WHAT IS AN ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR?

W. J. Henderson

A MAN clad in a suit of inky black and wearing long hair which falls heavily upon his white collar stands with his back turned upon a silent audience. He waves both arms vigorously, at times extravagantly, yet at others with purpose seemingly desperate, even deadly. In one hand he holds a small stick, which he thrusts fiercely first in one direction, then in another. He prances on one foot. He ranges from one edge of his little platform to the other. Before him sit some eighty musicians, who act as if mesmerized by his frantic pantomime so that they play frantically till the people shout approval and the walls tremble.

Another man stands on another platform. He also turns his back, a strong, straight, slender back. He also has a little stick. He moves it calmly, bravely, with silent but regal command. He seldom waves both arms at once. He does not prance. He does not rush spasmodically from one side of the podium to the other. Nevertheless his orchestra plays with noble beauty of tone and with lofty eloquence. In fact the critics (with one exception) prefer the performance of his orchestra to that of the other. But the people— most of them—do not believe that he signifies as much as the first man because he does not saw the air nor caper like the wild goat.

These men are orchestra conductors, stars of the baton, prima donnas of interpretation. They belong to a new race of musical virtuosi, unknown but a few decades back. Indeed the prinm donna conductor is a "demnition product." He is a prodigy reared in the tumultuous conditions of modern hysteria. He began in sanity, but his development has been abnormal; and its unreality has been brought about in some measure by the lamentable public misunderstanding of the nature and object of orchestral conducting. Almost everything in art is misapprehended by the mass of men; in music perhaps it is everything without the qualifying "almost."

IN certain details the common misapprehension as to the nature of conducting is like that which prevails about all musical performance. Thousands of emotional people love to think that when Kreisler comes forward to play the violin or Paderewski to deliver one of the piano gospels of Chopin he does not know precisely what is going to happen. He begins to perform and then a mysterious, overwhelming inner force, called "temperament," suddenly boils up and inflames his soul with fiery illuminating power. Then he instantly interprets the composition as he never interpreted it before.

In a manner somewhat similar to this a conductor mounts a platform and begins to wag a little stick, while the orchestra proceeds to fiddle and toot in perfect time. Then suddenly the conductor makes a wild swoop at the trumpets and they instantly blow in a way hitherto unknown to them. Or he leans over the desk and imitates 'cellos played tremolo, whereupon the 'cello players involuntarily play tremolo. Still more marvellous, he makes unexpected motions and the orchestra phrases passages in such fashion as to astonish every player, and nuances hitherto unthought of are introduced while a new and prodigious reading is created extemporaneously.

All of which is rubbish of the most ornate variety. The interpreting conductor does not do things on the spur of the moment, and if he tried to, the orchestra, unprepared for them, would not execute his wishes. Occasionally when everything is not going just as he desires, he may hasten or retard tempo. He may even accentuate a general forte. But that is about as far as he can go. Arthur Nikisch, the foremost conductor in Germany and at one time conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, himself the most magnetic and temperamental among symphonic conductors, told me that this was as far as he could go when on the platform. The rest had all to be carefully rehearsed.

THE conductor is purely a modern institution. The time beater is an old one. Indeed choirs were led by time beaters in the middle ages. But when the orchestra began to assume its infant shape, the time beater gave way to an instrumental conductor or, to be strictly technical, a leader. For many years this office was held by the harpsichord player, because the notes of this instrument could be clearly heard by the whole orchestra. Furthermore the principal violinists, seated close to the harpsichord, were also guided by the motions of the player's hands.

Time beating in opera seems to have become the custom in France a good while before it did in Germany, but the first real movement toward the modern orchestral interpreter was made by Johann Karl Stamitz (1719-61) and Francois Joseph Gossec (1733-1829). The former was the conductor of the Mannheim orchestra and the latter the founder of the Concert des Amateurs in Paris. These two conductors made a searching study of the possibilities of orchestral technic, phrasing, and nuance, and naturally they began to inquire whether they were appropriately applying their gradations.

Thus while they laid the foundations of that finish of performance which excites our admiration for such a body as the Boston or Chicago orchestra, they also opened the gate for the interpreting conductor with his studiously planned "reading" of a composition. Before Gossec's death Spohr, Mendelssohn and Weber had ushered in modern method, the first with his elegant delivery of Mozart's symphonies, the second with his resurrection of Bach, and the third with his revitalization of old German operas.

Finally Francois Antoine Habeneck (1781-1849) founder of the Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire, became a genuine "star" conductor, introducing Beethoven's symphonies to Paris and "reading" them with power, feeling and nobility. From then till now there have always been interpretative conductors. There is too much interpretation indeed, for at every concert the conductor feels bound to offer something individual, something new, something astonishing in the matter of a "reading."

"BUT first of all the conductor is a time beater, for the size of the modern orchestra and the space it occupies makes such a functionary absolutely necessary. Even the time beater's art is not to be despised, and it is a disheartening fact that many of the most pretentious interpreters are not well acquainted with it. The second requirement of the conductor is mastery of orchestral technic. He ought to know the technic of all the instruments in order that he may speak with authority. Beyond that he must be a master of the relations of the instruments in the ensemble. His the delicate task of adjusting the balance of tone so that the music shall issue forth into the auditorium clear, transparent, lucid. He must direct the growth of every crescendo and the descent of every diminuendo to the precise degree required to meet the purport of his "reading." He must polish every attack, smooth every curve of the melodic phrase, hit with elusive cunning upon the rhetorical pause which illumines the phrase like a flash of light.

In short the orchestra is the conductor's instrument upon which he plays with his little baton. But it is not a magician's wand. It is the sword of an officer. The conductor sleeps with the score of a new work. He dreams about it. He rises with it and spends hours at the piano with it. And then he goes to rehearsal. He usually begins with a few general directions, though this is not the custom of all conductors. Some begin by playing the first pages and only stop the orchestra when a point is to be made.

But in the main the process is the same. The conductor calls for more tone here, for a diminution of it there. He represses the brass, or strains the bows of the strings. But it is mostly done in talk. He knows what he wants—that is the highest compliment an orchestral player pays a conductor—and he makes it known. When a passage is not played just as he wishes it to be, he causes his men to repeat it till it is right. The score, if it be long, as in an opera, has letters or numbers printed over the staves at certain points. "Gentlemen, go back to six bars before G," or "Eight bars after No. 29." Repetition, explanation and insistence at rehearsal are the hard work of the conductor.

The direction of the public performance is not an extemporaneous action, but one studied, even as the pianist's reading of the sonata. The conductor's chief affair at the performance is to give the cue for the entrance of the instruments after rests, to make sure of the swift attack of a phrase, for which purpose his players must then direct their eyes to him, and to work up tempi when the music drags, or retard them when things move too excitedly. Chiefly his aim is to remind his men of what they prepared at rehearsal.

Beyond this, however, it is incontestable that the personal force of the man, his temperamental magnetism and his enthusiasm, have their effect on the players. A colonel may be past master of tactics, yet not have a smart regiment. A dull officer makes dull men. Every good musician might be a master conductor, if the personal element starked naught. But the widely cherished notion that the magnetic prima donna conductor works marvels on the spur of the moment out of the flame of sudden inspiration is absurdly exaggerated, and what is worse, it robs the great conductor of the correct honor. He is glorified for what he does not do and what he actually does passes unrecognized.

DR. KARL MUCK, conductor of the Boston orchestra, is a splendid example of the strong, quiet, forceful master, who has done his duty at rehearsal and at performance has only to call upon his men to give to the audience that which he and they have elaborated in private. Felix Weingartner, another master conductor, who has recently confined his American labors to the Boston opera, is one of the men who combines the intellectual and emotional elements of conducting admirably. He can train masterfully at rehearsal and inspire brilliantly in performance. Among orchestral conductors in this country Frederick Stock, of the Chicago organization, occupies an enviable position, and he has earned it by hard work. He succeeded the great Theodore Thomas when that master passed on, and he has brought the Chicago orchestra to a high place of excellence. Young Leopold Stokowski, in Philadelphia, has attracted the attention of connoisseurs by his finely wrought out readings, which show a close examination of every phrase in a composition and a grasp of the interrelations of all parts. In New York Walter Damrosch, of the Symphony Society, is the dean of conductors, and Josef Stransky, of the Philharmonic, the most recent of them.

In the operatic world the duties of the conductor are practically the same as those of the symphonic interpreter. The chorus learns its share of the work under the chorus master, and the principals study their roles at home and afterward review them with the solo repetiteur.

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The conductor's first business is to rehearse the orchestra by itself. Finally all the parties are assembled for stage and orchestral rehearsal, and then the conductor becomes the overlord of all. Soloists, chorus and orchestra must obey him. The responsibility for the musical interpretation of the opera rests on his shoulders. In case of dispute the impresario may be summoned, but it hardly profits to send for him, because he will surely say, "The director of the music is the conductor."

This does not mean that the soloist has no voice in the manner of his own interpretation. On the contrary no conductor worth his salt ever interferes with this. He lays down his ultimatum only when the idea of the soloist is palpably opposed to the general purpose of the scene, when, for instance, he wishes to take a tempo which will upset the ensemble. Occasionally, too, he may determine that a certain aria must be sung at a pace faster or slower than that chosen by the singer.

ARTURO TOSCANINI, the distinguished Italian conductor of the Metropolitan Opera House, is conceded to be the foremost maestro of his country. Mr. Toscanini's preparation of an opera is marked by one peculiarity not found in other conductors' study. He commits every score to memory and always directs without the use of the printed page. For many years his sight has been so defective that he can read the score only by bending down till his face almost touches it. Of course it is impossible to conduct in such an attitude. So early in life he began to cultivate a naturally fine memory till he was able to retain entire opera scores. He knows such works as "Tristan und Isolde," "Aida," "Gotterdammerung," "Manon," and Beethoven's ninth symphony entirely by heart and never uses the scores in conducting. He knows the entrance of every instrument or combination of instruments, and of every voice on the stage and can sing every word of the text. Hence when he rehearses he has an unequalled freedom, for he can bend his whole mental concentration on the quality of the performance. When the time arrives for public representation Toscanini, tremendously nervous with vitalizing magnetism, is there facing the orchestra and the singers, using the baton with graphic skill, talking to his players, singing at the singers, and projecting into all the surrounding atmosphere such a vast quantity of his spirit that one wonders how he lives through a season.

WHAT I have written is a plea for the recognition of conducting as an art. The popular conception of it denies it the first requisite of art, namely, method. The real inspiration in conducting is not that which is believed to fire the man on the platform, but that which illumines his mind when he sits in solitary study of the masterpiece and penetrates its inner meaning. His triumph is an eloquent and convincing publication of this to an audience.