THE CONDUCTOR
_The Score; a page from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony;
requirements of a Conductor; Lully; Wagner; our Symphony
Orchestras._
The Orchestra, a great instrument, composed, as we have seen, of so
many different instruments, voices, and human personalities, awaits the
Conductor before it becomes of value.
He enters, takes his stand before his men, raises his tiny white _bâton_,
and the large body is vitalized into sound. All these many vibrations
and voices reach our ears; and we, following the unfolding patterns and
musical phrases, put them all together in the shape and form that the
composer heard in his dreams, reduced to writing and made permanent for
posterity.
It is the Conductor’s work to make this musical pattern clear to us and
to realize the composer’s intentions. If the Conductor did not understand
the composition as preserved in the printed score, we could not put
together all these musical fragments. It would be nothing but a broken-up
jig-saw puzzle!
A Conductor has to _know_ the score.
[Illustration: ORCHESTRA OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY]
To read a score requires a very high order of musical intelligence. Some
of us have never thought to ask what the big book looks like that lies
on the Conductor’s desk. Facing page 276 is a page from the Conductor’s
score of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It is the opening of the second
movement, _Andante con moto_.
We know that the Soprano sings, or plays, in the Treble Clef, the Bass in
the Bass Clef, and the Altos in the Alto Clef. Those who play the piano
have learned to play in the Soprano and the Bass Clefs simultaneously;
for the right hand plays the one, and the left hand the other. A
violinist only knows the Soprano Clef; those who play the viola, play in
the Alto, or Soprano Clef; and those who play the violoncello, play in
the Bass, Tenor and Soprano Clefs, for they have to play in them all from
time to time. The Conductor has to read _all the parts of the Orchestra
at once_,—and in all the Clefs. Let us look at our illustration. The
flutes on the top line and the oboes next play in the Soprano Clef; the
clarinets play in the Soprano Clef but _in a different key_ (B); then the
bassoons play in the Bass Clef; then the horns in C (still another key);
then the trombones in C; then the _tympani, or kettledrums_, in C and
G; then come the strings: the violins and second violins playing in the
Soprano Clef; the viola in the Alto, or Tenor Clef; the violoncellos in
the Bass Clef; and the double-basses in the Bass Clef. Notice that a long
line divides the bars, a line drawn, or _scored_,[87] through all the
staves from top to bottom.
In our example we have twenty-two bars of continuous music. The
viola[88] and violoncello begin the melody, with the double-bass playing
_pizzicato_ at first and taking up the bow in the ninth bar. All the
other instruments are silent, as the rests show, until the violas and
violoncello have finished their gentle, sweet melody, when the bassoons
and violins add a finish to it. Then the cool woodwind plays a lovely
little part, and the warm violins come in as the liquid flutes, oboes,
clarinets, and bassoons finish their phrase; and then the woodwind and
strings play together, the horns, trumpets, and drums keeping silent;
and—we cannot see what comes now, for we are at the end of this page.
This one page gives an idea of what the Conductor has to do. He has to
bring out the melody, get the right accents, give the right shading
(the _pianos_ and _fortes_), and make the right _crescendos_ and
_diminuendos_, besides adding a poetic conception, so as to render the
melodies flowing and graceful and to bring out the composer’s inner
meaning.
What a quick and trained eye a Conductor must have to read the score,
both perpendicularly and horizontally at the same time!
Of course, an acute ear must be another of his gifts; and his natural ear
is trained and rendered more acute by experience.
An innate sense of rhythm must belong to a Conductor. He must have also
an appreciation of melody and an intuition that divines the subtle
melodies, melodic phrases, and beautiful harmonies that lie hidden in
the score. He must also have some of the qualities of a painter to bring
out light and shade and varieties of color—glowing hues and delicate
tints—from the instruments that are ranged before him ready to obey his
magic wand.
[Illustration: PAGE FROM CONDUCTOR’S SCORE
_Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony_]
The Conductor must also have a literary and a poetic sense to understand
the romantic and historical subjects, which composers so often select as
themes; and he must have imagination to visualize a picture in his own
mind before he can make his own Orchestra and his audience follow the
music, or the phrases, that go to make up that picture, or that _musical
impression of a picture_.
In a certain sense, the Conductor _leads his audience_, though most of us
are unconscious of his power in this particular. We, to a certain degree,
see the musical picture that the Conductor sees; for we have only the
threads he gives us—the scarlet and blue and green and purple and lilac
and golden threads with which we may weave as we listen the beautiful
musical tapestry, the cartoons for which may be said to lie in the pages
of the score.
Though it is often said that the “virtuoso-conductor” was practically
unknown until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, that statement is far
from correct. If you will read again the description of Lully’s Orchestra
(pages 162-172) you will see that he has a splendidly trained body of
highly artistic performers. Lully’s methods of polishing his material
were not unlike those in use to-day. Corelli, too, must have polished his
Orchestra highly; for his violinists all played as one man (see page 180).
It is a great mistake to condemn performances of the past and to think
that because tastes differed from ours that Orchestras were primitive.
There was nothing primitive in the cultured days of the Renaissance, nor
in those of Louis XIV.
We may be very sure that the lutes and viols, with their complicated
strings and intricate system of tuning, required _virtuosi_ to play them
artistically and romantically to suit the culture of the age; and that
the Conductors had something more to do than beat time, even if they sat
at the _gravicembalo_, or harpsichord.
Moreover, the audiences of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries were
highly cultured men and women. There were also many brilliant amateur
musicians. Perhaps, on the whole, amateurs reached as high a degree of
excellence as they do to-day.
Lully was undoubtedly a very great Conductor; and there does not seem to
have been any one after him who stood for such perfect performances as
his until Wagner pointed out the path for Conductors to follow.
Wagner’s criticisms in his _Art of Conducting_ show that the Orchestras
of Europe—even the famous ones—gave interpretations of the Classic
composer that we, Americans, would not tolerate; for it is no
exaggeration to say that the Orchestras of our country have for many
years been the most brilliant, the most finished, and the most poetic in
the world. This condition we owe to the guiding minds and high artistic
aims of the versatile and intellectual Conductors who have developed our
Symphony Orchestras, and to the fact that no national prejudice prevents
them from taking the best players from any country; the woodwind from
France and Belgium; the strings from Austria; the brass from Germany;
together with an ever-increasing number of young Americans who show
adaptability in all the orchestral groups.
[Illustration: RICHARD STRAUSS CONDUCTING]