You Can't Fool the Orchestra All of the Time

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 365, 21 June 1946, Page 28

You Can't Fool the Orchestra All of the Time

AUL HENRY LANG, the author of the following article (which we reprint from the "Saturday Review of Literature") is a Hun-garian-born American, aged 45, professor of Musicology at Columbia University, editor of the "Musical Quarterly" and author of a notable book, "Music in Western Civilisation.". By his combination of imaginative scholarship with lively journalism, he has put new vigour into musical learning and musical criticism in the United States. The article we print here appeared in the section "Hearing Things" which he contributes to the "Saturday Review."

HE conductor raises his baton, the audience is hushed, and the concert begins. The gyrations of the baton, imperious gestures of head and body, vivid facial expression, here approving, there pleading, seem to draw the music from the orchestra as if by magic. The magic is the .more convincing because quite often there is no score in front of the conductor and everything seems to be concentrated in, and emanating from, the slender piece of wood in his right hand. There can be no question that the admiration bestowed a generation ago on

the great virtuosos of the violin or piano cannot compare with the worshipful reverence accorded to our present-day virtuoso conductors; the answer is, of course, that they are not entirely free from the suspicion of sorcery. The reaction to the conductor’s mysterious doings is different, however, on the part of those who face him, for to them it is of vital importance whether those gestures have any practical meai:ing upon which they can rely during the execution of the work. An experienced orchestral player. can tell after a few measures whether the conductor is attending to his business or is indulging

in hocus-pocus for effect, and will govern his playing accordingly. Because-and this is not sufficiently appreciated by the public-he can play without payirg much attention to the conductor. The art of conducting is 90 per cent. rehearsing, with 10 per cent. added for the performance. The gestures are largely meaningless unless the all-important essentials of a composition-such as tempo, dynamics, phrasing, balance-in short, the depth and breadth of the composition are communicated to the orchestra in detail. All this takes place during the rehearsals, when the true skill and mastery of the conductor count. Many a person who unreservedly believes in the limitless memory and sovereign ease of action of our famous conductors would be surprised to see them in their overalls when, with a score before them, they rehearse a symphony. Influence of Toscanini On such occasions a few of our glamour boys cut a sorry figure in the eyes of their players. In the "old days"

the conductor was a man who knew his score inside out before starting on the first rehearsal; yet he would not part with his copy. To-day, some of our star conductors do not bother very much with their scores in advance. At the first rehearsal or rehearsals they sit up in the balcony and have the orchestra put through its paces by the assistant conductor or concert master, usually a very efficient musician thoroughly

capable of familiarising himself with the score in short order. Having thus painlessly gotten an over-all picture of the score, the conductor can proceed to invest it with the tricks of the trade, the oomph the public expects from the virtuoso conductor. This business of conducting without a score has a curious origin. It is due mainly to the fact that Toscanini’s eyesight is poor and he became compelled some time ago to conduct without the score. This he offsets by studying his scores with the utmost care until he really knows them. The great Italian’s misfortune was turned into a fad, and nowadays most conductors of position consider it their duty to avoid being seen in public with a score. Players Under Strain Needless to say; this silly custom sets various limitations on their freedom of action. They may know a work in its broad outlines, but can seldom master its details without the orchestral score, hence the players do not benefit from subtle and precise guidance, but get only the obvious cues which they do not need, but which the public will instantly recognise as a magic stroke of the baton, In turn, the players are under a strain, as they can never fully rely on help from the leader. Another natural consequence of this concession to showmanship is the narrowness of the conductor’s repertory. He will know the staples-and in our well organised .standard repertory he can go a long way with a couple of dozen works-and wil! avoid any new works if he can. (One approved way out is to let the composer conduct his new work; this looks like an honour, whereas it is likely to be plain indifference and laziness.) The committing to memory of the orchestral score of a large symphonic work is a gruelling and unnecessary task, not to be confused with the relatively simple memorising of compositions for a solo instrument. Memorising a piano sonata or a violin concerto is considerably aided by the physical memory of the fingers; as a matter of fact, there are many celebrated performers whose digital skill and memory are vastly superior to their musical talents. No one is altogether at ease when conducting by heart; the score should be there to be read so that the complete picture of the work is constantly before the maestro. Opera Calis the Bluff In _contradistinction, we seldom, if ever, see a conductor in an opera house lead a performance without a score, for the very simple reason that such bluffing as is done in the concert hall would soon end in disaster. The well-organised symphony orchestra can muddle _ through without a mishap even if it does not get much help from the conductor-the New York Philharmonic Orchestra used to play every piece to the bitter end even under Stransky. In the opera everything depends on the conductor. The singers, who sing from memory, need his constant vigilance, and the orchestra, usually less efficient than a good symphony orchestra and much less rehearsed, is not free to shift for itself; it must keep its pace with the stage. The really great conductors are made

in the opera, and some of our most celebrated heroes of the concert hall would not last half way through Hansel and Gretel. Those leisurely gestures, elegant grimaces, expressions of rage or grief which hypnotise the unsuspecting public are of no avail in the opera pit; the conductor must watch his prima donna lest the lady-seldom altogether sure of her music-will start too soon or too late, and a down beat must be a down beat for her, a pirouette won’t do, To be sure, a good performance is immeasurably aided by a fiery and enthusiastic conductor, but we must not forget that the motions of the baton are not for the purpose of churning up an ethereal whipped cream; every one of those motions is part of a basically very simple pattern of beating time. In the 18th Century French orchestra the conductor whacked his desk with something resembling a baseball bat- Rousseau called him "the woodchopper." After a while this practice was abandoned as being too noisy and conductors led their forces with a rolled sheaf of music paper, later, from about Mendelssohn onward, settling on the present-day method of. the silent baton. Still, in a way, that. pounding was very practical compared to the senseless baton meanderings of some of our conductors. Breakdown at Boston Most of our eminent orchestral leaders know just how far they can go in their showmanship without endangering the performance-or at least themselves. Some years ago I watched Koussevitzky gloriously at sea in the very first chorus of Bach’s St. John Passion. This music not being in his bailiwick he had the score in front of him, but his antics got him in trouble and he lost his way. Not so the Boston Symphony players, to whom this was a very simple task, nor the Harvard-Radcliffe choirs, superbly trained in their difficult parts by expert if unglamorous musicians. The piece ended with both conductor and performers still together-but it was they who led the conductor. The public does not notice such little contretemps, which are not unusual, but the musicians know it instantly and come to the conductor’s rescue. It is ironical, indeed, that the ethics of the trade forbid even mentioning such weaknesses in ‘the armour of the knights of the baton. Our musical life would gain much if we could return to the eminently pro- fessional, and of course artistic, customs of the days of, say, Karl Muck (since we have singled out the valiant Bostonians), but a conductor with a score and an unequivocally intelligible beat has no such chance until our public will realise the value of artistic integrity in conducting, and will place it above histrionics.