Return to blogAt some point in every Music Paradigm session I ask one participant to come to the podium, stand in front of the orchestra and hold the baton in her hand. I then move her arm in such a way that the musicians can read the baton’s movements. For the participant it is an astonishing sensation: it feels a bit like driving an incredibly responsive sports car. Your car and the road you’re driving on feel very real indeed, but they seem to have no material existence. Yet the energy of the sound in the room is incredibly real – palpable, in fact.
Music is a make-believe world whose emotional authenticity can seem more real than so-called real life. The baton makes this or that suggestion, and sure enough, the music goes exactly that way: louder or softer, faster or slower, more lyrical or more dramatic. Many participants comment that they feel an enormous power they’d never imagined.
Yes, it is very, very powerful. But it’s not the conductor’s power they’re feeling. Rather it is the orchestra: its composite talent, training, artistry and energy. The baton is merely focusing and aligning all of this. The illusion, however, is that the conductor is the all-powerful source of the music.
A leader’s job is to understand his organization’s power and to direct it to achieve its goals. But sometimes even an experienced conductor can be seduced by the illusion of his own power. The Principal Oboist of a distinguished European opera house told me this amusing story.
“We were playing a well-known Verdi opera with a guest conductor who lived up to his reputation for intimidation. There’s a beautiful lyric solo for oboe, and I have always phrased it as I imagine a great singer would. My mother was a singer, and taught me to always imitate the expressiveness of the human voice in such passages.
“The conductor, on hearing me play it, seemed dissatisfied. He stopped the rehearsal and explained that the oboe solo should not be more lyrical than the singer’s entrance, which follows it. ‘Play it more plainly,’ he said, ‘not so emotional.’ This was confusing to me. A moment ago I had felt that I knew how the music should go. Now I had no idea how he wanted me to play it. We repeated the passage and the conductor’s reaction was hard to read, but he certainly didn’t broadcast approval for what I’d done.
“When the night of the performance came I had no idea what I was going to do. Should I play it the way I love it, or should I do what I think the conductor had asked? I didn’t make up my mind until just a few seconds before taking my breath. ‘What the hell!’ I thought, ‘let him fire me. At least I will have created something beautiful.’ And so I played it according to my own musical instincts.
“It was opening night, and there was a reception for the cast and orchestra following the performance. I was on the lookout for when the conductor arrived, and tried to avoid eye contact with him. But, sure enough, when he noticed me he came straight in my direction with an extended finger. ‘Oh boy,’ I thought, ‘here it comes,’ and I braced myself for the worst. When he finally reached me he spoke in that same bullying tone we’d come to expect. Still shaking his finger at me he intoned, ‘You see, I told you that solo would be better if you did it my way.’”
To watch a guest conductor at a Music Paradigm session click here.
Roger Nierenberg
