It will soon be discovered by the amateur that in every case where an effect such as that described by Weingartner has been brought about, it is because the conductor has studied the music and has then made gestures which were prompted by his sympathetic response to the thought of the composer. In other words, the conducting was effective because the feeling which prompted the gestures came from within, as is always the case when an orator or an actor moves us deeply. This is what is meant by interpretation in conducting; and we can scarcely do better, in concluding our discussion of the whole matter, than to quote once more from a writer to whom we have already referred.[22]
The great interpreters of instrumental music are those who can most nearly enter into the composer's ideals, or can even improve upon them, and who are able to give a delicacy or force of accentuation or phrasing which it is outside of the possibility of notation to express.... The days of cold, classical performance of great works are practically over. The executant or conductor now seeks to stir the deeper emotions of his audience, and to do so he must pay homage to the artist who conceived the work, by interpreting it with enthusiasm and warmth.
CHAPTER VIII
The Supervisor of Music as Conductor
THE FIELD OF SCHOOL MUSIC
The phenomenal progress which has been made during recent years in the music departments of both the grades and the high schools of our great public educational systems, together with the fact that a large number of young men and women of real musical ability are entering the field of public school music as a life work, make it seem worth while to include a chapter upon the work of the music supervisor as conductor. The writer has long contended that the public school systems of this country offered the most significant opportunity for influencing the musical taste of a nation that has ever existed. If this be true, then it is highly important that the teachers of music in these school systems shall be men and women who are, in the first place, thoroughly trained musicians; in the second place, broadly educated along general lines; and in the third place, imbued with a knowledge concerning, and a spirit of enthusiasm for, what free education along cultural lines is able to accomplish in the lives of the common people. In connection with this latter kind of knowledge, the supervisor of music will, of course, need also to become somewhat intimately acquainted with certain basic principles and practical methods of both general pedagogy and music education.
We are not writing a treatise on music in the public schools, and shall therefore not attempt to acquaint the reader, in the space of one chapter, with even the fundamental principles of school music teaching. We shall merely call attention to certain phases of the supervisor's work that seem to come within the scope of a book on conducting.