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That Ring keeps him pretty busy. Had dinner with him a couple of weeks ago. He's in fine shape, for a hobbit.

Lucky you. Hope it involved beer!

It did.

I don't know where this response got to when I posted it, but it didn't show up here where I intended it.

Here ya go.

Phil O wrote:Yes, where has that little hobbit been lately?

Very nteresting topic.

Score prep is #1. It's not just a matter of studying the conductor score, but it's also about looking at the parts the orchestral players have to deal with. I've seen too many parts in which there is, say a 41 measure rest that lacks important information that makes it very difficult for a player to follow along. Knowing which players are freezing to death during a long interval trying to count measures with fluctuating tempos gives the conductor a chance to make eye contact at the point of the player's next entrance.

Leinsdorf said (in a Jesse Jackson sort of way) to have the score in your head and not your head in the score. That alone changed my life.

The best method with new music is to work closely with the copyist to avoid a clump of empty measures that serve to be more confusing to the player than helpful. This is harder to do in classical music because you might be dealing with a Kalmus edition that requires counting 28 measures before "Letter M". For my own scores, I number every measure to save time and to avoid mishaps.

But as to the conductor personality issue, I agree that a conductor brings a certain personality to the table that is highly recognizable. It's a bit harder to deal with where a particular orchestra/conductor combo is concerned. Some of the greatest performances of classical music were with a certain conductor and orchestra in combo. The Chicago Symphony changed (necessarily) under Reiner, Solti, Barenboim, Muti, and others. The musicians also changed. There were new ones coming and older ones retiring. It's kind of like baseball or football. You've got a team and special players as well as a compatible coach from one season (or a series of seasons) to the next. Likewise, Philadelphia sounded different under Ormandy than it did under Sawallisch, or Cleveland under Leinsdorf vs Dohnány. All were wonderful, but all were different.

As a kid, I'd listen to FM classical radio and found myself gravitating to certain performances only to find that the conductors were the same 2-3. For whatever reason, I was most attracted to Karajan and Bernstein for the way they would bend time out the yin-yang for a powerful expressive result. Some would say-- "Oh, that's not how Verdi would have done it", but I believe that there is a valid space between perceived absolute authenticity and personal indulgence that works.

The most important lesson I learned from Bernstein, Reiner, and Karajan was to keep the players "in the moment"-- not guessing, but engaged. I was present during a Boston Symphony concert in which Ozawa did Strauss' Don Juan. At one point he put his hands behind his back and stepped off the podium. That, to me, showed the orchestra that he had a tremendous amount of trust in them, that how they knew to play together was greater than how he would otherwise beat time. There are also many orchestras that don't even have a conductor who play extremely well together with undisputed precision.

It's about more than "mere" precision. There's a LOT of chemistry at work. It's the level of comfort and the depth of rapport the orchestra has with the conductor (aka: music director) that makes all the difference. Is it any different from any other relationship, musical or otherwise?

As always, Mr. Frodo, well said. Good to hear from you. Hope all is well.

Philippe

Phil!!

Some would say-- "Oh, that's not how Verdi would have done it", but I believe that there is a valid space between perceived absolute authenticity and personal indulgence that works.

Absolutely! Deems Taylor's essay on that subject changed my life (too busy to look which volume contains it).

It's about more than "mere" precision. There's a LOT of chemistry at work. It's the level of comfort and the depth of rapport the orchestra has with the conductor (aka: music director) that makes all the difference. Is it any different from any other relationship, musical or otherwise?

Frodo wrote:...it's also about looking at the parts the orchestral players have to deal with. I've seen too many parts in which there is, say a 41 measure rest that lacks important information that makes it very difficult for a player to follow along...

I worked as a pit drummer for a musical. The drum parts were painful. A figure was written out in one measure and repeat measures were numbered starting at #1. So if you had an 8 measure ostinato, measure 2 was marked 1, measure 3 marked 2, etc. The score was riddled with stuff like that. To make matters worse the drum charts had repeats that other players didn't have so say you had an 8 measure repeat at the head - when you got to measure 9 after the repeat everyone else's chart was at measure 17. The music director would say, "Take it from 72" and I'd be completely lost. One of my favorite memories from that show was a section marked, "play with increasing violence." The trombone player asked, "You want I should take out the drummer?" I'd like to give the copyist of that score some increasing violence.

I worked as a pit drummer for a musical. The drum parts were painful.

Pit orchestras... wow. I do not know how many shows I played (guitar/banjo and/or bass) or conducted over the years.

I learned an important lesson early. Mark cuts, discretionary cues etc. in pencil but correct mistakes in ink! You learn to spot mistakes by seeing an area that had been written and erased over and over again. I felt I was being nice to the next person who had to play the book. Over the years, I saw some of 'my' books come back several times.

... A figure was written out in one measure and repeat measures were numbered starting at #1

After a couple of shows, you learn to just go with that one.

After a couple of shows, you learn to just go with that one.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. Those charts were the worst I've ever seen. Some sections just had measures filled with quarter notes (which is not uncommon for drum parts) but with absolutely no indication of groove. It was just on you to listen then go back and mark your chart swing, straight eighths, etc. There were horn cues (so you can get the punches) that didn't line up with the horn charts. There were one measure rests at random spots that made absolutely no musical sense. I haven't done a lot of this kind of work, but every other pit gig I've done was very different. Did one on banjo that was a blast - Hee Haw Hayride, kind of a hillbilly Romeo and Juliet for young performers. But I digress.

And I'm still off topic.

People who have never played drums often have a hard time writing percussion parts. They can be a beast unto themselves.

Speaking of percussion, is it typical for a conductor to essentially delegate balance decisions and the like to the section leader? As most percussionists have to switch instruments many times throughout a piece (even when there are multiple percussionists), it seems like the "continuity" might be better known by the player than by the conductor -- and yet, given the gigantic dynamic range, the conductor might be the only one to be in a position to make proper judgment of how it is blending (volume-wise as well as articulation-wise) with the other players.

On a slightly different topic than percussion, yet semi-related, I have always been amazed at the range of decisions that different conductors make regarding the role of the hammered dulcimer (or clavichord; a related instrument) in Kodaly's Harry Janos (and other music by that composer). Only in recent years have I heard it front-and-center with maximum dynamics, and it is riveting! Not sure why it was so overly-romanticised and :smoothed out" for so many years, so I don't know if this is "conductor interpretation" or maybe substitute instruments were used due to snobbery towards instruments perceived primarily as folk instruments?