduct one before 21 in 2. At 21 the ensemble and precision are even more difficult because of the tutti and the fortissimo dynamic, therefore your gesture must be especially rhythmic and clear. Beginning at three before 22, conduct 3 + 2 + 2, for two measures, and then resume the 2 + 2 + 3 pattern for one measure. Conduct the 4/4 in 4, being sure to cue the 2nd trumpet at three after 22, then conduct 1 before 23 in 2, as a transition to the 7/4. At four before 24 warn the Chamber Orchestra with the same count-down of measures (4-3-2-1 fingers of the left hand), being careful to maintain the 7/4 precisely and conducting 3 + 2 + 2. At the bar before 24 one may conduct as 2 + 2 + 3, which will enable you to stretch the final three quarter notes, setting up the slower tempo at 24. The Chorus should sit and

the baritone soloist stand on the second measure of 24. Before 28 the oboe solo (eight bars before) and flute solo (five before) should be slightly less lively than the previous solos (at 24 and 25). At four before 28, warn the large orchestra with the count-down (4-3-2-1 with fingers of the left hand). The baritone soloist sits at 1 before 28, and the soprano soloist (sitting with the chorus) stands on the fermata it is important dramatically that these two soloists do not move together. At 30 the semi-chorus sings while seated. The tempo can move forward ever so slightly, and return a tempo with the sopranos return at 31. The same tempo fluctuation can be employed when the chorus enters at 5 after 31. Four measures before 33 warn the chamber orchestra with the same count-down with the left hand. The soprano soloist sits at 1 before 33. The baritone and tenor soloists stand two or three measures after 33. At four before 39 warn the four trumpets in the large orchestra with the count-down gesture with the left hand (be sure to let them know that you are going to do this!). The soloists sit after 39, and the entire chorus stands on the fifth measure. At 43 move ahead a little bit, relaxing the tempo at two bars before 44. At four before 45 there should be a poco ritard. At 45 beat in a quick, precise five (as before: a four pattern with an extra beat in the center). At four before 49 warn the chamber orchestra with the usual count-down with the left hand, but at one bar before 49 beat a four pattern, indicating three quarter notes and a lengthened (half note) fourth beat, which establishes the half note beat of the meter at 49 (Ex. 4).

At five after 49 and one before 50 cue the trumpets but do not conduct them. This is less confusing for the rest of the orchestra, so simply sustain and control the diminuendo. However, at five bars after 50 it may be necessary to conduct the trumpets (unless they can play together by themselves). If you do conduct the trumpets, hold the tutti with the baton, and conduct the trumpets, with the left hand, as four measures of 2/4. Do warn the rest of the orchestra of this system. At one before 51 cue the 1st trumpet but dont conduct. At five after 51, cue trumpet 2, but dont conduct. At four before 52 warn the four trumpets with the countdown gesture (4-3-2-1) with the left hand. The transition at rehearsal 52 is a tricky maneuver. For the horns, trumpet, timpani, bass drum, and piano, I choose to conduct the first two measures 4, 4, 3, as if it were three measures. The final beat of the 3 (last beat of the 7/4 measure) is the cue for the Tutti (full orchestra) and chorus at 3 after 52. The chamber orchestra should maintain their slower tempo at 52 and therefore they should release after 8 beats of the conductor. Note that in the score the release of the chamber orchestra is not aligned with that beat! The tempo, quarter note = 160, given by Britten at the beginning of the Dies irae, and repeated here, should be carefully adhered to. The utmost clarity and precision in the 7/4 is required. The basic division of the 7/4 is 2 + 2 + 3, except where the music and text change, requiring 3 + 2 + 2, as at the ninth and tenth bar after 52 and the three bars before 53. At 53, return to 2 + 2 + 3. At two measures before 54, clearly beat the last three quarter notes of the 7/4 to set up the brass. The soprano stands on the fermata before 54. In this slower passage, clearly beat all the quarter notes of the 7/4, using a subdivided 3/2 pattern (Ex.5).
Example 5

Example 4

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At four measures before 56, warn the chamber orchestra with the count-down with the left hand, and calando. The tenor soloist stands on the downbeat of 56 (his fermata) there is plenty of time for him to stand, and it works well visually and dramatically. Standing earlier would spoil the drama inherent in the ritard and diminuendo of the previous few measures. In the tenor recitative, simply cue the chord changes on each downbeat. At three before 57 warn the full orchestra and chorus with three fingers of the left hand (the count-down), and be sure to cue the harp at one before 57. At three measures after 57, relax the last quarter notes a bit, and cue the chamber orchestra on the last beat. At three before 58, warn the full orchestra and chorus (the count-down maneuver with the left hand). At one before 60 cue the chimes after the tenor soloists text at all. The Chorale at 60, as the first one at 16, requires a subtle beat. For details, see the description at 16. Since the work is without intermission, one should take a brief pause before the Offertorium (this also could be a late seating spot). 3. OFFERTORIUM (boys chorus stands) I personally choose not to conduct the boys. If the choir is seated on stage their own director can be seated unobtrusively and help them, both here, and most especially at 77, where they must be coordinated with the soloists and orchestra. Better yet is placing the boys chorus in a balcony with a portative organ or harmonium, where their director can lead them. Before 63, alert the chorus and full orchestra visually with the right hand/baton. The chorus should stand two measures before 63, and, if on stage and visible, the boys chorus sits on the downbeat of 63. At rehearsal 64, conduct dotted quarter notes (6/8 in two, 9/8 in three). At four before 69, warn the 97 JCG Vol. 30

chamber orchestra with the count-down with the left hand, as before. The baritone and tenor soloists stand at two before 69, and the choir sits at 69. The new section beginning at 69 is listesso tempo (Ex.6), i.e. the measures are conducted in two and the quarter note in the orchestra gets the beat. Note the change of tempo at 72. This must be very deliberate at first, but at five bars after 72, move the tempo ahead a bit. The tempo change to half-note = 88 at 73 is subito.
Example 6

At two before 74, beat the 5/4 measure with four clear beats, the half note in one beat followed by three quarters, followed by a regular 4/4 (Ex. 7).
Example 7

74 is a slow recitative, but the first orchestra measure should not be too slow, with the first part of it beaten in 3/4, then holding each whole note with a downbeat, single gesture. The two soloists should not be conducted, and you simply conduct the orchestra in the 3/4 part of each measure, holding the whole notes with a downbeat 1. Give a clear cue to the harp at 77. Rehearsal 77 begins a difficult section of ensemble with the boys chorus. I can only suggest my solution to the problem and what I did in my performances. There may be other ways. [For a complete discussion of the problems and the techniques I used in dealing with the boys choir, see the Appendix.] I cue the organist to start on the 2nd beat of the second measure after 77 (as aligned in the score). The conductor must listen carefully to the organ,

especially the C#s in the left hand. There should be perhaps three or four C#s heard (over the empty, fermata measures in the orchestra) before cuing the chamber orchestra at 7 bars after 77 (I disregard the footnote, and I count the orchestra fermatas as one measure, for there is no bar line at the change of page). Listen carefully to the boys chorus line, and follow it for all successive entries of the chamber orchestra and soloists. Warn the full orchestra (bassoons, celli, basses) visually for their entrance at 79. The chorus stands at 79, and the soloists and boys sit after the orchestra begins. 4. SANCTUS (soprano solo stands, chorus remains standing) The measures are free at the beginning of the Sanctus. I had success with a slightly slower tempo at measure 5 (quarter note = 92 rather than 108), with which our soprano soloist was more comfortable. I suggest that all conductors experiment. Conduct rehearsal 85 in one. In this cleverly confused (confusing) passage, the conductors challenge is not to get lost! I decided to group the measures as follows: 3-2-3-4-3-86-4-4fermata. This aids in cuing the entrances of the sections of the chorus; however, they also can be counted in groups of four bars!
Score errata: in the parts, at six bars after 87 in horns 1 & 2, the second beat is an A; it should be a B. The score is correct.

At four bars before rehearsal 93 warn the chamber orchestra as before with the count-down with the left hand. At 93 Britten, in his excellent recording, waits about 10 beats (quarter note of preceding section = 69) on this fermata. The new tempo is very slow, eighth note = 69. At three after 93, conduct a subdivided four (8/8, with eighth note = 88-92) for the flute and clarinet, and use same tempo each time this passage occurs. At one before 94, conduct a subdivided 2/4. Follow Brittens tempo indications exactly, so that the half note at 94 equals the preceding eighth note. At the end of the Sanctus, the baritone and chorus sit. 5. AGNUS DEI (tenor soloist stands, chorus sings seated) This section must be flowing, with each sixteenth note conducted, using the four pattern with an extra beat in the center (see Ex. 2). At four bars before rehearsal 99, move the tempo a bit, and return to tempo at 99. Calando near the end. The tenors last phrase, Dona nobis pacem, slows down and is quite flexible, and you should not conduct him. Coordinate with the soloist, and cut off together with the chorus. The tenor sits and the chorus stands at the end of the movement. 6. LIBERA ME (chorus stands) This movement, above all the others, requires of the conductor a very firm hand, an unimpeachable sense of pulse, and great rhythmic precision. From the beginning of the movement to rehearsal 116 there needs to be a carefully controlled, very gradual accelerando. The composer gives tempo indications (metronome markings) at the beginning of each major section, which aid in your planning and study. Begin at quarter note = 63. At four or three bars before 103, move slightly toward quarter note = 72, reaching that tempo at 103. At 104, begin to move the tempo again, reaching quarter note = 84 at rehearsal 105. This tempo is maintained until seven bars after 107, where the tempo pushes ahead slightly, reaching quarter note = 88 at 108. JCG Vol. 30 98

At three bars before 91 the phrase is very long for the soprano soloist. Should an extra breath be necessary, I suggest this (with an optional text addition, which may or may not be desired) (Ex. 8). At nine and eleven bars after 91 conduct the 5/4 as before a four gesture with an extra beat in the center (Ex. 2). Beginning at three before 92 relax the tempo a bit. The soprano sits after 92.

Example 8

The soprano soloist stands at the sixth bar after 107. Note, beginning at 105, the different meters for the orchestra and the soloist and chorus. Conduct the section beginning at 108 in four bar phrases (subtly, with one beat per 3/4 bar in the orchestra) unless the chorus needs to see these four beats per (their) measure. Should the soprano decide against singing the high C at 110, the following change to the melodic line could be made, which would involve a slight re-orchestration in the flute, oboe and clarinet (Ex. 9).

Example 9

110 is marked very lively with a tempo of 92 per beat unit. The conductor continues to beat the clear four-bar phrases (actually four beat measures for the chorus and soprano), which helps the performers with accurate counting and also will help you in giving the right cues. Five and six bars after 111 is a two bar phraseyou could consider the first six measures of 111 as a phrase of 3 whole notes, subdivided. The three measures before 113 could be beaten as a large three pattern, to support the crescendo and to set up and clarify the tempo in the new and very challenging section, with its irregular meters. Do not slacken the gradual accelerando, so that you arrive at half note = 96 at 113. 99 JCG Vol. 30

The section beginning at rehearsal 113 is extremely difficult for the chorus and soprano. Conduct the 2/2 bars in 2, of course. The 3/4 measures require three small, clear precise beatsdo not fall into the temptation of conducting these triple-meter measures in one! This section, between 113 and 115, consists of clearly defined phrases, each phrase beginning with the sopranos of the chorus. The first two phrases (Dies illa and dies irae) are each four measures long. The next phrase (calamitatis) is five measures long. At 114, the phrase (et miseriae) is six measures long, and the following phrase (dies magna) is four measures long. The ten measures of 115-116 are really two connected phrases, the first in 3/4 and the second beginning with three 2/2 bars and the huge climax of two 3/4 bars. At five before 116, I do not go back to conducting in 2, but continue to beat the quarter notes in four, to better control the stretch into (and within) the final 3/4 measures. 116 is the sonic climax of the piece, and also is very difficult for the chorus. The tempo is a broad 4/4 (in the orchestra) with quarter note = 63. This means that each measure of the chorus equals one beat in the orchestra. The chorus needs a very clear gesture to sing their entrances accurately. Because this section needs as much vocal volume as possible I suggest that you have all the women sing all soprano and alto entrances through four before 117, and have all men sing the first bass entrance (10 chorus measures after 116), with tenors jumping up to their entrance that follows in the next bar. Beginning at two before 117 the singers return to singing only their own parts. For the orchestra, give a very strong cue to the percussion and organ at 116. Bring out the horn color with the crescendo and decrescendo, with the maximum volume at four orchestral measures after 116, and again at six after 116. The trumpets peak at three and five bars after 116. Make a long diminuendo and calando down to 118. And at four (orchestra) measures before 118, warn the chamber orchestra with the left-hand countdown as before.

At this point there is a major decision to be made by the conductor and the chorus master: should the chorus remain standing through to the end or sit, and if they should sit, when? My personal feeling is that it is very taxing for the chorus to stand for such a long time. But more importantly, I feel it is totally contrary to the drama of the piece to have so many witnesses present during the unfolding of the story between the two soldiers. If the chorus sits at 118, even quietly and gracefully, it is visually very disturbing after the long quietening of the dynamics, the lightening of the texture, and the slowing of the tempo. The tenor and bass soloists should be left totally alone at 118! Because of this concern about the drama, I made the decision that the chorus should sit down by section, when they are finished singing their last part: sopranos sit at six chorus bars after 117, altos at fourteen chorus bars after 117, basses at seventeen chorus bars after 117 and tenors two chorus bars before 118. This can imply that the chorus will sing the Epilogue (In Paradisum, at 131) while seated, which, to me is perfectly acceptable musically and dramatically. At 118, there is a long-breathed, rhythmically flexible tenor recitative. Give one downbeat for each orchestral measure. Give the chord changes, being sure to connect with the tenor soloist precisely. At 119, the composer begins to show metrical subdivisions of the larger measures by the use of dotted bar lines for various instruments in the chamber orchestra. This is first apparent in the strings, where you should conduct the small crescendi with the left hand, using a 2/4 pattern, while holding the rest of the orchestra with the baton. The baritone soloist stands at rehearsal 120, and you conduct the three measures in a slow four, with quarter note = 60. At one before 121 and at 121, beat four with the baton for the entire chamber orchestra. Then return to marking each measure in one. Do not conduct the solos of the oboe, bassoon, or harp (unless they absolutely need it, then do it with small, subtle gestures of the left hand). It is best to spend JCG Vol. 30 100

time coaching these players separately, so they play these passages unaided. However, at two before 123 one needs to conduct with the left hand, due to the faster tempo and the ensemble problems in the next bar. This passage is quite metrically complicated, and one needs to pay strict attention to the composers use of the dotted bar lines. At two before 123, conduct in four with flexible rubato. At one before 123, beat four plus two. At two after 123 conduct, with the left hand, 3 + 4 + 3 (again as clearly indicated in by the dotted bar lines). And at four after 123, conduct in two (following the composers dotted lines), followed by two measures in three and the fermata. At three and one before 124, do not conduct the clarinet and flute solos. As you will have done with the brass players and their solo material in the Dies irae, you should work out how these kinds of passages are to be played in a private session with your wind players well in advance of the first rehearsal. Conduct quarter notes throughout the section that begins at 124, subdividing the 3/2 and conducting the 5/4 in the four pattern with an extra beat in the center (see Ex.2). Follow the subtle changes of tempo carefully, for they are vital to the piece. At one before 126, the tempo should be quarter note = 80. Conduct this large bar in 2/4 + 2/4 + 4/4 with a fermata on the final half note, with diminuendo. The preparatory beat for the winds and bass comes on the baritones word from (in this bar), which is also the release for the strings and flute. At five after 126, the fermata should be very long before I am the enemy you killed, my friend, for the drama requires the long silence. At two before 127, subtly warn the chorus, boys choir, and their director visually with eyes or a raised finger. At 127 the Epilogue begins, a most incredible, emotional, and deeply moving ending to this masterpiece. And it provides the conductor with one last challenge in terms of precision, ensemble, coordination, and mood! If the boys choir director is sitting in front of them (or leading them if they are in 101 JCG Vol. 30

the balcony or off stage), then he/she can clearly lead the young singers throughout this passage. It is otherwise impossible to coordinate the sections the boys sing that are in a different tempo than the other forces. At one before 127, release the strings on the final eighth note, but send the point of the baton up as if you were on the second beat (Ex. 10). From this position only a downbeat is necessary and sufficient. The tenor soloist and the boys stand just after the orchestral music begins.

Example 10

At 127, the orchestral music, with the tenor and bass soloists, is in two four-bar phrases. Cue the organ at 128, and stop conducting at the orchestral fermata, but continue to count five beats of the boys music. You will resume the beat on the downbeat (eighth note rest in chamber orchestra), coordinating with the end of the boys-choir passage, and beat the seven bars, holding on the fermata of the eighth bar. When the boys choir reaches the final syllable of their first passage (An-ge-li), their director starts counting eight beats (li = beat one), while watching the conductor. Their release should be on the tied quarter note, the third beat. On the eighth counted beat (five beats into 129) the director cues the boys. At six measures after 129, stop on the downbeat, count three beats, and on the third beat, cue the double basses. The chamber orchestra and soloists have a six-measure phrase that goes to 130, followed by a diminuendo and release on the eighth rest at the end of two after 130. Count five beats of the boys music, cueing the clarinet, harp, and double bass on the fifth beat. While this has been going on, the boys have sung through the text Martyres. The director counts eight beats, starting on the syllable res,

releasing the boys on the third beat (which is the tied quarter note). The eighth beat is the preparatory beat for their next entrance. From the chamber orchestra entrance after 130 there are seven measures: a four-bar phrase and a three-bar phrase. At three measures before 131, warn orchestra and chorus basses with the left hand countdown. Give a clear cue one beat before 131. During this, the boys choir has reached the text Jerusalem. The director starts counting fourteen beats at the syllable lem, releasing the choir on the third beat (tied quarter note). Give a preparatory beat on the fourteenth count for the organ and a downbeat for the boys next entrance (Chorus Angelorum. . . ). At three after 131, cue the chorus altos, flute 2, and especially second violins! From eight before 132, there are two four bar phrases. The boys choir director counts six beats, starting on the measure following their release of. . . suscipiat, and cues the organ and boys on the sixth beat, which is the beat before rehearsal 132. From 132, I suggest the following phrase structure: five measures six measures (the soprano soloist stands ad libitum) four measures (soprano soloist enters on the third measure of this phrase, at 133) four measures (with entrance of trombones) four measures five measures, to 134 five measures five measures, to release of the Tutti at one after five measures, to release of the Tutti at one after 135 The organ must be cued at one bar before 135, with a clear cue to the chimes on the second beat. The boys choir director should conduct these final two measures (Requiem aeternam dona eis

Domine) in a subdivided 3/2. I suggest that the choir enter a little late, after the Tutti release, in case the acoustical resonance blurs their first note. Their final pitch should be held over the bar line, to connect with the following chorus entrance. Clearly cue the chorus and orchestra after 135. Do not forget to cue the last entrance of the chimes. The final release of each ensemble must be exact: the chamber orchestra on the last eighth note and the full orchestra after they hear the final bells entrance. Let the bells vibrate. Conduct the final Chorale with the same style of gesture as at 16 and 60. Give the final release of the n of Amen gently, with the arms staying up, to prevent premature applause. Let your arms down slowly. APPENDIX In this discussion of the conducting problems associated with the boys choir, I shall refer to their conductor as director and to the conductor of the large forces as conductor. The following are suggestions for both conductors to help assure synchronization of the boys with the rest of the forces. The director of the boys choir should have the opportunity to read this entire article. Rehearsal 77: The conductor will cue the organ on the second beat of the second orchestral measure, and the boys should stand on that chord. The organist will adopt the tempo quarter note = 60 (I suggest checking that with a pocket metronome, even at the performance). The director should count seven measures of the organ introduction and then cue the boys on the eighth measure, maintaining the tempo strictly. The boys sit at 79 (after the organ finishes and the orchestra begins). Rehearsal 127, the boys chorus stands after the chamber orchestra begins. Whether the boys are seated on stage or located in a balcony, it is imperative that the director should be able to follow the conductors beat, either by a direct line of sight or use of video monitor. The conductor will cue the organ at 128. If the organist cannot see the JCG Vol. 30 102

conductor, then the director will give this cue and will conduct the boys in absolutely strict tempo, following the tempos established by the conductor (quarter note = 60, I hope!). On the last syllable li of Angeli the director starts counting eight beats (while watching the conductor), release the boys and the organ on the third beat (tied quarter note). On the eighth beat (which is the fifth beat after 129), cue the boys and the organ (If retaining pitch is a problem, the organist could play a C# on the beat before the entrance, as in Ex. 11). Four orchestral bars before 130, on the last syllable res of Martyres, start counting eight beats; release the boys on the third beat (tied quarter note). The eighth beat that you are counting is the preparatory beat for the next boys choir entrance.

The boys entrance, et lux perpetua, one measure after 136, should be similarly a little late, again conducted in a subdivided 3/2 with a slight stretch before the last note, which again should not be released before the full chorus enters. Placement of the boys chorus: The composer indicates that the sound of the boys choir should be distant. An ideal solution is to seat the choir in a balcony, with a portative organ or harmonium with them (or even an electric keyboard that has an acceptable organ sound, with adjustable volume). The director should be able to see both the organist and the conductor clearly. Should the boys choir have to be seated on the stage, the director can sit in front of them (at the back of the orchestra), in an unobtrusive location, where she/he can clearly see the conductor. ***** Paul Vermel is Music Director and Conductor of the Northwest Symphony in Illinois, and a faculty member of the Conductors Institute at the University of South Carolina. He is Professor of Music, Emeritus, of the University of Illinois, Conductor Laureate of the Portland (ME) Symphony and also served as Director of the Conducting Program at the Aspen Music Festival. He is the 2009 recipient of the Max Rudolf Award from the Conductors Guild. This award is given biennially in recognition of outstanding achievement as a conductor and pedagogue, and significant service to the profession in the realms of scholarship and ensemble building. He is only the 7th recipient of this important honor. For information on how to obtain his recent DVD entitled Conducting with Clarity and Musicality: The Teaching of Paul Vermel, visit his website at www.maestronotes.com.

Example 11

On the last syllable lem of Jerusalem, start counting fourteen beats, releasing the boys and organ on the third beat (tied quarter note). The fourteenth beat is the preparatory beat for the organ, and the organ entrance is the preparatory beat for the boys Chorus Angelorum. On the measure following the boys release of suscipiat, the director begins counting six beats, and cues the organ and the boys on the sixth beat (one beat before 132). One measure before 135, the organ should be cued by the conductor. I suggest that the boys choir entrance at one after 135 be a little late, in case acoustical resonance might blur the first note. This Requiem aeternam can be conducted in a subdivided 3/2. The final note of this passage should be held over the bar line, to connect with the following full chorus entrance. 103 JCG Vol. 30

Toscanini and the Myth of Textual Fidelity

(JCG Volume 24, 2003) By Linda B. Fairtile

Changes in the public perception of performing artists make for fascinating study. There once was a time when the Three Tenors were considered mere mortals. And there once was a time when a conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was considered the living embodiment of the composers whose music he performed. Largely through the efforts of the press and the National Broadcasting Company, Toscanini came to be known as the only musician with the integrity and modesty to perform a composition exactly as it was notated in the musical score. Thanks to the existence of recorded performances, as well as the reminiscences of some of his colleagues, many people now realize that Toscaninis reputation for absolutely literal fidelity to the printed score was largely a media creation. Still, for a segment of the music-loving public the name Arturo Toscanini continues to call to mind the lofty pursuit of textual fidelity. Toscanini seldom discussed his musical philosophy publicly, preferring instead to rely on spokesmen of often-dubious credibility. Rather than refuting the legends that sprang up around him, he carried on his work seemingly oblivious to the spread of the textual-fidelity myth. And yet there was a time, early in his career, when the question of exactly what was written in the score assumed great importance. In 1898 the thirty-one-year-old Arturo Toscanini conducted the first Italian performance of Giuseppe Verdis Quattro pezzi sacri. While studying the score of the Te Deum, Toscanini had been troubled by a passage in which he felt that a rallentando was necessary, despite the lack of any overt indication in the score. When he performed the piece at the piano

for Verdi himself, Toscanini added the rallentando at the appropriate point. Rather than correcting him, Verdi praised Toscaninis musical insight, explaining that if he had written the word rallentando over the phrase in question, an insensitive conductor might have overcompensated, slowing the passage unnecessarily. Instead, Verdi relied on the instinct of the true musician to recognize the need for a subtle relaxation of tempo. Some fifty years later the critic Olin Downes reported that when Toscanini re-told this familiar story, he acknowledged that his behavior had contradicted the gospel of textual fidelity. Nonetheless, the conductor continued, the interpreters taste and intuition ultimately control the outcome of a performance. If true, Downess revealing anecdote fails to account for the possibility that, for Toscanini, Verdis unwritten rallentando might well have been part of the letter of the music. Although the word does not appear at the critical point in the score, to a sensitive conductor versed in Verdian performance practice, those notations that do appear the melodic shape, the harmonic progression, the phrase structure indicate a slowing down of tempo almost as surely as a verbal indication. Nonetheless, Downess story represents a grudging admission that the printed score, in and of itself, may not have been Toscaninis sole concern. It is not news that Toscaninis reputation for absolute fidelity to the printed score was little more than a public relations myth; this has already been asserted by numerous critics, scholars, and performers, based on both personal experience and the inexact JCG Vol. 30 104

evidence of recordings. Now that Toscaninis annotated scores are available for study at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, it is possible to investigate exactly which elements of which compositions he altered, and, perhaps more importantly, to come closer to understanding the musical philosophy that permits a performer to impose significant alterations on the works in his repertoire and still maintain that he is at the service of the composer. The dissemination of the textual fidelity myth was first and foremost an American phenomenon, which reached its apex in the early 1950s. Like many myths, however, this one had roots in the reality of a distant place and time: the Italian opera scene at the turn of the twentieth century, as Arturo Toscanini, the thirty-one-year-old artistic head of Milans Teatro alla Scala, fought with every ounce of his considerable will against what he perceived to be low musical standards and arbitrary traditions. To those who questioned his right to toss aside decades of accumulated performance customs he offered the musical score as the final authority. Criticism of Toscaninis earliest performances at La Scala tended to focus on his perceived inflexibility in matters of tempo as well as his opposition to both encores and traditional cuts. Each of these issues, of course, relates directly to the topic of textual fidelity, but it was apparently not the intention of Toscaninis early critics to discuss that issue explicitly. Rather, their concern was preservation of the status quo, a tradition in which the performers authority often trumped the composers. An exceptional journalistic employment of the phrase the composers intentions appears in an 1899 review of Toscaninis first performance of Verdis Falstaff. Significantly, the phrase is employed to argue against Toscaninis interpretation. In the words of Alfredo Colombani,
I know that performing at such accelerated tempos is approved by him [Toscanini, who is] more capable than all others of expressing the composers intentions. But this assurance does not convince me, because the detail upon which I believe I must insist seems to me to be precisely

one, which is less easily realized by the composer of an opera and by a collaborator who knows it well.1

In other words, Colombani believed that neither the composer nor the conscientious conductor was the final authority on certain matters of performance practice. In the early years of Toscaninis career his celebrated appeals to the letter of the score were a weapon against what he perceived to be sloppy and self-indulgent interpretation. As both his artistry and his celebrity grew, the concept of musical literalism took on a life of its own, becoming a trademark by which he was known even to those who were unaware of the campaign that he had had to wage in earlier years. What had begun as a means to an end within a specific performing tradition eventually ossified, with the help of the press, into all-purpose dogma. Regardless of what he actually did, Toscanini became known as the only conductor selfless enough to perform exactly what was written in the score, no more and no less. Even as he arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in 1908, Toscaninis reputation was established in the American press, thanks in large measure to the journalist Max Smith. Typically, Smith saw textual fidelity as the principal feature that distinguished his idol from other conductors, writing that Toscanini:
has no sympathy with the trend of modern conducting, as exemplified by Nikisch, who not only shapes his readings to suit his individual taste, but actually presumes to change the orchestration set down by the composer. His [Toscaninis] all-absorbing ambition is to reproduce music in a way absolutely true not only to the letter, but to the spirit of the creating mind.2

Implicit in Smiths statement are both a condemnation of those performers who tamper with aspects of a musical composition and a corresponding endorsement of literal fidelity to the score. According to this journalistic simplification, it is textual fidelity, or its lack, that determines which of two fundamentally irreconcilable musical

105 JCG Vol. 30

interpretations the composers or the conductors emerges in performance. Samuel Chotzinoff, an accompanist turned music critic who would later become NBCs Music Director, described Toscaninis faithfulness to the score in terms of both mathematical precision and almost supernatural personal affinity:
Mr. Toscanini is literally a slave to the composer, carrying out his every intention, measuring his scale of the gradations of sound with a ruler on the score. What makes Toscanini the greatest conductor alive is that he follows the composer from the marks on the score back into the realm of ideas which gave them birthThe Eroica and the grandiose Fifth Symphony of Beethoven were subjected last night to a treatment which included a strict adherence to the printed scores, a divination of the exact ideas in the composers mind represented by them, and Toscaninis genius for orchestral analysis and co-ordination.3

Hour, hosted by conductor Walter Damrosch from 1927 through 1942, was one such effort. Complete with accompanying workbooks and written tests, the Music Appreciation Hour sought to teach children about the composers and works that make up the musical canon. Other radio programs aimed at adult listeners pursued similar goals. Although the NBC Symphonys broadcast concerts were not as overtly pedagogical as the Music Appreciation Hour, they nonetheless embodied RCA president David Sarnoffs philosophy of radio as a vehicle for self-improvement. Toscaninis leadership of the NBC Symphony, and his reputation for textual fidelity in particular, were put to good use by the popular education movement. According to Joseph Horowitz, the textual fidelity issue was a useful tool in the service of music appreciation. By anointing a single, correct performance of each musical work, chosen by virtue of its faithfulness to the printed score, the champions of music appreciation transformed complex works of art into neatly packaged commodities that listeners could acquire for their intellectual trophy cases. Toscaninis public image suited this purpose, since he was believed to be the only performer both willing and able to provide a literal translation of the composers notation into idealized sound. Like most celebrities, Toscanini received a great deal of mail from his admirers. Many of these letters illustrate that listeners to the NBC Symphony broadcasts wholeheartedly identified him with the ideal of textual fidelity. One young New Jersey fan, clearly influenced by what he had heard and read, praised Toscanini for being one of the few conductors to perform compositions exactly as they are written; in the next sentence, this ardent fan admitted that he knew next to nothing about music. So strong was the publics belief in Toscaninis reputation for literalism that when confronted with evidence to the contrary some were inclined to doubt the musical text itself rather than the interpreter. A fan from Delaware asked Toscanini about what he believed to be a misprint in his own score of Beethovens Ninth Symphony. What other explanation, the fan reasoned, could there have been JCG Vol. 30 106

Once again, Toscanini is declared musically and perhaps even morally superior to his colleagues by virtue of his compulsion not simply to observe the composers written instructions, but to follow them back to the very moment of artistic creation. In Arturo Toscanini (New York, 1929), biographer Tobia Nicotra pursued this concept to the point of absurdity, claiming that Toscanini steeps himself in the composition breathes the very air that Beethoven breathed, thinks the very thoughts that Beethoven thought. In 1937 Toscanini assumed the direction of the NBC Symphony, a new radio orchestra assembled to rival CBSs broadcast concerts by the New York Philharmonic. As Joseph Horowitz notes in Understanding Toscanini (New York, 1987), in the years prior to the NBC Symphonys creation, broadcasters had been engaged in an ongoing debate over nothing less than the very purpose of radio programming, a controversy that pitted the interests of entertainment against those of mass education. One result of this debate was the marriage of recreation and instruction in radio programs that provided guidance in the understanding of fine literature and music. NBCs Music Appreciation

for a divergence between Toscaninis performance and the printed music? In Reflections on Toscanini (New York, 1991), Harvey Sachs notes that the conductors interpretations of individual compositions often changed over time, an understandable circumstance considering the extraordinary length of his professional career, but also a sign that his ideas about any given musical work were not fixed and absolute. For those who never heard a live Toscanini concert, recordings are the chief means of acquaintance with his art. Although dozens of Toscaninis performances are available on disc, most were made during the final third of his sixty-eight-year career, and their sound quality is sometimes compromised by the original recording technology. Fortunately, another means exists to examine Toscaninis performing habits, and the textual fidelity question in particular, since his personal library of musical scores is available for study in the Toscanini Legacy, a collection in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (an inventory of these scores can be consulted online at http://www.nypl.org/ead/2603#id2305926). In a 1926 concert review Olin Downes wrote that Toscaninis scores contained no conductors markings, but this statement, made by a devoted admirer, is not supported by the evidence. Of the approximately 1,500 orchestral scores in the Toscanini Legacy, over a third contain annotations in the conductors hand. Many are routine clarifications of the printed instructions or technical notes pertaining to the act of orchestral direction. Other markings, however, directly contradict Toscaninis reputation for strict adherence to the printed score. For the purpose of this study, I have divided the annotations found in Toscaninis scores into three categories of increasing musical significance; these categories are based on the four levels of modifications identified by Gabriele Dotto in his study Opera Four Hands: Collaborative Alterations in Puccinis Fanciulla.4 In my analysis, I identify 107 JCG Vol. 30

type-1 annotations as any modifications of dynamics, articulation, bowing, phrasing, and tempo. These sorts of changes, in many cases, would probably pass unnoticed in performance for all but the most perceptive and informed listeners. Type-2 annotations include orchestrational adjustments that either reinforce or thin existing instrumental textures, or transpose individual instrumental passages into a different octave. These changes, often obvious in performance, nonetheless draw upon material that is already present in the score. Type-3 modifications, which are the most radical changes, involve the introduction of foreign material into a composition, either by inserting a completely new instrumental figure into the orchestral fabric, by substantially rewriting an existing melody, or by adding entire musical passages of the conductors own invention. Deletions from the score that affect its phrase structure or harmonic character also qualify as type-3 annotations. In general, many of the markings in Toscaninis scores seem to reflect historical or stylistic considerations. Compositions from the 18th century for example, Haydns 88th Symphony and Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante in E flattend to contain type-1 annotations only, suggesting that for works from the Classical period, Toscanini felt that slight adjustments of the printed dynamics, articulation, tempo, and bowing were the only changes necessary. More recent compositions that show a certain affinity with the Classical style, such as Mendelssohns Overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream, also reveal annotations exclusively of the type-1 variety. Type-2 annotations, especially those that augment or reduce the existing orchestration, are most evident in works from the 19th century. Often Toscanini seems to have considered the gradual improvement in instrumental technique between that time and his own. It is not uncommon to find an expanded viola part, for example, in the scores of Beethoven and Brahms. Passages in which the violas had originally been playing in unison with other string instruments, only to drop out when the parts technical demands

increased, now contain Toscaninis instructions to play continuously, suggesting a belief that these composers had been forced to compromise based on the insufficient ability of their performers. Technological advances in instrument construction also seem to have played a part in Toscaninis artistic decisions. Solos that were originally divided between two different woodwind instruments, ostensibly owing to one instruments weakness in certain registers, can become in Toscaninis scores duets for both instruments playing simultaneously, sometimes producing surprising timbral effects. Finally, parts for trumpets and horns are greatly expanded in Toscaninis annotated scores of early 19th-century compositions, reflecting improvements in valved brass instruments. None of these annotations is likely to shock a musician today, but they certainly contradict the way that Toscaninis interpretations were typically represented in the press. Other type-2 changes in Toscaninis scores have more obscure motivations. In many instances, he appears to have brightened the overall orchestral sound by adding flutes, piccolos, or other higher-pitched instruments to the existing texture. Scores as diverse as Brahmss Hungarian Dances, Mendelssohns Italian Symphony, and Ravels second Daphnis et Chloe suite contain such annotations. At the other extreme, he also thickened the orchestration of certain passages by adding mid-range and lower-pitched instruments. Again, a variety of compositions exhibit this type of modification, for example, Brahmss Third Symphony, Liszts Les Preludes, Schuberts Great C major Symphony, and Respighis The Pines of Rome. An interesting annotation almost completely erased from Toscaninis score of Beethovens Fifth Symphony sheds some light on this activity. At rehearsal letter C in the fourth movements development section Toscanini wrote in his score Mengelberg makes the third trombone play with the contrabasses. Why? It is evident that Beethoven did not want it. Toscanini himself rarely supplemented the bass instruments in Beethovens scores. To him, Mengelbergs apparently unmotivated addition of

the trombone, an instrument whose construction remains basically unchanged since Beethovens time, seemed not only unnecessary, but also contrary to the composers wishes. Type-3 changes extreme modifications of melody, harmony, and structure are relatively uncommon in Toscaninis annotated scores, but when they do appear their purpose is seldom clear. One such instance occurs in the final movement of Beethovens Fifth Symphony (Example 1). As the development section moves to a close, Beethoven assigns a variant of the movements primary theme to the woodwinds and brass, over a dominant pedal. An ascending triplet motive in the piccolo complements this melody. While Beethoven employs the piccolo triplet twice, Toscanini adds a third statement that ascends to a high B. It is unlikely that practical concerns prevented Beethoven from adding this third triplet himself, since he gave the piccolo numerous repeated and sustained high Bs over the next several measures. While the composer believed that the symmetry of two piccolo triplets was sufficient, Toscanini apparently disagreed. Toscanini seems to have brought a unique approach to 20th Century compositions, of which there were more in his repertoire than some critics are willing to acknowledge. In many cases he was personally acquainted with the composer, who was often young enough to have been his son, or occasionally even his grandson. These conditions seemed to foster a less than reverent attitude towards the composers intentions. For example, in a score of Bernard Wagenaars Second Symphony, a piece that begins in C major and ends in D-flat major, Toscanini not only inserted a transposition that forces a C-major conclusion on the work, but he also instructed the composer to make the change permanent. It could be that as he passed into old age Toscanini felt a responsibility not only as a performer, but also, to an extent, as a guardian of Western musical tradition. Such an attitude, coupled with a feeling that some modern composers were following the wrong path, might have emboldened him to carry out musical JCG Vol. 30 108

109 JCG Vol. 30

alterations more extreme than those that he had made as a younger man. Further insight can be gained from a detailed look at Toscaninis written modifications in the scores of two compositions, one that was central to his repertoire, Beethovens N inth Symphony, and another that lay on the periphery, George Gershwins An American in Paris. Beethoven was one of the composers with whom Toscanini identified most firmly. Over the course of his career, he performed Beethovens music hundreds of times, often in concerts devoted exclusively to his works. Forty-two Beethoven compositions are represented in the Toscanini Legacy by over one hundred individual scores, and the N inth Symphony alone exists in six different annotated copies. It is in the works of Beethoven, then, that we can readily observe Toscaninis performance aesthetic in action. Only a fraction of the Toscanini Legacys scores contain dates or other indications of when they might have been used. It is virtually impossible, therefore, to match these scores of Beethovens N inth with the dozens of performances that Toscanini gave the work between 1902 and 1952. In addition, the well-known fact that he rehearsed and conducted from memory means that what was heard in performance may have sometimes depended less on the markings in a particular score than on his powers of recollection or on spontaneous decisions made in rehearsal. Still, he continued to acquire and annotate scores of compositions that he had already performed on numerous occasions, indicating that for Toscanini the act of studying and thinking about a musical work remained essential to the re-creative process. Of the Toscanini Legacys six annotated scores of Beethovens N inth Symphony, three are full-sized and three are miniature scores. Given Toscaninis notoriously poor eyesight, it is tempting to assume that he used the miniature scores in the earlier part of his career; indeed, one of these is dated October 11, 1902, six months after his first performance of the work. In general, the miniature scores contain far fewer annotations than their full-sized counterparts. This statistic is misleading, however, since it is

harder to write anything of substance on the miniature scores tiny musical staves. My assessment of Toscaninis approach to Beethovens N inth Symphony, is confined to the first movement, as it appears in a single miniature score dated October 1902, and in two of the full-sized annotated scores, identified in the Toscanini Legacy as items A41 and A42. All three of these scores contain numerous type-1 annotations, and the full-sized scores have quite a few type-2 changes as well. Most of these appear in the movements exposition and recapitulation, which is not surprising, since the woodwinds and brass play almost continuously throughout the development section, leaving little opportunity for Toscaninis orchestrational additions. The score identified as A42 is by far the most heavily marked. On several occasions, Toscanini fills gaps in the horn parts with material borrowed from the trumpets, and then fills gaps in the trumpets with material from the horns. The overall effect is an intensified brass sound, with a reinforcement of the pitches typically assigned to these instruments, usually components of the tonic triad. This score also exhibits an expanded viola part, in some cases doubling the first violins, and in others, the cellos. At one point Toscanini redistributes the violin and viola material so that the melody is featured more prominently (Examples 2a and 2b). The cellos twice venture into viola territory, and on one occasion in the exposition they reinforce an arpeggiated figure in the bassoons. Other significant type-2 annotations are found in the closing group in both of the full-sized scores. Although the flute and oboe play a countermelody in octaves in measure 142, Beethoven is briefly forced to disrupt the symmetry out of concern for the flutes limited range, so that the melodic fragment in the oboes
Example 3a

becomes
Example 3b

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in the flutes. Toscaninis annotations in each of the full-sized scores offer a different solution, both designed to avoid the flutes awkward melodic skips. In score A41 he rewrote the flute line so that once it drops down to the lower B-flat, it stays in that octave, continuing in unison with the oboe.
Example 3c

In score A42 he simply gave the flute the high G and B-flat that it probably would have had if the instruments in Beethovens day had been capable of producing the latter pitch.
Example 3d

numerous markings in Toscaninis hand. In addition to the usual type-1 modifications of dynamics, articulation, and the like, his annotations reflect numerous reinforcements of existing string and woodwind lines, in other words, type-2 changes. The percussion section, a critical part of Gershwins orchestra, also attracted Toscaninis attention: more than once, he gave the snare drum the task of strengthening an important rhythmic figure. The final 16 measures of An American in Paris have been completely reorchestrated; by redistributing both melody and harmony Toscanini achieved a brighter instrumental sound than is manifest in the original ending. Perhaps to reinforce this transformation, he changed Gershwins expressive indication of grandioso to the more objective tempo indication Largo ma non troppo. The overall effect of Toscaninis alterations to An American in Paris brightens and homogenizes Gershwins variegated orchestral sound. The most surprising and musically significant of Toscaninis annotations occurs in the final six measures, where a series of orchestrational substitutions produces an alteration of the existing harmony. Over the concluding F-major triad is heard a final statement of one of the works most prominent melodic motives. In Gershwins own setting, a countermelody played by the third alto saxophone and first trombone adds an E flat to the harmony in essence, producing a dominant-seventh chord on F that resolves irregularly through E natural to F.
Example 4a, Gershwin, An American in Paris: original orchestration

The miniature score dated 1902 is comparatively free of markings, perhaps owing to its size, or to the fact that Toscanini apparently used it early in his career. A few octave doublings of the first trumpet part by the second trumpet are the only notable type-2 annotations in this score. Taken as a whole, Toscaninis modifications to the first movement of Beethovens N inth Symphony are largely concerned with supplying musical fragments that the composer himself might have demanded had his performers been capable of playing them. Toscaninis modifications in his score of George Gershwins An American in Paris reveal a different approach. With the N BC Symphony Orchestra he performed this work in 1943, and again two years later; a recording of the 1945 performance is available commercially. Many of the markings in Toscaninis score of this composition probably reflect two specific conditions, namely, the composers reputed inexperience as an orchestrator and the conductors relative unfamiliarity with a jazz-influenced musical idiom. The score contains 111 JCG Vol. 30

Example 4b, Gershwin, An American in Paris, Toscaninis modifications

Toscaninis reorchestration eliminates this colorful harmonic effect altogether: the third alto saxophone simply plays the main melody while the first trombone participates in the F-major triad. The irregularly resolved seventh simply disappears from both Toscaninis annotated score and his 1945 recording of the piece. It is tempting to imagine that Toscanini, ever vigilant, could not tolerate so blatant an appearance of an improperly resolved seventh chord. Contrary to his American reputation for literal adherence to the printed score, Toscanini actually modified details both large and small in many of the compositions that he performed. Can it be that he was really just as willful and ego-driven as those conductors to whom he was so often judged superior? How would Toscanini reconcile the evidence of his annotated scores with his identity as the humble servant of the composer? The answer to these questions may lie in a particular combination of Italian and German performance practice symptomatic of Toscaninis aesthetic blend of these two cultures. The popular conception of the performers task, clouded as it is by the textual fidelity issue, conditions an audience to assume that an orchestral conductor simply translates the printed score into physical gestures that are read by the musicians under his or her control. N othing more is expected, much less required. In reality, the performing tradition from which Toscanini emerged had quite a different concept of the conductors responsibilities. When he led his first performance in 1886, the idea of a baton-wielding conductor at the head of an

opera orchestra was a relatively recent innovation. As late as the 1870s, some Italian ensembles still adhered to the time-honored tradition of divided direction, whereby the first-chair violinist led the performance only after the maestro, usually a keyboard player, had made all the musical decisions in rehearsal. This clear separation of the two rolestime-beater versus interpreteris reflected in the terms used to describe their respective duties: the Italian word direzione, meaning direction, was applied to the first violinists work, while the word concertazione, a complicated term indicating the act of preparing a performance, referred to the maestros responsibility. When both roles were assumed by a single personthe conductorthese two functions became part of his job description. And it must be remembered that composers, often conductors themselves, were well aware of the situation. While the conductors time-beating responsibilities are easy to comprehend, the preparation of a performancethe activity expressed by the Italian word concertazioneis somewhat enigmatic. Italian music dictionaries offer a variety of definitions for this term, from the Dizionario artistico-scientifico of 1872, which simply states that it is a synonym for rehearsal, to the detailed explanation offered one hundred years later by the Ricordi-Rizzoli Enciclopedia della musica:
Concertazione is the work of gradual study during rehearsals for the purpose of preparing a performance. It essentially consists of controlling the precision of the textual reading, the suitability of technical solutions for the requested dynamic and timbral effects, the equilibrium between sounds or between the various parts or voices, their coordination or subordination in an agogic unity and, the most valuable goal, making individuals aware of the reciprocal functionality of their actions the attainment, that is, of that spontaneous understanding that is called harmony. N o limits are placed on the methods and objectives employed in the pursuit of one of these optimum performance plans.5

During a conference held in 1967 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Toscaninis birth, the JCG Vol. 30 112

eminent conductor and scholar Gianandrea Gavazzeni gave an example of the modern, colloquial use of the term concertazione with regard to Toscaninis subtle modification of a passage from Verdis Un ballo in maschera. His statement succinctly illustrates this second, often misunderstood responsibility of the conductor:
Consider the case of the four unison horns in [Act III of] Un ballo in maschera, something which has become such a part of tradition that even though that modification is not inserted into the performance materials, today when one prepares [quando si concerta] the opera it is enough just to glance at the horns and they already understand that they are to play the bassoons and cellos figure in unison at the moment when the lots are drawn. Toscanini correctly considered this moment [in its original orchestration] to be weak, while the four horns in unison lend a dramatic timbre that otherwise could not be obtained.6

are likely to lose in roundness and splendor. The remarkable thing last night was the beauty and the body of tone that Mr. Toscanini achieved.7

Later in life Toscaninis acoustical ideals seem to have undergone a transformation. His well-known preference for the notoriously dry NBC Studio 8H, site of most of the NBC Symphonys concerts, has mystified many critics. It may be that some of the orchestrational changes in Toscaninis scores result from his association with this performing venue. While acoustical conditions may have convinced Toscanini that orchestrational modifications were needed in certain compositions, they do not explain in a comprehensive way why a conductor who allegedly put the composers interests first would believe that he had the authority to overrule that same composers own notations. Considering the types of annotations that he made, as well as his recollection of the influences on his early career, it seems likely that the theories of Richard Wagner were the basis of Toscaninis interpretive practice. Wagner wrote two treatises that are of special interest to conductors. The first, On Conducting, appeared in 1869, while the second, On the Performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony, was published in 1873, after Wagner conducted that work to celebrate the laying of the cornerstone at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Both essays systematically explain Wagners goals as a conductor and offer examples from the literature to illustrate how those goals might be attained. It may seem unlikely that Wagner, a colossus of German music, would have had such a strong influence on a fiercely patriotic Italian conductor, particularly since that conductor had pursued his musical training at a time when his country was experiencing an anti-Wagnerian backlash. Wagners theories, however, provided Toscanini with answers to the artistic problems that had been plaguing his first efforts as a conductor. Andrea della Corte, a music critic who knew Toscanini during his tenure at La Scala, has written of a conversation that he had with the conductor in 1924. According to della Corte, at the onset of his career Toscanini endured years of frustrating on-the-job training, as he

It may be that Toscanini himself contributed by his example to the flexible, modern definition of the term concertazione. Given this historical context, and perhaps even justification, for Toscaninis alteration of many of the scores in his library, it remains to determine why he made the types of changes that he did. Certainly, as others have conjectured, the acoustics of the spaces in which he performed may have induced him to implement certain orchestrational changes. The possibility of such a practice is suggested by Olin Downess review of a Toscanini concert at the old Metropolitan Opera House:
Particularly grateful, under the acoustical conditions, was the Latin genius for clarity and beauty of tone and for exact sonorous proportions. It has been remarked more than once in these columns that the Metropolitan Opera House does not and is not expected to furnish the ideal environment for an orchestral concert. The tone, when the orchestra is on the stage, loses a measure of its resonance, richness, and glow. The different choirs of instruments become clear-cut strands of sound in place of the fusion and shimmer that usually arise from the fortunate combination of instruments. Climaxes

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struggled to achieve in practice what he could only imagine while studying musical scores. Although the young Toscanini clearly recognized the failings of other conductors who vacillated among imprecise tempos, beating time with neither authority nor sensitivity, he could not find a viable alternative. For a time he believed that the composer-conductor Giuseppe Martucci, an advocate of metronomically rigid tempos, might be the mentor who could show him the way. In the words of della Corte,
Toscanini listened to Martucci, he studied him, he followed him, but he did not succeed in feeling like him. An overpowering desire for freedom, for relativity, for warmth disturbed him. Certain pages, certain passages, especially by Beethoventhese he would have wanted more intense, more animated, more supple. He studied, thought, and rethought.8

place in larger unitsan approach that sometimes led him to adopt unusually quick tempos.

But it was not simply in matters of musical pacing that Wagner had an impact on Toscaninis performance aesthetic. Wagners concern with the orchestral sound itselfits clarity, balance, and elasticitywas intimately bound with his emphasis on the melody. Here, too, Wagners experiences made an impression on the young Toscanini, who put his recommendations to the test. Again, in the words of della Corte,
This attempt made use of technical research that Wagner, too, had found indispensable, since in order to sing well one must first refine the sound, render it beautiful, malleable, sure, one must know how to weigh and to measure out . . .

Della Corte goes on to report that it was Wagners essay, On Conducting, that gave Toscanini consolation and the courage to pursue his ideals. Like Toscanini, Wagner had rebelled against routine musical interpretations. The passion and vitality that he had found while studying orchestral scores seemed strangely absent from most of the performances that he attended. In his own work as a conductor, Wagner adopted a number of practices that enlivened his own interpretations. One of the fundamental tenets of Wagners conducting philosophy was to allow the melosthe melodyto determine the tempo, shape, and pacing of a performance. He clearly admired the Italian approach to music. Indeed, Wagners praise of instrumentalists trained in the Italian tradition, for whom playing an instrument well means making it sing,9 later found its parallel in Toscaninis own mantra, cantare, cantare. Critical assessments of Toscaninis Wagner interpretations, in particular, focus precisely on their melodic character. Unlike the sometimesmeandering readings of Wilhelm Furtwngler, perhaps his chief musical rival, Toscaninis performances exhibit a concern for the melodic phrase as a wholeits shape, its direction, and its

It is in Wagners essay, On the Performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony, that we find direct evidence of his influence on Toscanini. Wagners practical knowledge of how to weigh and to measure out shines through every page of this treatise. Among his recommendations for the performance of this difficult symphony are specific restorations of trumpets and horns that had dropped out of the musical texture for apparently technical reasons, instrumental reinforcements of certain inaudible melodies, and rewritten melodies that Beethoven seems to have been compelled to distort for reasons of limited instrumental range. Toscanini adopted each of these suggestions, and several more concerning the vocal parts in the final movement, for his own performances of the symphony. While other conductors, such as Gustav Mahler and Felix Weingartner, created their own reorchestrations of the Ninth Symphony, Toscanini preferred to follow Wagners advice. Wagners justification for the many changes that he imposed on Beethovens Ninth Symphony can be summed up in his rationale for ordering melodic doubling in the Scherzo:

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In deciding such matters the point at issue is whether one is willing to put up with performances in which the composers intentions are temporarily obscured or prefers to take the steps most likely to do them justice.

been dispelled, the true and significantly more complex record of Toscaninis achievements is free to emerge. *****

In short, Wagner felt that Beethoven was the victim of circumstances, both internal and external, that prevented the ideal realization of his musical conception. There seems little doubt that this assumption was behind the majority of Toscaninis alterations to the works in his repertoire. Perhaps it was Wagners dual identity as a composer and a conductor that gave him the authority, in Toscaninis eyes, to sanction the necessary alteration of other composers scores. How, then, are we to judge Toscaninis modifications of the musical text? As any performer can attest, absolutely literal fidelity to the printed score is impossible, simply because musical notation is inadequate to capture every nuance of a living, breathing composition, and is unable to anticipate every condition under which a performance might take place. Certainly, it makes sense to look at Toscaninis annotations in light of their overall musical significance. Sacrificing the scrupulous observation of printed dynamic markings in order to make a particular passage work is hardly a major artistic distortion. Similarly, reinforcing the orchestration of an important melody so that it does not get lost in the overall texture is not necessarily a crime against the composer. About wholesale additions or deletions of material we might be less forgiving, but these types of changes are comparatively rare in Toscaninis scores. Perhaps what ultimately mattered was Toscaninis motivation. The combination of his Italian musical heritage and Wagnerian aesthetic convinced him that the highest service that a conductor could render was to impose certain types of musical changes whenever he sensed that a composers artistic conception was threatened. In his mind, there was neither egotism nor hypocrisy in his actions. The textual fidelity myth, while it lasted, helped to forestall questions about the fluid relationship between composer and interpreter. Now that it has 115 JCG Vol. 30

Linda B. Fairtile is the Music Librarian at the University of Richmond (Virginia). She is the author of Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research, as well as articles on various aspects of Italian opera. While working for The New York Public Library, she processed the personal papers of Arturo Toscanini, Jacob Druckman, and other noted musicians.

ENDNOTES
1 Corriere della sera, 12-13 March 1899. 2 Century Magazine, March 1913. 3 New York World, 2 February 1927. 4 Journal of the American Musicological Society 42/3 (Fall 1989). 5 Franco Melotti, Concertazione, Enciclopedia della musica (Milan, 1972). Ricordi-Rizzoli

6 Fedele DAmico and Rosa Paumgartner, eds. La lezione di Toscanini (Florence, 1970). 7 Olin Downes, Music: Arturo Toscanini Conducts, The New York Times, 2 February 1927. 8Toscanini visto da un critico (Turin, 1958). 9 On Conducting, translated by Robert L. Jacobs in Three Wagner Essays (London, 1979).

Conducting Cannot Be Taught (CCBT)

(JCG Volume 27, 2007) By Harold Farberman

Its time to redefine our conducting profession, to rid ourselves of a 19th century pattern hangover and to demand that conducting teachers address the need for a new kind of baton movement. The time for a clear-headed examination of the art of conducting is now. 1. The earth is flat. 2. The sun revolves around the earth. 3. Man will never fly. Intelligent, dedicated scholars endorsed and actively propagated those views. Examples of the prevalence of CCBT: Conducting cannot be taught-Michael Jimbo, Director of the Monteaux School-Conductors Guild Conference PanelNew York 2002 Conducting cannot be taughtJonathon Sternberg, esteemed colleague, former Professor of Conducting, Temple UniversityConductor Guild Conference PanelNew York, 2006 A musically literate population, which has included Artruro Toscanini, Richard Strauss and Erich Leinsdorf, continues to support the notion that conducting cannot be taught. It took time, counted in centuries, to reveal the shape of the earths place in the solar system. The concept of manned flight and its validation took even longer. Conducting as a profession is barely a few hundred years old, still

evolving, so perhaps it is not surprising that the idea of the conductor continues to be bathed in self-serving mystery, a condition that promotes misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Can CCBT be taken at face value? There are numerous conducting programs in conservatories, universities and music schools throughout the world. Summer programs specifically designed to teach conducting have proliferated. Private tutors are ready and willing to initiate young hopefuls into a perilous profession. The idea of conducting as an art and a business can, and is, being taught. What sort of conducting is unteachable? What kind of conductor is under discussion? Maestri Jimbo and Sternberg, who teach, will speak for themselves and I have already explored this same issue briefly albeit under another name: the born conductor (footnote, The Cambridge Companion to Conducting a Cambridge University Press publication.) If unteachable conducting exists how do we acknowledge and recognize its results? Performanceasproof remains the core of those who support the CCBT theory. They cite various performances as, incredibly moving, fantastic, other-worldly or, a once in a lifetime musical experience. Advocates are quick to point out that conservatories cannot teach music-making of such magnitude, nor can professors pass creative gifts to a student. Achieving such extraordinary levels of conducting cannot be taught, and those conductors who produce such performances must be regarded as self-taught, naturally intuitive performers. We are JCG Vol. 30 116

to believe that they are recipients of extravagant genetic musical gifts and are pre-destined to become great conductors. CCBT is a specious and dangerous elitist argument; a template specifically created for imaginary super-conductors. The idea is also deeply disturbing because, when fully considered, it is a view that promotes the notion that training conductors is unnecessary. In the oddly convoluted world of CCBT, conductors who undergo rigorous training are automatically relegated to a lesser performing level because they are devoid of the intuitive gifts that produce natural conductors. Lets examine the real world. Conductors come in various shapes, sizes, genders and talents. There are a small number of highly gifted conductors and a much larger number of conductors whose gifts are less obvious. When orchestras advertise for a conductor, they generally receive some 300 applications. At least 280 applicants will quickly be classified as not qualified, about 93% of the applicant pool. Six of the remaining 20 applicants will be chosen as guest conductors. That is 1.8% of the original 300. I would guess that gifted conductors are no different percentage-wise than gifted pianists, violinists, painters, surgeons, lawyers or potential astronauts. Many want to be; few will be. I can say without hesitation that after 30 years of teaching and observing a large number of hopeful conductors, I have never yet met a natural conductor. There have been a number of truly gifted young musicians, many excellent ones, and a large number of dedicated but less talented musicians. It should be easy to predict who will be successful but in fact it is quite difficult. The process of becoming a conductor of quality is a diverse and complex long-term commitment, very different from mastering a single instrument. Immensely gifted, passionate students often fail, generally because they expect success quickly. Less gifted musicians unexpectedly succeed as conductors because they understand the long journey to be undertaken. 117 JCG Vol. 30

Specific schooling, instrumental skills, composition, extra-musical knowledge, languages, an understanding of three centuries of past musical currents and most importantly, opportunities for on-the-podium failures are essential ingredients for a career. It would be stretching credulity to believe any of the above necessities are organically intuitive. Finally, a probing intellect and ones own innate musicality comes into play and form the beginnings of a conductor, a specially trained musician who, after experience, will be uniquely qualified to bring a composers creation to life. Are there natural musical performers? The answer must be yes. Throughout musical history we have read about, and witnessed in our own time, the emergence of pre-teen instrumentalists whose accomplishments are extraordinary. These very young violinists and pianists defy classification. They astonish, generally for technical achievements rather than for probing musical reasons. Conversely pre-teen natural conductors are extremely rare, if they exist at all. But because the act of conducting is a collective enterprise, it is entirely possible for a bright ten year old to stand in front of an orchestra, beat patterns and as if by magic, conduct a performance of a Mozart symphony. That is possible because orchestras are giant computers. They retain performance history. Press a key (beat a pattern) and basic musical information appears. In contrast a violin cannot play itself. It makes no sound until it is held and bowed and at that moment of first contact the sounds produced will not be fully formed. In contrast our unschooled conductorbeginner can produce a compact coordinated sonority. The difference in sound production is shocking. The magic is not the conductor, but the orchestra/computer. It is a living sensitive instrument that can produce sound without the guidance of a professional conductor. Like steroids for athletes, orchestras often enhance a conductors performance and inadvertently help keep the CCBT proposition alive.

Many nonmusical professions that rely on statistics can easily identify individuals as natural. Baseballs Hank Aaron hit 744 home runs. No one else has done that. His historic performance identifies him as a born, natural hitter. As has been noted, performance is the heart of the CCBT belief. However unlike the game of baseball which produces concrete statistics based on performance, performing music is an abstract art which defies categorization. Depending on who is listening, the same performance may be perceived as a home run (fantastic), a single (OK) or even an out (not worth hearing.) In contrast, a home run in baseball is a home run for everyone, forever. There is no mystery, no debate. For many, there is an air of mystery firmly in place around extraordinary performances credited to natural conductors. But if one rehearses and performs daily with the worlds leading conductors, and with a great orchestra that features a signature sonority cultivated over decades, the idea of performance as an event cloakedinmystery cannot be taken seriously. Conductors of substance are a complex composite of learned craft, accumulated skills and deep emotional attachments to the music they bring to the public. When a conductor of quality produces an extraordinary musical experience it is a disservice to call his labor the result of some mythical, natural intuition, the kind of conducting that cannot be taught. An experienced observer of conductor/orchestra interaction would know better. He would presume that an excellent conductor brought a musical concept to the podium that gained the respect of an excellent orchestra. There is nothing mysterious about great orchestral performances. They are a combination of multiple skills, shared knowledge and hard work. With those essentials in place an unexpected revelation may, or may not, occur. The same conductor with different orchestras, or the same orchestra with different conductors might not be able to repeat an exceptional performance. Why do we continue to discuss CCBT and natural conductors? The answer lies in the 19th century. Despite the presence of a large number of musicians

who called themselves conductors, conducting was not a profession and conducting teachers did not exist. Music conservatories were well established in Paris, Milan, Naples, Prague, Vienna, Brussels, Leipzig and London. In the United States, Peabody, Oberlin and the New England Conservatory were the first major conservatories. When Mendelssohn (reputedly a fine conductor) designed his Leipzig Conservatory in 1843, he did not include a conducting department. When Wagner, mentor to Blow, Seidl, Richter and Levi designed a music school for Munich, he did not think it was necessary to include a conducting department. A story often repeated tells of a young student who asked Liszt for piano lessons. Liszt replied that when the student became technically proficient he would consider teaching him music. Now imagine 19th century orchestral performances featuring the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Dvorak or Liszt, conducted by the composers. If, as Liszt indicated, the end game is a comprehensive knowledge of the music then who could possibly know the music better then the composer? As a result, 19th century composers were expected to conduct their new compositions, but without technical training. Describing the music verbally was the norm, and a public appearance by a composer as a timekeeper (conductor) was an onthejob learning experience. The CCBT and natural conductor model was born. What methods were used to conduct a group of players in the 19th century? Despite Louis Spohrs disputed account of introducing the silent wooden baton for the first time on April 10, 1820 in London, conducting with a baton was not the normal 19th century procedure. Berlioz describes a performance he attended at the San Carlo Opera in 1831:
The noise made by the conductor tapping his desk bothered me greatly. I was gravely assured, however, that without this support the musicians could not possibly keep in time.

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In 1832, the violin section leaders in a London orchestra objected to Mendelssohn using a baton, insisting he conduct while sitting at the piano. The silent baton was finally accepted by mid 19th century, although pockets of resistance could be found throughout Europe. The only technical tool available to 19th century time keepers were the 18th century two, three and four beat pattern designs formalized by Thomas Janowka in 1701. And because 19th century orchestras regularly performed new music, it was the right tool at the right time. Can you imagine a group of musicians reading a Beethoven symphony in manuscript for the first time without some recognizable patterns from maestro Beethoven? It would have been an almost impossible task. Beat patterns were a fundamental and essential element in the early development of orchestral performance. Patterns continue to be useful, especially in mixed meter music. Think of Pierre Monteaux in Paris in 1911 rehearsing Stravinkys Rite of Spring for the first time. He needed twenty plus rehearsals to instill a technical baton language based on irregular pattern combinations to be able to conduct the Rite of Spring. But by the 21st century, all the components that helped create those historic first performances in the 19th century had changed: The new music of the 19th century is now 200 years old. We now know a great deal about the lives of the composers, and the performance practices of their periods. Unlike 19th century musicians, todays gifted orchestra musicians perform Beethoven, Brahms, and Berlioz with great skill. Hard to read handwritten manuscript parts have been replaced by easy to read printed music. Brass, wind and percussion instruments have been improved. Bows and strings have changed. 119 JCG Vol. 30

Here is another thenandnow comparison. It would have taken a span of 24 years to attend the premieres of all of Beethovens nine symphonies. Today his symphonies can be heard in nine hours, at home, with enough time for lunch and a dinner. After 200 years, Beethovens music is as familiar as our morning newspaper. Today, professional conductors have replaced the composer/conductor model. One thing has not changed. Present day professional conductors stubbornly cling to yesterdays beat patterns. The rationale for pattern use in the 19th century was necessary and acceptable. But those new music conditions no longer exist for todays podium occupants. Present day orchestras know the 19th century repertoire well enough to play entire symphonies without a single baton stroke from a conductor. However, conducting teachers are stuck in the 19th century. They continue to teach music firstan excellent idea that no one can object tobut neglect to put in place a physical delivery system to make the music they teach coherent, or teach technique. Music can be learned from a variety of sources in many ways, and most young students I encounter have interesting and wonderful ideas about all kinds of music. Music is everywhere, but a teacher of conducting is the only source for conducting technique. A new kind of conducting technique, a physical art form that moves beyond patterns, must take hold and be taught. Learning 200yearold formulas should take about fifteen minutes. Is that conducting technique? That notion is insulting to all composers and every young conductor who realizes he cannot make an orchestra respond to his wishes. Teachers tied to patternastechnique fail to realize that they rob young students of the ability to think creatively about the physical aspects of conducting. There is little or no information in the pattern because a pattern has no musical value. It is simply a time keeping device.

The lack of creative physical movement is a 19th century hangover. Natural conductors and CCBT theories are an attempt to hide the problem and it is a shameful indictment of our profession that intelligent musicians support those mystical notions. A score has all the information a gifted musical mind needs to construct a meaningful physical replica of the music. Conducting technique is extracted from the score, changing as the music changes. It is not a formula that is blindly imposed upon all music. I recently revisited The Art of Conducting: Volume 1, a video. However, I watched it silently with the volume turned off. I encourage every student conductor to do the same. Look for the amount of musical and technical information given to the orchestra by the conductor. Then turn the sound on and decide if the orchestras generally excellent performances reflect the conductors information. In many cases the orchestras performances far surpass the information supplied. All the conductors shared common traits: intense commitment to the music, immense knowledge of the scores they were conducting and great orchestras to decipher limited physical directions. So the question must be asked and answered: If the performances were accepted as successful, why change a formula that works? The answer to that important question cannot be given unless another question is asked: What kind of conductor do we want to become? There are two choices. The first choice is the old model, very well represented in the video. It shows very strong musicality, relying on formula time beating for orchestral togetherness, and expecting the orchestra to reproduce all articulations not indicated by the conductor. It worked because historically (19th century onwards), orchestras supplied all the missing ingredients, and in the process became selfsustaining entities. Performances without a unified musical point of view were, and still are common, and create a climate in which conductors often receive credit for performances largely created by the orchestra.

The second option would be called the new model conductor. He or she would be very strong musically and equally strong technically, embracing creative baton movement not tied to rigid formula patterns. As a result the orchestra would become a willing partner in reproducing the musical/technical information supplied by the conductor. Depending on the knowledge and passion of the conductor, the result, for better or worse, would be a unified presentation of the composers intent. The answer to the question of why change a working model, is that the conditions that created that formula have changed dramatically, and so we must change as well. As orchestradriven performances fill our concert halls the conductor is in jeopardy of becoming a deified relic, present but not fully in charge. We can continue to dumbdown our profession while all others improve, or we can begin the process of replacing the old formula. Our profession has undergone significant changes. As rehearsals have become more expensive, rehearsal periods have been reduced. The relationship between conductor and orchestra has been reconfigured. Musicians unions have leveled the playing field. Conductors can no longer act like lords of the manor. I am reminded of a Toscanini cassette tape that was widely circulated in the 1950s. It was a recording of an NBC Symphony rehearsal of the cellobass recitative in the last movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony. The Maestro was on his game. He rehearsed those several measures over and over and over again. Shouting, singing and yelling his instructions he continued to rehearse the same passage yet again and again. At every abrupt interruption his anger and frustration seemed to grow. He was not satisfied and still shouting at the players when the cassette ran out after some 20 minutes. Such behavior is no longer tolerated, but if we step beyond the histrionics, a serious question needs an answer. Why was Toscanini, regarded by many as the greatest conductor of the 20th century, so angry and frustrated? The NBC Symphony was a handpicked orchestra, a stage full of great musicians who JCG Vol. 30 120

could play anything. Is it possible they could not read the recitative correctly? The answer to that question is a definite no. If we had a video of the rehearsal, it would be easy to determine the cause, but even in the absence of a video it was surely Toscanini who created the musical damage. He knew what he wanted, but he couldnt make his musical intentions clear with a baton. He resorted to what every 19th century conductor did: they verbalized the music, which is exactly what Toscanini was forced to do, but in his own inimitable manner. Ultimately the old formula worked, but can the formula be improved or should it be replaced? Should Richard Strauss be considered a great conductor? Based on the video performance of his own Til Eulenspeigel, I would say that Strauss was a great musician and a modest time beating machine, certainly not my idea of a conductor. He is not alone. Change is necessary because the impressive technical abilities of orchestras continued to grow throughout the 20th century while conductors have remained stagnant. Orchestras have become better than conductors. Many orchestras have reached impressive performing plateaus and most sound alike because conductors do not have the technical skills to make them sound better and different from one another. It is no longer necessary to teach a good orchestra how to play Beethovens Fifth Symphony, nor do players want to listen to lectures about the music and about how to play the music. No longer should we expect it to be businessasusual: orchestras helping wellmeaning, intelligent, gifted musicians with no conducting skills succeed as conductors. The message should be clear to all aspiring conductors. Change is necessary. Some progress has already been made. A small number of teachers believe physical motions other than updown, sidetoside can be considered tools for valid technical/musical use. Within the next few decades the physical image of the conductor and conducting will continue to change. A new kind of baton technique will allow conductors the flexibility and freedom to control all elements of the music while allowing the orchestra to perform with little 121 JCG Vol. 30

interference from the conductor when or if desired. The orchestra will cease to be an expert note producing machine and become an equal partner to the conductor in producing a true reflection of the mind, heart and will of the conductor. Technique Prerequisites for the use of these twelve technical considerations are that the conducting student is musical, dedicated to learning and believe that physical movement can be dictated by the music. 1. Baton: Control of the tip of the baton is essential for carrying sound and creating orchestral weight. Changing the speed of the movement of the tip of the baton will create color, line and phrase. 2. Wrist: The wrist is the most important part of the conducting arm. It is the closest movable part of the conducting arm to the tip of the baton, and its movement is capable of creating every dynamic and all articulations. 3. Articulations A: The conducting arm has three movable units (wrist, forearm, shoulder) and each unit has a different strength and function in creating and delivering a variety of baton strokes containing a variety of articulations. B: A combination of wrist and forearm movement (never together) can cover every technical and expressive marking in a score with precision. Vertical, horizontal, clicks, flicks, staccato, legato, sfzs, circular and half circular strokes can be used forcefully or expressively in all dynamic ranges. 4. Body: Beyond a proper and comfortable stance, crouching, dancing, etc. it is important to realize that the body is not a baton. Music passes through our bodies as we breathe and create sonority, and the body acting as a conduit for movement to the tip of the baton. The baton must always be the primary visual element for the orchestra. The body certainly helps, but if the body shakes, rattles and rolls, the baton is nullified.

5. Registration: A technique in which the baton follows the flow of a line as it moves upwards or downwards and breaks pattern. Registration works best in slow to moderate moving music and is excellent for gaining p to pp sound structures but only with wrist movement. Baton Registration is learned by practicing scale movement (sing the scales): up, down, sidetoside, using all articulations. 6. Score Study: Add visual score study for baton placement to traditional score study. 7. Conductors Space: The entire area around the podium to the furthest reaches of the conductors arms is the conductors working area. Visual score study identifies the areas in the conductors space for baton placement, based on the needs of the score. Identifying the need for specific strokes (articulations) in specific areas may mean breaking patterns. 8. Hands: The use of both hands in various areas of the conductors space, independent of each other, is essential for the fullest realization of the text. The old idea of beating time with the right hand in one area, and emoting with the left hand (usually shaking it at the first violins) should be retired. 9. Topography: The placement of either hand in the conductors working space is a result of the composers topography. Examine a page of music (visual score study). It will contain all the information a conductor needs to make reasoned baton movement decisions. Pages will differ from one another in density of notes, orchestration and rhythmic ideas. Every bit of print on the page should impact the choice of stroke. As music changes, the strokes will change. This approach to baton movement (technique) is very different than simply repeating the same formula pattern measure after measure. 10. Orchestration: Use the composers orchestration as a guide to orchestrate your hand movements, using either hand as primary musicmakers. Move from hand to hand if the orchestration allows it, e.g.

left side to right side or winds to harp, etc. Give up pulse when the composer suspends active motion. Conducting through an entire work with the right hand beating every pulse is probably the least viable option in recreating a composers music. No composition can possibly be as dull as a repeated pattern, and no professional orchestra needs constant time keeping. 11. Score: Every component in the score dictates the conductors physical response. Imagination and knowledge must influence decisionmaking, and conductors will differ on the meaning of the music, but the score is the only roadmap to public performance. 12. Music: Music creates its own technique, which must be an energydriven physical replica of the composers mind and heart. If conducting technique is created by the music, the physical act of conducting cannot be a codified set of motions applied to every kind of music. Conducting has its own unique technique, divorced from patterns. Conducting can be, and is, an art form. ***** Harold Farberman, founding President of the Conductors Guild, is the Founder, Director and Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Conductors' Institute at Bard (NY). He also serves on the Advisory Council and Mentoring Committee of the Conductors Guild. ENDNOTE Teachers of conducting finally appeared in the 20th century with the emergence of non-composer conductor professionals in the last quarter of the 19th century. In 1905, the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris hired Vincent DIndy, followed by the Vienna Hochschule in 1909 (Franz Schalk), and the Royal College, London in 1919 (Sir Adrian Boult). JCG Vol. 30 122

Chamber Orchestra & Ensemble Repertoire A Catalog of Modern Music

by

Dirk Meyer
This catalog, of nearly 4,000 compositions, provides complete performance information on a variety of repertoire for smaller ensembles. The extensive appendix allows you to search the entries according to features like instrumentation and duration, and is completed with a list of publishers and resources. Foreword by David Daniels.

This extremely comprehensive and user-friendly guide significantly serves the interests of adventurous spirits performing and programming 20th and 21st century repertoire. Paul Moravek

Thorough, intelligent and incredibly well organized! Vadim Gluzman

A Must! Ludovic Morlot

Visit w w w . C h a m b e r O r c h e s t r a R e p . c o m for more information.
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