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Re: Conductors and Literature

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-07-20 23:33

I am an educator who conducts student ensembles as well as a clarinetist performer myself. I'm not a professional conductor. I think that a conductor needs to be able to see the craft of a piece of music - the structure, the harmonic and melodic technique, the orchestration, etc. - in terms of how it builds toward the beauty that you describe. You start with the impression of beauty and musical value and then drill down to figure out what produces it. This is because there is another participant in the process, the audience, that is the nominal target of the work the performers do.

That said, I have played for many conductors who seemed only to be able to see the technical details and had no grasp of an overall meaning of the music they were working with - the conductor who has almost nothing to say except "it says piano - you're playing too loud" or "watch the baton - it isn't together!"

I'm not sure it ought to be different in reading written literature, but it more easily *can* be, because the reader has no responsibility to anyone else - the reader is the only audience for his or her specific reading (performance) of the literary work.

Karl

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