“The man who lacks tact is not fit to be a conductor. Tact is the lubricant that keeps the administrative machinery smoothly working when heat and friction would otherwise arise.”
(From “Choral Technique and Interpretation” by Coward)
Novello
“Finally, one word more on the art of conducting itself. More and more I have come to think that what decides the worth of conducting is the degree of suggestive power that the conductor can exercise over the performers. At the rehearsals he is mostly nothing more than a workman, who schools the men under him so conscientiously and precisely that each of them knows his place and what he has to do there; he first becomes an artist when the moment comes for the production of the work. Not even the most assiduous rehearsing, so necessary a pre-requisite as this is, can so stimulate the capacities of the players as the force imagination of the conductor. It is not the transference of his personal will, but the mysterious act of creation that called the work itself into being takes place again in him, and, transcending the narrow limits of reproduction, he becomes a new-creator, a self-creator. The more however his personality disappears so as to get quite behind the personality that created the work,—to identify itself, indeed, with this—the greater will his performance be.”
(From “On Conducting” by Weingartner)
Breitkopf & Härtel
From Grove’s Dictionary
“Definition—The word ‘conducting’ as used in a musical sense now ordinarily refers to the activities of an orchestra or chorus leader who stands before a group of performers and gives his entire time and effort to directing their playing or singing, to the end that a musically effective ensemble performance may result.
“This is accomplished by means of certain conventional movements of a slender stick called a baton (usually held in the right hand), as well as through such changes of facial expression, bodily posture, et cetera, as will convey to the singers or players the conductor’s wishes concerning the rendition of the music.”