Essentials in Conducting

by Karl Wilson Gehrkens

The word interpret, as ordinarily used means "to explain,"—"to elucidate,"—"to make clear the meaning of," and this same definition of the word applies to music as well, the conductor or performer "making clear" to the audience the message given him by the composer. It should be noted at once, however, that interpretation in music is merely the process or means for securing the larger thing called expression, and in discussing this larger thing, the activity of two persons is always assumed; one is the composer, the other the performer. Which of these two is the more important personage has been for many decades a much mooted question among concert-goers. Considered from an intellectual standpoint, there is no doubt whatever concerning the supremacy of the composer; but when viewed in the light of actual box office experience, on an evening when Caruso or some other popular idol has been slated to appear, and cannot do so because of indisposition, it would seem as if the performer were still as far above the composer as he was in the days of eighteenth-century opera in Italy.

It is the composer's function to write music of such a character that when well performed it will occasion an emotional reaction on the part of performer and listener. Granting this type of music, it is the function of the performer or conductor to so interpret the music that an appropriate emotional reaction will actually ensue. A recent writer calls the performer a messenger from the composer to the audience, and states[8] that—

As a messenger is accountable to both sender and recipient of his message, so is the interpretative artist in a position of twofold trust and, therefore, of twofold responsibility. The sender of his message—creative genius—is behind him; before him sits an expectant and confiding audience, the sovereign addressee. The interpretative artist has, therefore, first to enter into the spirit of his message; to penetrate its ultimate meaning; to read in, as well as between, the lines. And then he has to train and develop his faculties of delivery, of vital production, to such a degree as to enable him to fix his message decisively, and with no danger of being misunderstood, in the mind of his auditor.

This conception of the conductor's task demands from him two things:

1. A careful, painstaking study of the work to be performed, so as to become thoroughly familiar with its content and to discover its true emotional significance.

2. Such display of emotion in his conducting as will arouse a sympathetic response, first on the part of orchestra and chorus, and then in turn in the audience.

EMOTION IN INTERPRETATION

Real interpretation, then, requires, on the part of the conductor, just as in the case of the actor, a display of emotion. Coldness and self-restraint will not suffice, for these represent merely the intellectual aspect of the art, and music is primarily a language of the emotions. This difference constitutes the dividing line between performances that merely arouse our judicial comment "That was exceedingly well done"; and those on the other hand that thrill us, carry us off our feet, sweep us altogether out of our environment so that for the moment we forget where we are, lose sight temporarily of our petty cares and grievances, and are permitted to live for a little while in an altogether different world—the world not of things and ambitions and cares, but of ecstasy. Such performances and such an attitude on the part of the listener are all too rare in these days of smug intellectualism and hypersophistication, and we venture to assert that this is at least partly due to the fact that many present-day conductors are intellectual rather than emotional in their attitude.

It is this faculty of displaying emotion, of entirely submerging himself in the work being performed, that gives the veteran choral conductor Tomlins his phenomenal hold on chorus and audience. In a performance of choral works recently directed by this conductor, the listener was made to feel at one moment the joy of springtime, with roses blooming and lovers wooing, as a light, tuneful chorus in waltz movement was being performed; then in a trice, one was whisked over to the heart of Russia, and made to see, as though they were actually present, a gang of boatmen as they toiled along the bank of the Volga with the tow-rope over their shoulders, tugging away at a barge which moved slowly up from the distance, past a clump of trees, and then gradually disappeared around a bend in the river; and in yet another moment, one was thrilled through and through with religious fervor in response to the grandeur and majestic stateliness of the Mendelssohn Motet, Judge Me, oh God.

It was interpretation of this type too that gave the actor-singer Wüllner such a tremendous hold upon his audiences a few years ago, this artist achieving a veritable triumph by the tremendous sincerity and vividness of his dramatic impersonations in singing German Lieder, in spite of the fact that he possessed a voice of only average quality.