 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-02-13 18:01
In another thread Tony wrote:
"Playing together -- say, for simplicity, between two players -- isn't about one player reacting to another. It's about the two players sharing a model of what the music is doing."
This seems to me to be the purpose of rehearsing- so that the musicians can find a joint model of what the piece of music is doing.
Tony- would you say that the role of a conductor is to present a model of the music, which the musicians in the orchestra can then relate to? I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what makes a good orchestral conductor. The only thing that I could come up with which seems to be a quality of all the best conductors I've worked with (perhaps the only one that they share), is that they have such a strong and well-thought-out concept of what the music is doing. They all have different ways of presenting this to the orchestra- some are very good at showing it with their gestures, some are able to present it verbally- but their model is so convincing that, even if you wouldn't "conduct" it that way yourself, you understand their model and have no problem going along with it. This seems to me to be the ultimate role of a conductor. Imagine how long it would take to achieve such a model (say, playing a Mahler symphony) without someone standing at the front wagging a stick?!
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2010-02-13 18:29
I had gotten on a serious conductor jag recently after catching an airing of "Beauty As I See It" on Public Televsion some months ago. A great quote from Karajan in it relates a story of his youth. During riding lessons, young Karajan is presented with the the chanllenge of jumping his horse for the first time. He said that he couldn't sleep the night before worrying how he was ever going to get such a huge, heavy beast over a such a daunting obstacle. The day came and his teacher said with some affection, "you are riding the horse the horse is not riding you, just point it in the right direction and don't disturb it." Karajan used this as an example of what a conductor does, merely pointing the general direction and letting the orchestra just execute without interupting it.
An even better example is to listen to recent recordings of perhaps one of the best ensembles out there today - The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. I heard a recording of the Prokovief first symhphony that was beyond sublime. They, of course accomplish all of this WITHOUT any conductor at all.
............Paul Aviles
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2010-02-13 19:47
I didn't see the original thread so I'm wondering what is the context of that quote, maybe referring to something specific? Becuase some music - let's say, for the same example, played by two players - is exactly about one player reacting to another (meaning the players reacting to each other, I assume that's what is meant in the quote too). Of course the result is what the music is, but it is created by the reactions of the players.
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2010-02-13 20:32
Paul Aviles quoted "his teacher said with some affection, "you are riding the horse the horse is not riding you, just point it in the right direction and don't disturb it." Karajan used this as an example of what a conductor does, merely pointing the general direction and letting the orchestra just execute without interupting it."
OK, I'll bite. We are playing the Polovetsian Dances right now with that nice oboe/clarinet interplay in the fast 6/8 section. The conductor is not going to cue each entrance in this case; the oboe and the clarinet have to dance together. The strings keep the beat. So, what is the conductor's physical role in this situation, assuming the passage comes off better in the presence of the conductor than it does without the conductor. And yes, this is a situation where the conductor can compromise the execution of the passage. I have experienced this before.
Barb
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-02-13 21:30
clarnibass- the original quote was in the thread on off beats. Tony continues to say:
"Rehearsal is the process of the creation of that model, which can then be updated in real time by what actually happens. So, you don't play with the other person; you both play together with 'it'."
Hope that makes more sense now?
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-02-14 21:05
Liquorice wrote:
>> This seems to me to be the purpose of rehearsing -- so that the musicians can find a joint model of what the piece of music is doing....would you say that the role of a conductor is to present a model of the music, which the musicians in the orchestra can then relate to?>>
Yes, I would:-)
Actually, I'd say that the best conductors first have a model; and then allow the players to participate in rehearsal to some extent in the realisation of that model; and then allow the model to be 'alive' -- that is, to respond to what happens in the concert -- so that the players, and they themselves, are not just trying to reproduce what they did before. Both the players' responses and the conductor's responses 'count' in that aliveness.
Perhaps another way of putting it would be to say that in the best of all worlds, the rehearsal creates a close-knit family of possible models.
(In the sports analogy, a batsman, say, needs to have available many such families of models of what may happen, as he faces a bowler or pitcher.)
Tony
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-02-15 14:08
Tony Pay wrote,
>>Both the players' responses and the conductor's responses 'count' in that aliveness.>>
Tony, I watched you put that "close-knit family" model into action in the superb Library of Congress concert in 2006. (From first chair, Tony conducted about a dozen solo wind players and one string bass, from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.) Watching someone conduct and play at the same time that way, the audience can learn more of how conducting works than we can in a symphony concert, because we don't have to concentrate on playing, ourselves, but we can see you almost as well as the musicians can -- much better than we see a conductor on a podium with his or her back turned to the audience.
This was an unusually cohesive group, in the sense that the collection of individuals became one unified musical instrument, like a pipe organ. The group not only sounded together but moved together, the way sea creatures in a school move together with and then against the force of the waves or birds in a flock move with and against the wind. I'm interested in what makes some groups cohere that way, while others that sound raggedy usually look raggedy, too. The unifying force in a group as large as that one can't be the synchronicity between individuals that creates a fractal pattern from random motion, for instance, because you were not playing aleatory music.
Well, this metaphor is taking an inelegant turn and I don't really mean to cast you as the lead gander at the point of the flying V, but that is sort of what happens with musicians all following the same score, isn't it? The geese know their goal and their places in the pecking order, but it takes the lead gander to keep that formation elegantly moving. In the ocean, the whole school of bright fish suddenly and apparently spontaneously wheels together, veering in another direction, but maintaining the same distance between individual fish, without colliding. They're following the score but also following their conductor.
I noticed that the seating arrangement let you make eye contact, and that you did make eye contact with the other musicians quite a lot. You also seemed to use wide-angle vision -- not always focussing in and locking eyes with individuals, but looking in the general direction of a group whose entrance was coming up, for instance, in such a way that peripheral vision could continue gathering in a broader view. Meanwhile, it seemed to me that all of the musicians' body language communicated out to the other musicians' wide-angle vision. You used subtle body language to signal tempo and dynamics not only to each other but the the audience. (A sforzando sounds as if it has more oomph if the body language isn't languid.) The fact that the body language *was* subtle -- that you could get away with subtle signals instead of the gross jerking and gyrating and flailing that some conductors use -- indicated the other musicians' well-learned sensitivity to these signals.
That use of visual signals also indicates strong preparation during private practice, in advance. You and the other musicians had the sheet music on the stands in front of you during the concert, but clearly had learned the music so well that you (plural) never had to lock your eyes down on the notes and thus withdraw into yourselves. After all the debating's done about exactly where there's a misprint in the score or where the editors have added unwarranted dynamic markings or whatever, memorization or near-memorization of the final version the conductor decides to use appears to be one of the biggest differences between typical amateur playing and professional playing. You've freed your eyes to be the windows of your ears.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-02-15 20:43
My conducting experience is very limited and mostly of the choral variety, but my observation has been that most of what a conductor does the audience never sees: studying the score, interpreting what the score says to formulate that initial mental model of the music, figuring out what aspects of the performance will have to be explicitly worked out in rehearsal and what can be communicated merely through the baton, figuring out who needs what cues and how you can accommodate all of those needs simultaneously, planning rehearsals to make maximum effective use of the available time, etc.
And then of course, he/she has to communicate the results of that work to the ensemble in rehearsals, observe what the ensemble does in response to the communication during rehearsals, and plan the next rehearsal and/or adjust his/her own mental model in response to what goes on in the rehearsal.
What the audience sees (and, for that matter, what the musicians see as well) is really just the tip of the iceberg.
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2010-02-16 00:56
I think I see the mathematician in Tony peeking out here. The way I view it, a model is an abstraction from reality. It captures some but not nearly all aspects of that reality. The modeler usually chooses which aspects to include to accomplish some end. Thus a batsman/batter, probably more often through observation than study of physics, creates models of various bowlers (pitchers) to help predict where the ball will be at a particular instant and creates models of his/her own swing varieties with the object (to oversimplify) of arranging for the bat and ball to arrive at the same place at the same time in such a way that the ball is redirected "where [the fielders] ain't." The best batsmen/batters are those who have the best models and the best ability to: (1) identify the model that applies to the bowler's/pitcher's actions in a particular instance (including both what the bowler/pitcher is likely to do in a situation and what s/he actually does), (2) select the most appropriate "swing" model from their repertoire and (3) execute their "swing" model's instruction.
In music, the composer's score is, it seems to me, a visual model of the music whose goal is to communicate to the players how the composer would like the music to come out. Each player's individual part is a subdivision of that overall model whose goal is to communicate the role the individual player should perform in the proceedings. As a model, however, (and I think this is important to recognize) the score is actually a fairly gross abstraction. For example, the score might specify that, at a certain point in the music, a clarinetist should execute a concert A4 for two beats at a tempo of allegro and a forte dynamic level, using a C clarinet. Attempting to convert this model's instruction into reality allows for a great deal of variation in what the player actually does. Is the A to be interpreted as 440 beats per second, 442, or some other number? What is the exact duration of the note? How should the note be attacked? At what decibel level should it be played? And is it really necessary to use a C clarinet or is a Bb clarinet adequate? If the music is to come out sounding anything like the composer intended, all the players not only have to be on the same page, they have to be "in" the same model so to speak -- and the composer's model at that.
This, it seems to me, is where a conductor may or may not come in. Ideally, the conductor interprets (and transforms) the "score model" to create his/her own model of how things should come out, making decisions regarding pitch, tempo, note values, (and, if necessary, instruments) and so on. The conductor then attempts to communicate this model to the players through physical motions with the objective of coordinating the players' activities. But note that the conductor's model is an abstraction of how the conductor thinks the music should come out, not necessarily what the composer had in mind.
Good conductors create good models and communicate them accurately. Whether "good" in this sense means "accurate regarding the composer's original intentions" or "pleasing to the audience" or something else is a source of debates (that often turn up on this Board). To the extent players
recognize the conductor's model of a piece and sync it with their own, the performance is more likely to "come out" the way the conductor wants it to. Also, however, to the extent the players understand each others' models, and sync them with their own, they are better able to react to what other players do and interact with each other. Incorporating the conductor's and other players' models with their own creates a richer model for them. Understanding the conductor's model and each others' models is then a function of rehearsal. To the extent the players and the conductor understand the composer's model and how it was originally constructed/abstracted, they are able to create what the composer intended. This is, in part, the function of musical education.
Anyway, that's how I interpret your original comment, Tony.
Best regards,
jnk
Post Edited (2010-02-16 01:01)
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