The Conductor Raises His Baton

William J. Finn

Description

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528763714
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FOREWORD
FATHER FINN has devoted a lifetime to music and conducting, particularly to the inspired a cappella music of the sixteenth century. His book on conducting is an important contribution to the widespread development of music.
Conducting is a many-sided art. One of its numerous functions is to give unity to groups of singers, as in the masses of Palestrina-to groups of instrumentalists, as in the symphonies of Brahms-to both singers and instrumentalists combined, as in the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. Unity of rhythm, tempo, phrasing-unity of breathing for singers, woodwind and brass players-bowing for string players. Unity of quality, contrast, and balance of tone-in giving homophonic music prominence to its melody, and relative quietness to its underlying harmonies-in giving clarity to all the voices or instruments in polyphonic music, so that each melodic thread in the woven mesh of melodies has its due value. But above all, unity of expression, thought, emotion, imagination-in conveying to the listener the message which all great music has-the message that cannot be conveyed by words or painting or sculpture or any other of the arts-the message that, by its nature, can only be expressed by Music.
L EOPOLD S TOKOWSKI
PREFACE
THIS is a book about certain aspects of interpretative conducting from which some conductors have been distracted. It concerns primarily the choral conductor but regards as well the orchestral maestro, for the chorus and orchestra are twin instruments of expression. The title of the book and the caption on the flyleaf indicate the trend of ensuing chapters. From the experience and observation of years many convictions and some positive tenets have crystallized. These are written here. Perhaps the data will not singly compel all the single conclusions derived, but the facts, theses, and proposals, in aggregate, should stimulate curiosity. Probably many musicians know that fundamental properties of music as both a fine and a liberal art are ignored on many podiums. I am inviting the reader to consider some of the fundamentals, not academically but in their relations with practical processes. Succinctly, this volume deals with the controlling factors of musical performance, tempo and dynamics , emphasizing the sovereign position of quantity ratios. Therefore rhythm, phrasing, the balancing of melody and harmony, the apposition of contrapuntal figures, the tension of canon and fugue, and the valid disclosure of that musty old academic mystery- the horizontal line of polyphony -comprise the subject matter.
It has not been easy to write this book. It was not difficult to write in other books of the physical technique required for choral virtuosity: how to rid voice lines of ugly encumbrances; how to balance parts; how to blend these in a unified agency; how to manage the alto line (this was not so easy!); how to make the von B low crescendo and diminuendo; how to beat time in public. These were all questions of burning interest to choirmasters, school musicians, and an occasional local conductor of a choral society. And these questions could be answered directly and simply from the experience of the rehearsal room and the concert platform. But the topics of this volume are of a different order. They reach down to the nature of music, involving an understanding and a control of its patent and latent forces. Poetic fluency, the stresses and slacks of rhythmical accentuation, the psychology of slowness and quickness, the strategy and tactics of effective dynamics, the acoustical influence of high low, and middle pitches upon the temper of melody, the simplification of contrapuntal presentations, the sacred secret of polyphonic performance-these are subjects which, offering no showcase technique (except in the items of counterpoint and a cappella polyphony ), may leave the superficial student cold. The ennui with which some of our conductors have glanced at such a list of subjects suggests the willingness of musicians and student musicians to discount their importance.
In these pages I engage myself to set forth, as logically as I can, the procedures which I have found dependable (and indispensable) for directing the competence of highly trained units to their most convincing communicability: how to guarantee rhythmic sweep to lyric melodies; how to promote the melos of music; how to guide movements to their rhetorical climaxes; how to relieve homophony of distressing monotony; how to improve a hymn tune or part song; how to clarify the aural obscurities of counterpoint, canon, and fugue; how to take Palestrina out from under the notes and make his music sound beautiful in an age of vertical clashing and horizontal swinging. The precepts strewn through the pages are pet corollaries to the premises standing sentinel at the heads of chapters.
If you think the pages about rhythm to be unimportant, turn to the chapters on dynamics, and you ll probably turn back to the unimportant.
On each page I am asking the student reader this question: Did you ever think of this before ? I wish that some old-timer had asked me the same question about the same items-when I was young.
W ILLIAM J. F INN
THE CONDUCTOR RAISES HIS BATON
Contents
I
The Conductor a Re-creator
II
Rhythm
III
Tempo
IV
Dynamics
V
Dynamics (Continued)
VI
Dynamics (Continued)
VII
A Cappella Polyphony
VIII
Homophony
Appendix I
The Locale of Melody
Appendix II
Modality

Index
CHAPTER I
THE CONDUCTOR A RE-CREATOR
THE art of conducting has become within the past hundred years a highly specialized phase of musical expression. The modern conductor is the product of the latter half of the nineteenth century. His precursors were primarily preceptors who accomplished their tasks, without public acclaim, in rehearsal rooms. The earlier maestros taught the techniques of concerted music to their singers or players, unified and burnished the individual contributions to ensemble effect, and inculcated principles of interpretation so thoroughly as to preclude the need of public coaching. But the modern conductor, frequently outranking in popular appraisal the soloists and groups which he directs, is rated as a performing artist. His gesticulating presidency over choral or orchestral units is expected to bring aesthetic delight to the audience. Sometimes his actual contribution to a performance is overestimated. The conductor whose worth is measured by the unsafe criteria of publicity and stage manner is usually too highly prized. Nevertheless, the role of the choral and orchestral conductor is of real importance in these days of confusing musical idioms, even if gullibility is fashioning too many nimbus-disks around the heads of celebrities. Modern choral and orchestral music is involved and frequently difficult of execution. An analyst is needed to discover and reveal much that is obscure and even esoteric. The conductor assumes the responsibilities of the analyst.
The older music required no conducting in our current understanding of the function. There was no obscure material in Gregorian chant; the rhythm of this ancient style was free and largely textual, thus eliminating the necessity of time beating; the dynamic variations were gentle and indicated by the arses and theses of a simple melodic curve line. Nor was there need for the public directing of an interpretative conductor in the increasingly elaborate polyphonies during the era from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Polyphony expounded itself; the cues to its proper performance were few and as easily discernible as those in the Gregorian unisons from which it stemmed; the imitative contrapuntal figures and phrases were conjured up in the creative imaginations of the polyphonists as mosaics of horizontal melodies which, in actual performance, could be tessellated aesthetically into harmonic units with a simple technique.
The introduction of absolute time values in the polyphonic style developed the need of conveying to performers the precise length of notes and rests. Without a quasi-metronomic indication of note durations, polyphony would have been only heterophony. This need was filled by the sol-fa, frequently a singer, who, making slight gestures with a scroll of parchment, was wont to establish the continuity of pulsations. In such a simple manner was the great music of the a cappella masters conducted. Even through the following two and a half centuries conducting involved only the beating of the measures. Sometimes the player of harpsichord or pianoforte would strike a few extra notes to call the attention of performers to irregularities of tempo or intonation, and in Ragenet s A Comparison between the French and Italian Musick and Operas , one learns that the eighteenth-century conductor at the Paris Opera had an elboe chair and desk plac d on the stage, where, with the score in one hand, and a stick in the other, he beat time on a table put there for that purpose. . . .
Time beating, which naturally included the setting of the tempo, was the only public prerogative and obligation of the maestro di cappella and the chef d orchestre . Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, when the art of the interpretative leader began to take form, the attempted superimposition of personal concepts or fancies by an individual on a chorus or orchestra during a public rendition would have been regarded as not only superfluous and silly but arbitrary and presumptuous. Wagner, Mendelssohn, Manns, Halle, Richter, Berlioz, and von B low, with their colleagues and disciples, made the first comprehensive canvassing of the new field in which the virtuoso conductor was to develop; and their findings, especially those preserved