(Fr. direction d'orchestre; Ger. Dirigiren; It.direzzione d'orchestra).
Modern conducting combines at least three functions: 1) the conductor beats time with his or her hands or with a baton in performance; 2) the conductor makes interpretive decisions about musical works and implements these decisions in rehearsal and performance; 3) the conductor participates in the administration of the musical ensemble. The word conducting acquired its present meaning in the 19th century, as the practice developed in its modern form. Conducting is largely limited to the tradition of Western art music, although other traditions have adopted the practice (e.g. Turkish art music, big band jazz).
The history of musical direction may conveniently be divided into three overlapping phases: the singer-timebeater (15th–16th century); the instrumentalist-leader (17th–18th century); the baton conductor (19th–20th century).
J. SPITZER and NEAL ZASLAW (1), LEON BOTSTEIN (2), CHARLES BARBER, JOSÉ BOWEN (3(i)–(iv)), JACK WESTRUP (3(v))
The rise of polyphonic music and mensural notation made it advantageous to coordinate singers on different parts by means of a visible beat called the tactus. The tactus marked a unit of musical time, usually (but not always) equivalent to a semibreve. A few 15th-century paintings are said to depict singers beating time, but their interpretation is problematic. A hand that seems to be beating time may be giving cheironomic signs; what seems to be a baton may be a pointer for indicating the notes in a choirbook (fig.1). Writers on music do not mention timebeating until the very end of the 15th century. Adam von Fulda (1490) mentions the tactus, but does not say how to mark it; Ramis de Pareia (1482) recommends that singers mark the tactus to themselves by tapping a foot, hand or finger. Many 16th-century treatises give instructions for displaying the tactus to other singers with vertical motions of the hand and arm. Agricola (1532) writes that the tactus ‘is a steady and even motion of the singer's hand … by means of which the notes of the song are led and measured. All the parts must follow it if the song is to sound good’. Tomás de Santa María (1565) describes vigorous beats ‘in empty space’, with the hand stopping at the top and the bottom of its motion. The downbeat may strike a book or another object audibly, and Santa María says that instrumentalists should learn to ‘mark the tactus and the half tactus with the foot, since the hand cannot do so while playing’. Other authors complain that this sort of audible time-beating disturbs the performance (Philomathes, 1523; Bermudo, 1555; Friderici, 1618).
Depictions of choirs from the 16th to the 18th centuries often show one man with his hand raised, evidently beating time. Often he holds a scroll of rolled-up paper in the time-beating hand (see Nuremberg, fig.4). Some writers speak of the time-beater holding a small stick (‘baculus’) but depictions of this are rare. Sometimes it seems to have been the choirmaster or precentor who beat time; in other cases one or more of the singers apparently kept the beat without assuming additional authority.
The multiple-choir (cori spezzati) practices of the early 17th century made time-beating even more necessary. Viadana (1612) says that the maestro di cappella should stand with the first choir, controlling the movement of the music and cueing the entrances of the singers. When the additional, ripieno choirs are to enter, the maestro ‘raises both hands as a sign that everyone should sing together’. Maugars, describing polychoral singing in Rome in 1639, says that the master ‘gives the main beat in the first choir’, but in each of the other choirs there is a man whose only job is to watch the director and duplicate his beat so that ‘all the choirs sing to the same beat without dragging’. The time-beater, sometimes depicted as a keyboardist rather than a singer, endured well into the 18th century, particularly in church music (fig.3). In their correspondence of the 1770s and 80s Leopold, Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart still distinguished between the verbs tactieren or Tact schlagen (time-beating in church music and oratorio) and dirigieren (directing with an instrument in opera or concert music).
With the advent of basso continuo practice around the beginning of the 17th century and the growing size and increasing independence of instrumental ensembles, direction by an instrumentalist gradually became the predominant mode. The practice and the techniques of instrumental direction developed over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries along with the growth of the orchestra. Instrumentalist directors led by example, indicating the beat primarily by the way they played, rather than by visible or aural signs. As Mattheson said in 1739: ‘Things always work out better when I both play and sing along than when I merely stand there and beat time. Playing and singing along in this way inspires and enlivens the performers’. The responsibilities of the instrumentalist director eventually extended beyond tempo and beat to include other aspects of performance, like dynamics, articulation, accuracy and affect.
Two instruments were the most suitable for directing an orchestra: keyboard (organ, harpsichord, piano) and violin. Several factors made it advantageous to direct from the keyboard: the keyboard player was often the composer of the music being performed; he often held an administrative post as Kapellmeister or Director; and he coached the singers and accompanied them when they sang. A keyboardist directed by playing the bass line with his left hand and supplying as many notes as necessary in the right hand to be heard by all the singers and instrumentalists (Quantz, 1752). C.P.E. Bach (1753) suggests that if the bass part had long notes, the keyboardist might subdivide them to keep the rhythm going for everyone to hear; he also recommends that the keyboard player raise his hands off the keys between notes, both to produce a more forceful sound and so that the rise and fall of his hands would mark the beat. Other authors describe keyboard players marking the beat by bowing at the waist, flapping their elbows, stamping their feet, standing up and waving their arms or even shouting aloud (Veracini, n.d.; Rochement, 1754; Schönfeld, 1796). They also describe keyboard players directing rehearsals, tuning the orchestra and filling in missing or errant parts from the score (Scheibe, 1745; Junker, 1786). The problem with keyboard leadership was that in several types of orchestral music the keyboard did not participate. In the theatre, ballet music, overtures and instrumental interludes were usually performed with no continuo; and many orchestras played symphonies without a keyboard instrument (Webster, 1990). In the late 18th century keyboard participation declined in other types of music too, so that by 1800 even opera recitatives were sometimes accompanied only by a cello (Rochlitz, 1799). Finally, the keyboard director did not do quite the same thing as the other instrumentalists: he improvised an accompaniment while they played independent, written parts. ‘The keyboard director’, says one early 19th-century commentator, ‘has become a stranger among the other instrumentalists … and has little effect on whether the performance succeeds or fails’ (Arnold, 1806).
Direction by the leading violinist, on the other hand, became increasingly common during the 18th century. The Leader, as he was called in England led by means of the strength, clarity and loudness with which he played the first violin part (Reichardt, 1774). The leader also gave visual signals: bowing vigorously to indicate the tempo, moving the neck and scroll of his violin to mark the metre and beating a bar in the air with his bow before the beginning of a movement (Arnold). Sometimes he stood on a raised platform so that the entire orchestra (and, in opera, the singers) could see and hear him.
The notion of ‘dual direction’ (Schünemann, 1913; Carse, 1940), that the keyboard player and first violinist led simultaneously or shared direction in 18th-century orchestras, is somewhat anachronistic, because it projects a modern concept of conducting onto a period when the functions of the conductor had only just begun to develop. 18th-century sources neither employ the term nor express the concept of ‘dual direction’ and give no directions for the sharing or dividing of leadership between violinist and keyboard player. Composers directed either from the keyboard or with a violin as appropriate, usually keyboard in vocal music, violin in instrumental music. J.S. Bach, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart are all known to have directed in both ways. The musicians followed the keyboard or the violinist (or the singer or the instrumental soloist), as convenient and appropriate: for the most part they took responsibility for themselves. ‘Where an orchestra is arranged so that its members can all see and hear one another, where it is staffed with virtuosos, where the composer has included performance indications in the parts, and where there are sufficient rehearsals, then no further direction is necessary: the piece plays itself like a clock that has been wound up and set running’ (Biedermann, 1779). Only towards the end of the century, as specifically orchestral performing practices developed, did a debate over direction materialize: who should direct the orchestra–keyboard or violin?
In northern Germany and in England, where the keyboard continuo survived longest, such writers as Forkel (1783), Busby (c1801) and the anonymous ‘deutscher Biedermann’ (1779) described the confusion that ensued when keyboardists and violinists competed for direction during a performance, and they argued for the keyboard against the pretensions of the violin. However, a succession of treatises, by Reichardt (1776), Galeazzi (1791 and 1796), Arnold (1806), and Scaramelli (1811), confirmed the ascendancy of the violin leader at the end of the 18th century and outlined his ever-expanding duties. He was responsible for selecting musicians, directing rehearsals, determining seating arrangements, setting tempos, understanding the composer's intent and realizing that intent in performance. Successful violin leaders became famous for the achievements of the orchestras they led: Benda in Berlin, Cannabich in Mannheim, Pisendel in Dresden, Pugnani in Turin, G.B. Sammartini in Milan, Giardini, Cramer and Salomon in London, La Houssaye in Paris and many more. Insofar as the orchestra was an autonomous institution in the 18th century, its leader was the first violin.
A notable exception was the Paris Opéra, where, from the mid-17th century until the beginning of the 19th, the music was directed by a time-beater with a baton, who gave visible and audible signals to the singers, dancers and instrumentalists. Lully, in charge of the Académie Royale de Musique until 1687, seems to have directed at the Opéra in this way, although the only evidence is iconographic. An engraving of a performance of Alceste in 1674 shows a man (perhaps Lully) standing at the stage apron holding a short stick in his raised right hand (see Paris, fig.13). Another engraving from the same year shows a time-beater (perhaps Lully again) directing singers and instrumentalists in concert with a scroll of paper in each hand (Zaslaw, 1987).
By the first decade of the 18th century the batteur de mesure had become established as a distinct function at the Opéra. Around 1760 his position was merged with that of the maître de musique, suggesting that he had acquired other responsibilities. J.-J. Rousseau described in 1758 how the batteur marked the beat, not with vertical movements in the fashion of singer time-beaters, but with a downbeat followed by ‘various movements of the hand to the right and to the left’. Rousseau, along with many contemporaries, complained bitterly about the noise of the downbeat, struck against a music stand or the stage apron; he contrasted this ‘continuous disagreeable noise’ with Italian and German practice, where the musicians felt the beat and maintained it on their own. The audible beat may not have been as continuous, however, as Rousseau implies (Charlton, 1993). In orchestral numbers time-beating was not necessary at all unless the tempo was very slow, and in recitative the job of the batteur was to communicate the free rhythms of the singers to the orchestra, a task accomplished with patterns traced in the air rather than with an audible beat; on the other hand, as late as 1791 the maître still beat time audibly in choruses (Framery and Ginguené, 1791).
Although audible time-beating declined, the authority of the maître seems to have grown at the Opéra during the last part of the 18th century. The maître stood at the stage apron, facing the singers, with his back to the orchestra, beating time and directing with a short, sturdy baton (fig.5). His activities were called ‘directing’ (diriger) or ‘conducting’ (conduire), and he himself became known as the ‘chef d'orchestre’. J.-B. Rey, first batteur, then maître at the Opéra from 1780 until 1810, began his regime by instituting a system of auditions and, when his authority was challenged in 1800, succeeded in having the first violinist dismissed (Charlton, 1993). According to one of his supporters, Rey was the ‘motor of the whole musical action’, taking responsibility not only for rhythm and tempo but also for the character of the music, for phrasing and for the coordination of singers, chorus, dancers and orchestra. By the beginning of the 19th century the chef d'orchestre at the Opéra looked and acted in many respects like a modern conductor.
1820 has long served as a watershed in the history of conducting; Ludwig Spohr is said to have introduced the baton at a concert in London that year. Although he probably used a violin bow, Spohr took credit in his Autobiography for ‘the triumph of the baton as a time-giver’. Spohr had used scrolled music paper when conducting The Creation in 1809. Carl Maria von Weber used a manuscript roll to direct concerts in Dresden in 1817 but subsequently switched to the baton.
The rapid shift to the baton suggests the extent to which the craft of conducting was transformed between the 1820s and 1847, the year of Mendelssohn's death. The difficulties and innovations in the orchestral music of Beethoven and the early Romantics, and the increased number and diversity of the instruments in the orchestra, made directing from the first violin desk (fig.6) or from behind a keyboard in the opera pit unsatisfactory. The need for a central figure visually in charge of the ensemble became widely accepted. The codification of visual signals as the sole systematic means of guiding a performance quickly followed. The evolution of the art of conducting from auditory directives, including clapping, tapping (although tapping the stand at the start lingered on through the century), foot-stamping and shouting, and most of all playing along, coincided with the decline in amateur participation in public performance and the rise in spectator expectations. By the mid-1830s, the greatly expanded urban audience for music demanded higher standards as a consequence of the astonishing and widely travelled virtuosity of Spohr, Paganini, Liszt and Thalberg. More accurate orchestral ensemble, intonation and balance were responses to advances in dexterity and brilliance in solo instrumental playing. Weber and Spohr improved the quality of orchestral playing. Weber re-seated the opera orchestra so that woodwind, brass and percussion were no longer obscured by the violins. Nevertheless, the placement of the conductor at the front of the orchestra with his back to the audience did not become uniform until later in the century.
Throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, conducting technique and training remained linked to opera, because of the scale, the number of variables and the demands of the theatrical that frequently worked against coherence on the musical side. Mendelssohn was one of the few early 19th-century conductors without extensive experience in the opera house. The steady growth in the number of public professional and semi-professional orchestra concerts in London, Paris and Vienna encouraged the transference of the image of the virtuoso onto the conductor. In the concert hall the visual aspects of conducting style assumed new significance. The conductor took on the role of a leading stage personality and became the focus of adulation, criticism and applause. François-Antoine Habeneck was lionized for concerts he gave well into the 1840s; he introduced the Beethoven symphonies (albeit with cuts) to Parisian audiences. Habeneck's conducting won the grudging admiration of Wagner (who nonetheless felt him devoid of genius) although, except towards the end of his career and when faced with large forces, Habeneck still conducted in the old style with a violin bow from the first desk. Habeneck insisted on intensive rehearsals and his tyrannical manner on the podium and reputation as a man of ‘iron will and artistic superiority’ helped frame a longlasting set of expectations about conductors.
Habeneck was among the first conductors who were not composers. The gradual separation of conducting from composing gave rise to a crisis of confidence within music criticism and the public about conducting; it mystified the skills and technique of the conductor while shifting the focus of attention to mannerisms, style, appearance and issues of interpretation. The first publicity monger and truly stylized baton conductor who did not attain stature as a composer was the flamboyant crowd-pleaser Louis Jullien. He was, as W. Davison remarked, ‘ceremonious, grandly emotional’; ‘at the conclusion of a symphony’ he would ‘sink back with demonstrative exhaustion’. Highly melodramatic, Jullien worked in London at the same time as Michael Costa who cultivated another lasting but no less compelling model of the conductor as ‘the embodiment of calm, collected, concentrated will without the least show of ostentation’. This pre-1848 generation of baton conductors already displayed the elusive qualities of modern conducting, intangibles that go beyond technical prowess in terms of musicianship or manual dexterity. A conductor was expected to possess an aura, defined by Davison as ‘that special, perhaps magnetic, power of holding together and swaying numbers of men’.
The leading figure in the history of conducting during the 1830s and 40s was Mendelssohn. His careful, didactic methods, reflected in his success with ensembles in Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Berlin and England, did much to define rehearsal expectations, orchestral discipline and the aura of the orchestral concert. He approached conducting as if it were a sacred task. Perhaps more than his predecessors, he heard everything on stage (although Clara Schumann reported that he had trouble with the rhythmic displacements in the last movement of her husband's piano concerto) and was noted for his ‘elastic and stimulating’ movements. He was said to communicate ‘as if by an electric fluid’, especially through the use of facial gestures and eye contact. Mendelssohn understood the role of the conductor vis-à-vis the audience; as one observer noted, ‘the spectator could anticipate from his face what was to come’.
Despite the ubiquity of the baton (usually a longish, thick ebony or light-coloured wooden stick, often combined with ivory, held above the bottom; fig.8) and the rapid expansion in the number of orchestral and operatic performances, at mid-century conducting was not yet considered an independent profession. Spohr, Weber, Habeneck and Mendelssohn remained active as instrumentalists. Conducting as an autonomous craft entered a new phase with Berlioz and Wagner. In 1856, Berlioz wrote the first important modern treatise on baton conducting, Le chef d'orchestre: théorie de son art. He made a clear distinction between time-giving and the real art of the conductor, interpretation. Advancing the idea of personal magnetism, he considered the mysterious transmission of feeling a fundamental feature of successful conducting. An ‘invisible link’ had to be established with the players, the result of an ‘almost indefinable gift’. The true conductor exerts an imperial power; without that, he is merely a beater of time. Berlioz outlined a definition of competence and training still valid today: knowledge of the score, the nature and compass of the instruments of the orchestra, and the cultivation of an inspired point of view. From Berlioz's description it is clear that conducting had become the art of transmitting someone else's music, not only one's own. Throughout the history of modern conducting, from Habeneck and Berlioz to Toscanini and late 20th-century practitioners (Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Roger Norrington), the performance of music from the past, especially the Beethoven symphonies, has remained at the centre of criticism and the formation of public reputation.
In his treatise (which became an appendix to his study of instrumentation and orchestration), Berlioz made suggestions regarding the disposition and control of large forces in the pit and on stage. He set forth the standard patterns of silent time division (arguing against audible time keeping), including complex metre (5 and 7) and a circular triple metre. Spohr published basic beat pattern diagrams in his Violin Schule in 1831, but Berlioz's exposition was far more sophisticated. Berlioz's lack of virtuosity on an instrument, in contrast to most of his predecessors and contemporaries, inspired him to perfect his skills as a conductor. He was noted for the use of a baton about 50 cm in length which he held in his right hand. Most accounts of his conducting take note of his enormous energy and often exaggerated gestures. Moscheles said ‘he inspired the orchestra with fire and enthusiasm; he carried everything as if it were by storm’. He was patient and considerate of players. He was prescient in understanding that the work of a conductor was not limited to rehearsal and performance: the conductor had to be an organizer, a teacher and a psychologist, and was an entrepreneur and showman whose job it was to infuse the orchestra with ‘life’.
After Berlioz, the most influential reconceptualization of the role of the conductor was Wagner's. In his 1869 tract Über das Dirigieren he derided most of his predecessors, particularly Mendelssohn, as favouring tempi that were much too fast and treating them with unmusical inflexibility. Tempo selection and control, particularly when conducting Beethoven, were the foundations of the conductor's art. For Wagner, conducting demanded a romantic perspective dominated by the imperative of subjective re-creation whose purpose was to dispense with classicist rigidities. All music had to be imbued with an expressiveness that communicated with the audience. Music at all times needed to be heard as breathing and singing. The conductor's task was overwhelmingly interpretative, driven by a perception of the inner spirit of the music correspondent to the continuous unfolding of narrative and poetic meaning. Rather than enslaving himself to metronome markings and the literal aspects of notation, the conductor had to penetrate the surface of the printed page to transmit in the present moment the spiritual power inherent in music. Wagner gave no technical advice, but his interpretative approach to the Beethoven symphonies indicated a penchant for nuanced and persistent tempo modifications and selective reorchestration. As a conductor he helped to popularize the strategy of ceasing to conduct at moments and allowing the orchestra to play alone. His shifts in mood on the podium also further deepened the mystery of the conductor's art. Sometimes a reserved gentleman, other times a demon, his compelling rapport with the players of the orchestra was palpable to audience members. The mix of subjectivity, personality and power in Wagner's theory and practice of conducting is reflected in the quip of Wilhelm I, who after seeing Wagner conduct a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, observed, ‘now you can see what a good general can do with his army’.
By the 1880s conducting, although still rarely divorced from composition or instrumental performance (as late as 1906 Mahler would express astonishment that the young Klemperer wanted to become a conductor and not a composer), was clearly recognized as a distinct branch of the profession of music. Success as a conductor of music of the past, as in Mahler's case, could eclipse other musical pursuits, particularly in the early 20th-century context of gradual decline of audience interest in new music. Conductors exerted profound influence on 19th-century urban musical culture, as in the cases of Liszt in Weimar (through the introduction of new repertory), Theodore Thomas in New York and Chicago, Hans Richter in Vienna, Edouard Colonne in Paris, Hans von Bülow in Hamburg and Berlin and later Henry Wood in London. Although Bülow was also a famous pianist, he became the dominant conductorial personality of the latter half of the 19th century. With his legendary Meiningen Orchestra he ushered in a new level of excellence. Orchestral precision had come to equal pianistic virtuosity. The Meiningen Orchestra toured Europe in the 1880s exposing cities throughout Europe to first-rate performances. Bülow took his inspiration from Liszt whom he poetically described as ‘playing the orchestra almost as beautifully as he speaks the piano … his principle in handling the baton could be summarized as follows: the literal kills but the spirit brings life’. Other notable contemporaries of Bülow who helped establish conducting as an autonomous profession include Hermann Levi, Wilhelm Gericke (who left Vienna to conduct the Boston SO), Felix Mottl, Anton Seidl and Charles Hallé. The centrality of conducting as an independent profession with its own technique can be measured by the extensive entry by Hermann Zopff, the Berlin critic and pedagogue, in Mendel and Reinmann's 1870–80 Lexikon. Zopff presented the full range of skills and requirements for the art of conducting, including detailed advice about baton technique. Following Wagner, Zopff underscored the need for more than drill and control of detail; he stressed spiritual command and therefore the interpretative dimension of conducting.
Bülow stood out from his contemporaries because of his brilliance and idiosyncrasies. He treated orchestral concerts as didactic events, addressing audiences directly in an effort to educate them about the music; his wit and sarcasm were legendary and he had the personality of a martinet. Bülow's prominence and his Wagnerian approach to interpretation provoked a reaction against the Wagnerian tradition. Felix Weingartner's landmark 1896 pamphlet, entitled Über das Dirigieren (following Wagner), marked the onset of a post-Wagnerian and objectivist phase of conducting. Weingartner attacked Bülow's tempo modifications as arbitrary and called for a new approach to conducting that displayed more literal fidelity to the score and the intentions of the composer. Although Weingartner's treatise was self-serving, he was successful in launching a movement against the cult of the conductor as theatrical personality and extreme subjectivity in interpretation. With the rise and popularization of the discipline of music history, and the concomitant emphasis on historic repertory in concert programmes, a selfconsciousness regarding stylistic adequacy in performance evolved. In the 1860s Brahms was scandalized by Johann Herbeck's insensitive and historically inappropriate approach to the Messiah. Weingartner's call for conducting not as a virtuoso display of personality but as an act demanding analytic sobriety and fidelity to text had allies. Charles Hallé took issue, as did Weingartner, with the growing popularity of conducting from memory; in his autobiography (1896), he rejected it as a strategy designed to dazzle the audience. The danger of what was little more than ‘a modern craze’, was that memorizing the score was actually a trivializing process; the mind is necessarily selective in its recall, resulting in the conductor inevitably simplifying analysis and interpretation. In Weingartner's opinion, conducting from memory served only to ‘make a parade of virtuosity that is inartistic’ and divert attention from the music to the conductor.
In 1911 Gustav Mahler, a conducting titan in Wagner's image and a beneficiary of Bülow's admiration, died. He had set new standards for performances of opera in which stage and pit were tightly integrated and synchronized. Although intense, extensive and rapid in movement on the podium at the start of his career (fig.10), Mahler demonstrated the superior effectiveness of economy of gesture in his later years, particularly in New York. Mahler's contemporary Richard Strauss succeeded Bülow in Berlin and became a consummate technician. Strauss perfected the use of the baton so that the left hand was used purely for periodic emphasis; not only rhythm, but phrasing, balance and dynamics could be read from the baton. The early 20th-century standard of technique called for a firm planting of the feet together on the podium in front of the orchestra. The body remained basically motionless as the extended right arm and wrist holding the baton were employed in modified beat patterns designed to give the key directives with respect to ensemble, dynamics, phrasing and line. Arturo Toscanini, who exemplified this new, more restrained technique, helped make Weingartner's ideology and the claim to an objective interpretative style the reigning standard of early 20th-century conducting. His baton focussed on the propulsive, continuous flow of sound; he perfected the use of the baton to move and shape pulse and sonority. Strauss and Toscanini pulled back, with smaller gestures, to allow sound, particularly in forte passages, to fill the space. In moments of piano they did not stoop or crouch as earlier practitioners (and later ones too) were wont to.
Early 20th-century treatises on conducting stress economy of gesture, close analysis of the score, and control of the baton sufficient to indicate inner beats and subdivisions. From Berlioz to 1945, the art of conducting relied on extensive and detailed rehearsal. The performance was less an occasion for demonstrative antics and more the restrained realization of carefully prepared effects. But the new objectivist style by no means diminished the popularity of the conductor as podium personality and virtuoso. By the 1920s the centre of musical culture in Europe and North America had completed its migration from the home to the public arena. Opera house and concert-hall audiences had become accustomed to written explanatory notes. They acquired a taste for a familiar, older repertory and repeated hearings at the expense of new music. The early 20th-century audience no longer largely consisted of sophisticated amateurs. As Heinrich Schenker predicted in the mid-1890s, the conductor of the future would be increasingly driven to communicate with an audience that could not follow music merely by hearing: he would be compelled to provide visual assistance by decorating and demonstrating. The focus of the audience gradually shifted from listening to the work to watching its realization, following along with the ear. The Wagnerian habit of injecting subjective ‘expressiveness’ into a piece, supported by Mahler (of whose conducting of Beethoven Schenker deeply disapproved) had evolved into an expectation on the audience's part that the conductor would visualize the act of interpretation for the lay public. The conductor increasingly functioned as a cipher for audiences: the more he seemed able to enact the experience of hearing visually, the more popular he became.
As the 20th century progressed, a golden age of conductors who only conducted ensued, later sustained by the evolution of the broadcast and recording industries. Arthur Nikisch, the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus until his death in 1922, exemplified the early modern type of virtuoso and celebrity. His looks, charm, grace and intensity made him the darling of audiences. The extent to which he was lionized as possessing a magic and poetic touch sufficient to mesmerize player and listener–Hermann Scherchen thought Nikisch unique in his ability to spark and reflect, like a mirror, the myriad of brilliant lights of the orchestra and mysteriously transform them into a unified organic whole–suggested the increased role played by music journalism, concert management and eventually international touring in defining expectations. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries the image of and attitude towards conducting paralleled notions about power and leadership and the dynamic of expectations surrounding monarchs, political leaders and orators. In Nikisch's heyday, conductors maintained extended tenures with particular orchestras (such as Willem Mengelberg at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw), but after 1918 conductors of a certain level of fame began to travel regularly. Touring and guest conducting helped strengthen the tendency in technique towards clarity and efficiency; idiosyncrasy in gesture and the use of verbal explanation to gain results became less valued. The demand to see celebrity conductors on the podiums of the great metropolitan orchestras resulted in a legendary cadre: Adrian Boult, John Barbirolli, Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in England; Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Busch, Franz Schalk, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Erich Kleiber in German-speaking Europe; Václav Talich in the Czech lands; Pierre Monteux and Ernest Ansermet in France and Switzerland; Victor de Sabata in Italy. With the advent of travelling conductors, the monopoly of power traditionally wielded by conductors over individual orchestras and concert programming began to weaken.
Two members of this mid-century elite, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Toscanini, have continued to exert influence on conducting style. Furtwängler was noted for expressive, free and flexible but penetrating performances. He was not known for baton precision but for an outstanding capacity to show structure, phrasing, balance, line and subtle emphasis. He exemplified a conception of modern conducting as an interpretative craft explicitly influenced by philosophy, literature and culture; he was influenced by Schenker and was intent on communicating the underlying logic of composition. Toscanini was celebrated as the ultimate technician, ruthless in rehearsal, noted for accuracy, directness, the ideal of fidelity to literal indications in the score (even though he indulged in cuts and orchestral retouchings), crystalline texture and electric performances; he was the tyrant par excellence who abused the players, shouting and exploding in rage. Toscanini was brilliantly marketed and became the outstanding star conductor in the age of modern recording and broadcast. Furtwängler and Toscanini, like most conductors in the mid-20th century, concentrated essentially on older repertory with only selective allegiances to contemporary music (e.g., Toscanini to Puccini and Respighi, Furtwängler to Strauss, Monteux and Ansermet to Stravinsky, Erich Kleiber to Berg). Specialization even within the standard historic repertoire emerged. Serge Koussevitzky, who was not notable for his technique, developed a rich Franco-Russian sound with the Boston SO; his successor Charles Münch became best known for his French repertory. Koussevitzky was unusual in his broad commitment to new music, particularly by American composers.
In the USA, the most influential conductors after 1933, apart from Toscanini, were Fritz Reiner, George Szell and Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski reseated the orchestra even beyond the increasingly common placement of both violin sections together on the left, experimented with free bowing, abandoned the baton, and created the lush sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His love of publicity was legendary and his efforts to reach popular audiences, particularly through cinema, were often criticized. Stokowski's innovations, his lavish orchestrations of Bach and his staunch advocacy of contemporary composers and American musicians suggest his astute sense that the very adoration of the conductor by the modern audience could be exploited on behalf of music's popularity, as Leonard Bernstein was to do later in the century. Stokowski's technique reflected a recurrent 20th-century desire to circumvent the limitations of the baton by abandoning it, using the right hand and the fingers in a free manner as if to show more convincingly how sound can be sculpted and moulded. In Stokowski's baton-less conducting one can see the effect of the remarkable advance in the post-war era in the proficiency of orchestral musicians; the conductor's role as time-beater and ensemble-keeper recedes; the conductor gives upbeat patterns and replaces them with the mesmerizing visualizations of phrasing, registration and expression independent of the bar line.
The influx of European conductors, especially around World War II, transformed American orchestral practice and conducting habits. Szell, Reiner and Artur Rodzinski continued the objectivist traditions of superlative ensemble and attention to detail and developed some of the world's finest orchestras in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Cleveland. Reiner perfected the art of conducting through the use of small gesture and restricted motion. The visual contrast between sonic power, clarity and tension and the minimalist display of control over pace and dynamics was part of Reiner's magic. Drive and muscular tension, as well as precision in balance were Szell's forte. Both conductors concentrated on a restricted range of repertory, with only token contributions from the 20th century, Bartók in Reiner's case and Martinů in Szell's. Dimitri Mitropoulos, who used no baton and had a prodigious memory (the finest in modern times) as well as profound interpretative gifts, suffered, in contrast, on account of his advocacy of new and unfamiliar repertory and his failure to emulate the tyrannical methods, elegant refinement and authoritarian image of Szell and Reiner. Reiner, Koussevitzky, Monteux, Jean Morel and Leon Barzin became noted pedagogues and trained many post-war American-born conductors. Leading post-war European teachers include Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Ilya Musin in Leningrad. Major figures of international reputation after 1945 include Ferenc Fricsay, Sergiu Celibidache, Hans Rosbaud, Georg Solti and Carlo Maria Guilini. In the Soviet Union, a tradition of great conducting flourished, influenced primarily by German theory and practice, in the towering figures of Aleksandr Gauk, Nikolay Golovanov and Evgeny Mravinsky.
Ironically, the development of baton technique took its greatest step forward as a result of the requirements of modernist music. Schoenberg once remarked, when a conductor claimed not to be able to understand one of his scores, ‘Why does that occur to him only with my music?’, implying that the conductor was no better at conducting Beethoven. The pitch recognition requirements of serial composition, the layered textures of orchestral works (e.g. in Varèse and Ives) and the rhythmic complexity evident in 20th-century music from Stravinsky to Carter forced a dramatic advance in the basic level of technical proficiency. The attainment of rhythmic accuracy and proper intonation demanded a new order of training and preparation and led to the use of a much shorter baton, and extensive skills in independent cueing and time indications using each hand. The conducting craft required to lead an ensemble in 20th-century repertory efficiently is therefore extraordinarily subtle and intricate, even though operetta, bel canto and recitative conducting pose some of the most daunting technical challenges to baton technique.
During the 1960s and 70s, recording and television enhanced the status of conducting as a truly global and glamorous pursuit. The careers of Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan best exemplify the cosmopolitanism of 20th-century conducting. Karajan brought to an apex the tradition of concentrating on a limited repertory and working with very few ensembles, mainly the orchestras of Vienna and Berlin. Conducting with his eyes closed, he perfected the notion of the conductor as cult figure, using all possible media, exploiting the fashion for a stylized image and cultivating modern techniques of marketing. Bernstein set a new example by being distractingly but purposefully athletic on the podium; he was a magnetic teacher and gifted composer who successfully bridged the worlds of popular and classical music both European and American. His decisive role in the post-1960 advocacy of Mahler indicates the extent to which conductors could influence, through recording, repertory for the public at large.
Towards the end of the century the period-instrument movement and new scholarly methods in the reconstruction of performing practices helped accelerate specialization. The international concert circuit led the public and critics to accept the reductive notion that national identity is essential to valid stylistic interpretation; Russian orchestras and conductors seem best at Russian music, Hungarians and Czechs at their nation's composers and so on. Similarly, 20th-century music has developed its own group of advocates and specialists. Among conductors at the close of this century, only Pierre Boulez has equalled the 19th-century tradition of composer as conductor. Despite the explosion in numbers of fine orchestras and conductors some observers believe that the era of great star conductors has passed. The standardization of the repertory, the marginal status accorded to new music, the variety and number of recordings now available (recent and dating from before 1945), the refined quality of recorded sound and the diversity of interpretation documented by sound reproduction have made originality vis-à-vis the standard repertory harder to formulate and justify.
The evolution of conducting technique remained stable from the late 19th century until the advent of recording, which increased the capacity of all performers to hear themselves. Listeners were able to compare sounds heard in live performances with recorded sound. Recording completed the evolution of international technical standards. It also brought about a touch of unfortunate uniformity; before recording, apart from written accounts of performances, listeners had no easy way of comparing one conductor or orchestra with another. Crucial to modern technique is the capacity to alter sound to fit broadly accepted notions of stylistic adequacy. In addition to specialization along nationalist lines and in Classical and Baroque music, the conductor after the mid-20th century is faced with interpretative benchmarks in the form of recorded precedents. Daniel Barenboim, for example, cites the influence of Furtwängler, a conductor he witnessed only as a teenager, whose legacy retains currency through recordings. The paucity of fresh interpretative insights may in fact lie in the extent to which conducting has been separated from other aspects of music and culture. Although many conductors at mid-century (e.g. Szell, Klemperer and Furtwängler) tried their hand at composition, few after 1970 besides Boulez and Bernstein became established as composers. Some conductors continue careers as instrumentalists (e.g. Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy), but most do not. Scholar/performers or conductors with highly developed intellectual and literary interests (in the sense of Berlioz, Bülow and Ansermet) are rare. In the contemporary context, the significance of the conductor's role in training a professional orchestra to play well–that is, accurately, in tune and together in standard repertory–is indispensable only in new and unfamiliar music, as the success of the conductorless ensemble Orpheus suggests (although the first serious experiments at conductorless orchestras, such as Persimfans in Moscow, took place in the 1920s). The reading skills of the modern orchestra are unparalleled. Accounts of early examples of orchestras' reading of new music (for example, in Vienna under Hans Richter, when Hugo Wolf heard Penthesilea read) suggest that modern standards are incomparably higher. The canonic orchestral repertory has become integral to the training of all instrumentalists.
Beyond recording, the aeroplane, film and video and, finally, trade unions and the attendant economics of orchestral concert life have exerted a profound impact on modern conducting technique. The ease of travel has made guest conducting more significant than long permanent posts. Herbert von Karajan was an exception, and it is evident, as in the historical example of Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw, that a particular orchestra over time can read the non-standard personal gestures of their conductor and his intentions, so that unique modes of communication suffice. Szell developed a special rapport with the Cleveland Orchestra but could not readily replicate it when working with the New York PO. For most professional conductors, however, the international circuit demands the use of a visual language that translates easily and quickly. This has had the effect of restricting the range, not only of repertory but also of interpretation. The rapidity of communication between conductor and orchestra mirrors the high cost of rehearsal time, now a dominant factor as a result of the regulation and rising cost of compensation and working conditions for orchestral musicians. The ideology of podium dictatorship has been replaced with one of collegiality and collaboration. What Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Bülow, Mahler, Toscanini, Furtwängler and Koussevitzky (who rarely guest conducted) achieved in almost unlimited and painstakingly detailed rehearsals in the post-war era, has to be achieved in a matter of a few hours with a minimum of verbal explanation and exclusively by gestures using baton, left hand, eyes and body. Celibidache, who opposed recording and resisted the contemporary demands of the profession (and remained fiercely independent in his interpretative approach), once quipped that the young, modern conductor had one rehearsal and a hundred concerts, whereas he demanded one hundred rehearsals for one concert. Simple as these explanations may be, the modern conductor must from the first rehearsal mould sound and direct it efficiently.
The theatrical and visual dimension of conducting in the age of recorded sound, however, has become indispensable to the conductor's craft. It will no longer suffice, as Schenker predicted, for the conductor to prepare an interpretation and lead it discreetly. This is permitted only for old masters; the aged Klemperer, Karajan or Lovro von Maticic. Audience expectation requires the balletic and energetic self-presentation pioneered by Bernstein in his early years and perfected by Riccardo Muti, in whose work grace and musicality merge in an alluring visual display. The apogee of the technical virtuosity expected of the modern conductor in terms of the visualization of sound and line is evident in the styles of Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel and Carlos Kleiber, son of the great Austrian mid-century maestro. Kleiber's appearances are few and his repertory is limited, but he has perfected the use of space to show registration, a three-dimensional visualization of sound, not merely vertical and horizontal strokes, and a remarkable independence of right and left hand. Strauss's admonition to a young conductor to keep his left hand in his pocket would appear anachronistic today. Even Furtwängler and Toscanini relegated most of the expressive aspects of conducting to the left hand and used the body sparingly. In modern conducting, the burden has shifted from preparation to the moment of performance and the capacity of the conductor to put nuance on the stage in terms of dynamics, articulation and balance, with the hands alone. The conductor's role in the cases of less proficient but commercially successful practitioners often deteriorates into a decorative display over the music, indicating events rather than creating them, following lines rather than shaping them, and celebrating sonorities as opposed to encouraging and sustaining them. Although Monteux admonished conductors not to conduct for the audience, in an age dominated by television and film, the visual impression the conductor makes has become far more influential than might seem reasonable.
The repository of recorded performance has strengthened the ideology of fidelity to the score and the notion of accurate interpretation. Modern treatises on conducting now refer to comparative study of recordings as a result of the capacity to scrutinize in close detail the recorded archive of performances. Furthermore, claims to historical authenticity bolstered by modern scholarship have lent credence to arguments first proposed by Weingartner and advocated polemically by Toscanini, even though the notions of definitive performance, fidelity to text and authenticity have been challenged on convincing philosophical and historical grounds. The prevailing interpretative strategy remains far removed from the point of view championed by Wagner, even though conductors such as Fritz Steinbach (Bülow's successor in Meiningen) and, later, Hermann Abendroth continued to pursue a more flexible, free and highly differentiated approach well into the mid-20th century. Conductors tend either to follow conventions established by reassertion through recordings and uphold the interpretative practices to which audiences have been most accustomed, or to insert arbitrary nuances in a desperate attempt to suggest originality. These habits, as Wagner and Berlioz aptly realized, are inadequate, and not consonant with the expectations of composers (save those in certain schools of 20th-century composition intent on specifying everything and leaving nothing to the whim of the performer). Conducting remains ideally, as Strauss observed, a mix of fidelity to intention and text and inspired improvisation. Since most conductors are distant from contemporary music as performers or composers, the sources for convincing improvisation have narrowed considerably, especially under the weight of indelible recorded precedents that define the patterns of reception by critics and audiences.
At the end of the 20th century stick technique and podium manner had become more standardized than at any point in the history of conducting. The rise of formal training at college and conservatory levels, the influence of international competitions and local apprenticeship programmes, the impact of recordings and film in the establishment of a conducting ‘common practice’, the impact of the international conductor as a generator of commerce and the concomitant reduction of expensive rehearsal time have all combined to codify the functions and skills of the modern maestro. These purely technical skills coexist in several forms and begin with first choices.
As a consequence, particularly, of the early music and performing practice movements of the 1940s–90s, and the associated rise to prominence of the scholar-conductor (Mackerras, Harnoncourt, Norrington, Christie, Gardiner, Jacobs, McGegan, Hogwood and others), conductors are increasingly concerned about textual accuracy. Accordingly, serious conducting begins with a choice of score that reflects the highest state of current scholarship. Scholars and publishers are required to provide answers to problems of variant, incomplete and error-ridden editions. While it was perfectly acceptable 100 years ago to retouch Handel, Chopin, Schumann and even Beethoven, wholesale rewriting of Musorgsky and Bruckner was the norm, and issues of period performance were rarely raised, today, many conductors look to a more rigorous attitude to the composer's assumptions regarding the performance of his music. This is reflected in the procedures of a conductor's preparation.
Working from a reliable text, and often after examination of other source materials, a conductor may study the score through harmonic and rhythmic analysis, possibly at the keyboard. A conductor must make informed choices about blend and balance, line and partwriting, bowing and articulation, dynamic, shade and colour. These choices will derive from personal judgment after close score study, will be marked and entered in the players’ parts and will inevitably be adjusted in the process of rehearsal, especially if they come into conflict with orchestral traditions, accepted wisdom and the reality of creating sound; dynamic markings, for example, are relative and become meaningful only in relation to the sound produced by the particular orchestra.
In both the symphony hall and the opera house, high costs place a severe limitation on rehearsal time. The time is past when music directors such as Celibidache, Koussevitzky, Mengelberg and Mravinsky could require nearly endless rehearsal periods; few guest conductors can demand the same. Accordingly, the professional conductor is increasingly defined by the efficient use of rehearsal. Rehearsal strategies vary widely. Many conductors will play a work from beginning to end and then return to correct deficiencies. Some will begin correcting errors and phrasing from the start. Many will call out errors as the work is in progress and some will stop and demand changes at every instance. At the second rehearsal, highly skilled conductors often work from a list of problems revealed at the first; in the process, they may select significant sections from within the music, the solution of whose problems will then apply broadly across the work and in that process establish a model, so conserving time and creating musical coherence. When giving a première, many conductors invite the composer to assist in the rehearsal process (or vice versa, as in the relationship between Ozawa and Messiaen), although that role is usually restricted to correcting wrong notes, advising over tempos and the like. Time constraints have increased the pressure to convey intent visually rather than orally and conductors would be ill-advised to make lengthy speeches about the spiritual import of a particular passage or his conception of a work.
Conducting is almost universally a right-hand practice (Penderecki and Runnicles are rare exceptions). Roughly speaking, the right hand, often extended with a baton, illustrates time; the gestures of the left are used to suggest line and intensity, to cue entries and release, to illuminate crescendos and decrescendos and to shape the broader contours of the music. The modern baton, a white length of wood or plastic, serves to clarify and magnify the gestures of the hand; its use is entirely optional, largely traditional and frequently serves primarily to mesmerize the audience which has come to expect it. The baton has no inherent musical properties. Batons have often been very long: 60 cm or more were not unknown to such conductors as Henry Wood, Charles Munch and Adrian Boult. Half that length or less is now standard. Most batons have a cork to absorb sweat, or similar butt, and are gripped lightly there or just above it.
Some conductors work without a baton, or use it only sparingly. Boulez and Stokowski (after 1929) appear never to have used a stick, considering it a distracting antagonist. Mitropoulos also worked without a baton; he has said (1954):
I believe that there is some kind of communication through the expression of the hands of what you feel … I think I can express myself better with my hands … I make an appeal, I mean, when I try to reach, to reach the soul of my musician who plays the solo, let us say, at that moment, and it's just a kind of gesture that I couldn’t do with my baton and naturally I could use my left hand just, but I have two hands to use and I feel happier that I can reach for somebody's soul.
With baton or without, most conductors also use a podium to raise the effective display of their hands. Modern podiums are usually between 15 to 30 cm in height.
The beat and the preparatory intake of breath establish tempo, character, style and power. The impact of that preparatory event is crucial; widely employed in opera, the breath of preparation assists singers and wind players especially to prepare entry and quality of sound, and it is usually audible. The preparatory beat, given simultaneously, appears metrically at the point of maximum usefulness. It may occur as a conventional upbeat leading to a standard downbeat, or it may take the form of one or two ‘bars for nothing’. There can be no fixed rule for the metrical placement of such preparatory events; they are bound to the music they animate. Scherchen, Rudolf, Leinsdorf and many others have written about how to open a work that begins at an awkward or irregular metrical point. There is invariably more than one practical solution to such a problem, but any remedy will ordinarily lie within the province of the beat pattern itself.
In the course of the 20th century, beat patterns became largely standardized and capable of being understood by musicians around the world. The idea of tactus represents that of fixing the central pulse of a passage in a regular and identifiable beat pattern. The notion of ictus is to place within that pattern visible beat points which articulate that pulse and give some guide to the character of the music. This is achieved in many ways, such as a bounce or flick of the wrist, its stasis and release, or the raising and lowering of the baton point itself. The ictus of a Wagner legato will be profoundly different from that of a Skryabin staccato.
There is one geographic distinction in the placing of pulse. In British and North American schools, conductors and orchestras are trained to play ‘on the beat’; i.e. to produce the sound at the actual moment when the baton strikes the appropriate rhythmic juncture. Many continental European conductors, especially those trained in German opera houses, practise a subtle variant of this: they train their orchestras to sound not on, but just after the visible beat. This is most often used in slower music of an elevated lyricism, where the early-warning apparatus of the conductor's gestures can provide a remarkable flexibility, rubato and shapeliness of line. Furtwängler, Klemperer, Knappertsbusch, Talich, Karajan, Carlos Kleiber and Maazel have been among the masters of this special technique.
The basic movements of the stick are vertical and lateral; where there is only one beat or two beats to the bar it is vertical only. Fig.5 shows the generally accepted direction of the beat. Attempts to show this on paper have often been made but are not particularly convincing, since the nature of the motion varies according to circumstances. The underlying principle is that the stick does not move in a series of jerks but in a fluid, continuous movement, which so to speak bounces off each point in the diagram. The way in which this is done varies according to whether the music is slow or fast, legato or staccato, and so on. Where there is only one beat in a bar the bounce must be considerable in order to reach the point at which the next beat begins.
Subdividing the beat may be necessary in a rallentando or where there is particularly elaborate figuration. The purpose of such subdivision is clarity. The contrary process may also occur, e.g. in a quick movement in 4/4 the presence from time to time of a basic rhythm of two in a bar may make it more convenient to beat two instead of four. Strauss, who disliked giving more beats in a bar than were strictly necessary, did this constantly, even to the extent of beating parts of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde in two instead of in six.
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E. Bernard: Le chef d'orchestre (Paris, 1989)
P. Hölzl: Die Technik des Dirigierens (Vienna, 1989)
A. Weisberg: Performing Twentieth-Century Music: a Handbook for Conductors and Instrumentalists (New Haven, 1993)
H. Farberman: The Art of Conducting Technique: a New Perspective (Miami, 1997)
G. Schuller: The Compleat Conductor (New York, 1997)
M. von Bülow, ed.: Hans von Bülow: Briefe und Schriften, iii: Ausgewählte Schriften (Leipzig, 1896, 2/1911)
A. Seidl: Moderne Dirigenten (Berlin, 1902)
G.P. Upton, ed.: Theodore Thomas: a Musical Autobiography (Chicago, 1905/R)
F. Weingartner: Ratschläge für Aufführungen der Symphonien Beethovens (Leipzig, 1906, 3/1929/R as Ratschläge für Aufführungen klassischer Symphonien, i; Eng. trans., 1907, as On the Performance of Beethoven's Symphonies, repr. in Weingartner on Music & Conducting, New York, 1969)
F. Weingartner: Akkorde: gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1912/R)
F. Weingartner: Erlebnisse eines ‘Königlichen Kapellmeisters’ in Berlin (Berlin, 1912)
M. Komorn-Rebhan: Was wir von Bruno Walter lernten: Erinnerungen (Vienna, 1913)
F. Weingartner: Ratschläge für Aufführungen klassischer Symphonien, ii: Schubert und Schumann (Leipzig, 1918)
W. Damrosch: My Musical Life (New York, 1923/R, 2/1930)
F. Weingartner: Lebenserinnerungen (Vienna, 1923, 2/1928–9; Eng. trans., 1937, as Buffets and Rewards)
S. Koussevitzky: ‘Concerning Interpretation’, Musical Courier (29 June 1929)
H.J. Wood: About Conducting (London, 1945/R)
B. Walter: Theme and Variations: an Autobiography (New York, 1946/R; Ger. orig., 1947/R)
F. Furtwängler: Gespräche über Musik (Vienna and Zürich, 1948, 9/1978; Eng. trans., 1953/R as Concerning Music)
F. Busch: Aus dem Leben eines Musikers (Zürich, 1949/R; Eng. trans., 1953/R as Pages from a Musician's Life)
W. Schuh, ed.: R. Strauss: Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Zürich, 1949, enlarged 2/1957; Eng. trans., 1953/R)
W. Furtwängler: Ton und Wort: Aufsätze und Vorträge 1918 bis 1954 (Wiesbaden, 1954, 9/1966/R)
C. Munch: Je suis chef d'orchestre (Paris, 1954; Eng. trans., 1955)
B. Walter: Von der Musik und vom Musizieren (Frankfurt, 1957; Eng. trans., 1961)
A. Boult: Thoughts on Conducting (London, 1963)
O. Klemperer: Minor Recollections (London, 1964)
Weingartner on Music & Conducting (New York, 1969)
M. Kennedy, ed.: The Autobiography of Charles Hallé, with Correspondence and Diaries (London, 1972)
P. Heyworth, ed.: Conversations with Klemperer (London, 1973, 2/1985)
B. Jacobson: Conductors on Conducting (Frenchtown, NJ, 1979)
H. Swarowsky: Wahrung der Gestalt: Schriften über Werk und Wiedergabe, Stil und Interpretation in der Musik (Vienna, 1979)
W. Furtwängler: Aufzeichnungen, 1924–1954 (Wiesbaden, 1980; Eng. trans., 1989)
N. Del Mar: Orchestral Variations: Confusion and Error in the Orchestral Repertoire (London, 1981)
E. Leinsdorf: The Composer's Advocate: a Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians (New Haven, 1981)
L. Bernstein: Findings (New York, 1982/R)
N. Harnoncourt: Musik als Klangrede: Wege zu einem neuen Musikverständnis (Salzburg and Vienna, 1982; Eng. trans., 1988)
N. Harnoncourt: Der musikalische Dialog: Gedanken zu Monteverdi, Bach und Mozart (Salzburg and Vienna, 1984; Eng. trans., 1989)
M. Anderson, ed.: Klemperer on Music: Shavings from a Musican's Workbench (London, 1986)
J. Vermeil, ed.: Conversations de Pierre Boulez sur la direction d'orchestre avec Jean Vermeil (Paris, 1989); Eng. trans. as Conversations with Pierre Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting (Portland, OR, 1996)
R. Chesterman, ed.: Conductors in Conversation: Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, James Levine (London, 1990)
J. Krips: Erinnerungen: Ohne liebe kann mann keine musik Machen (Vienna, 1994)
T. Koopman: ‘Recording Bach's Early Cantatas’, EMc, xxiv (1996), 605–21
L. Botstein: ‘On Conducting’, MQ, lxxxi (1997), 1–12
E. Leinsdorf: Erich Leinsdorf on Music (Portland, OR, 1997)
C. Krebs: Meister des Taktstocks (Berlin, 1919)
H.C. Schonberg: The Great Conductors (New York, 1967)
H. Swarowsky: ‘Randbemerkungen um den Dirigenten’, ÖMz, xxii (1967), 706–10
D. Woolridge: Conductor's World (London, 1970)
K. Geitel and others: Grosse deutsche Dirigenten: hundert Jahre Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin, 1981)
O. Daniel: Stokowski: a Counterpoint of View (New York, 1982)
J.L. Holmes: Conductors on Record (London and Westport, CT, 1982)
H. Matheopoulos: Maestro: Encounters with Conductors of Today (London, 1982)
W.A. Bebbington: The Orchestral Conducting Practice of Richard Wagner (diss., City U. of New York, 1984)
D.L. Appert: Berlioz, the Conductor (diss., U. of Kansas, 1985)
K. Martner: Gustav Mahler im Konzertsaal: eine Dokumentation seiner Konzerttätigkeit 1870–1911 (Hamburg, 1985)
M. Zurletti: La direzione d'orchestra: grandi direttori di ieri e di oggi (Florence, 1985)
M. Wenzel-Jelinek and K. Roschitz: Dirigenten (Vienna, 1986)
J. Williams Gartrell: Hector Berlioz as Conductor (diss., U. of Washington, 1987)
F. Willnauer: ‘Der Hofoperndirektor Gustav Mahler’, SMH, xxxi (1989), 389–404
E. Schenk: ‘Gustav Mahler: der Dirigent’, Musikblätter der Wiener Philharmoniker, xliv/6 (1990), 181–9
N. Lebrecht: The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power (London, 1991)
J. Wagar: Conductors in Conversation: Fifteen Contemporary Conductors Discuss their Lives and Profession (Boston, 1991)
For further bibliography see Ansermet, Ernest; Bernstein, Leonard;Böhm, Karl; Bülow, hans von; Busch, Fritz; Fricsay, Ferenc; Furtwängler, Wilhelm; Karajan, Herbert von; Klemperer, Otto; Levi, Hermann; Mitropoulos, Dimitri; Monteux, Pierre; Nikisch, Arthur; Reiner, Fritz; Richter, Hans; Schuricht, Carl; Solti, georg; Stokowski, Leopold; Toscanini, Arturo; and Walter, Bruno.
K. Gehrkens: ‘The Psychological Basis of Conducting’, MQ, xxi (1935), 437–42
D. Epstein: Beyond Orpheus: Studies in Musical Structure (Cambridge, MA, 1979/R)
C. Moral: La direction d'orchestre: essai d'analyse de l'apparition d'un métier (diss., U. of Paris IV, 1992)
R. Philip: Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (New York, 1992)
G. Kuhn: Aus Liebe zur Musik: über Dirigieren (Berlin, 1993)
N.-G. Sundin: ‘Aesthetical Criteria: Intentional Content in Musical Interpretation in Contemporary Performance’, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Cognitive Musicology: Jyväskylä 1993, ed. J. Laaksamo and J. Louhivuori (Jyväskylä, 1993), 330–36
N. Cook: ‘The Conductor and the Theorist: Furtwängler, Schenker and the First Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony’, The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. J.S. Rink (Cambridge, 1995), 105–25
D. Epstein: Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance (New York, 1995)
J.A. Bowen: ‘Tempo, Duration, and Flexibility: Techniques in the Analysis of Performance’, JMR, xvi/2 (1996), 111–56
H. von Bülow: Musikalische Interpretation (Stuttgart, 1999)