Wagner’s epoch-making works demanded a new school of conductors, and gradually he was able to train younger men to carry out his ideas and to spread the message of the new art. Chief among these Wagner apostles was Hans von Buelow, a great pianist and a musician who might have been a creator in his own right had he not heeded the call of specialization, demanded of him as an interpreter. He toured Europe with his small but highly-trained Meiningen Court Orchestra, and completely revolutionized the status of orchestral playing. His conducting of “Tristan” and his beautifully clear piano score of the same, testify of his high understanding of the Wagner spirit. And yet, after his tragic break with the Bayreuth master, he was able to espouse the cause of the classic composers and, what is all the more astonishing, become the chief exponent of the anti-Wagner school, of which Brahms was the symbol.
In Bayreuth Wagner had as his conductors men like Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Hermann Levi and the names of these men are indelibly connected with the glory that was Bayreuth’s. With the advent of these conductors we stand at the threshold of today.
This brief sketch has led us from the time when the conductor was little more than a time-beater functioning in the most mechanical manner, to our own time when the conductor has achieved an importance in the musical world second only to the creator himself, and in some cases even transcending the position of the mere creator of the music. Did not a great conductor of today recently ask a composer: “Have you ever heard me conduct your opera?” “No.” “You should, you wouldn’t recognize it.”
The conductor of today is not merely the time-beater and drill-master who achieves note-perfection, but he is the genius who frees music from all the imperfections of material limitations, his rhythm is no longer the wallpaper pattern of the bar line, but takes on its original meaning in the stressing of the flowing phrase; his gesture is no longer the mere beat but is the pictorialization and visualization of the music itself.
In the new conductor, Liszt’s ideal of the conductor or time-beater who makes himself superfluous is partially realized, but not in the way Liszt thought. The conductor of today has made the old time-beater-drill-master superfluous by supplanting him with a super-being, one who with his wealth of subtle and interpretative gestures has brought into being a new art of chironomy which does not merely indicate the rise and fall of the melody, but indicates that which no composer has ever succeeded in putting on paper—the living soul and spirit of the artwork.
CHAPTER II
THE PHYSICAL ASPECT OF CONDUCTING;
ANALYSIS OF ARM AND HAND MOVEMENTS
USED IN CONDUCTING
This chapter is devoted entirely to the physical aspect of conducting. Analysis of the gestures used in conducting has shown that there are four fundamental movements.
A—Wrist movement in horizontal position. (With palm of the hand facing downward.)
B—Wrist movement in vertical position. (With palm of the hand facing inward.)