The orchestra and orchestral music

by W. J. Henderson

It is not so easy to define the functions of the conductor of an orchestra as it may seem to be, because at present there is a general tendency to exaggerate one element of his labor, namely, the interpretative. “Readings” are the order of the day, and we are invited to consider Mr. Paur’s reading of Beethoven’s C minor symphony, Mr. Nikisch’s interpretation of the same, and again Mr. Gericke’s, and to compare them one with another, as we might compare Mr. Barnay’s performance of Hamlet with that of Wilson Barrett. The conductor’s magnetism, his personality, his style, even the cut of his cuffs have thrust themselves between the public and the immortal works of the masters, until it seems as if there must come a reaction which will drive us back to the ancient time-beater. Perhaps it will be advisable, before considering conducting in the abstract, to trace briefly the development of the conductor.

It is impossible to tell when the conductor made his appearance in music. There seems to have been the widest diversity in the customs of different places and different times. In modern music, which may fairly date from the time when vocal and instrumental composition started upon lines of independent development, namely, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the conductor was at first nothing more than a leader. He was one of the performers whom the rest followed. His function is preserved to-day by the leader of the college glee-club. Yet long before the year 1600 there certainly were conductors who used the baton. An ancient manuscript in a Parisian library contains an illustration (which the reader will find reproduced in Emil Naumann’s “History of Music”) showing Heinrich von Meissen, a minnesinger who died in 1318, conducting a choir of singers and players. He is seated on a raised platform and is using a long baton in his left hand and the extended finger of his right. His attitude and facial expression clearly express his intent to guide those below him, or correct someone who is going astray. Two or three of the figures in the choir seem to be repeating his beat.

What became of conductors of this kind between 1318 and 1600 I have been unable to discover. The early operatic performances in Italy, however, were conducted by the harpsichordist, who played the chords sustaining the dry recitative and led the rest of the performers in the orchestral passages. This method of conducting followed Italian opera into Germany and France. Lully’s works were conducted in this manner, and when young Pelham Humphreys, one of the gentlemen of the King’s Chapel, returned from his studies in France, “a young monsieur,” as Pepys notes, and made fun of the performances of his former companions because they could not keep time, he must have shown them how his master, Lully, conducted. At any rate, the conducting of operatic performances at the harpsichord was common in the time of his pupil, Purcell, and when Handel, who had been writing Italian operas for the Germans, went to London, he, too, conducted his own works while sitting at the harpsichord. Heinrich Schütz must certainly have learned this method of conducting when he went down to Italy to get the score of Peri’s “Daphne” for the delectation of the Dresden court, even if he had not known it before. This would account for the introduction into Germany of the Italian method of opera conducting, and it was continued, of course, at Hamburg under Reinhard Keiser and afterward under Handel. Sufficiently numerous pen-pictures of Handel have come down to us, and we know that he conducted the performances of his operas in Germany sitting at the harpsichord.

How did these harpsichordists conduct? Undoubtedly, sometimes with a nod of the head, sometimes with a wave of the hand, and occasionally, perhaps, with a most emphatic stamp of the foot. Not a little light is thrown upon the various methods of conducting by the records of the practices of the church musicians. It appears that even in the days of Handel and Bach there were different ways of conducting church music. Johann Bähr, concert-master at Weissenfels, says, in a book published in Nuremberg in 1719, that “one man conducts with the foot, another with the head, a third with the hand, some with both hands, some again take a roll of paper, and others a stick.” It is perfectly clear, from other remarks of Bähr, that these different methods were applied to different kinds of performances. A Nuremberg engraving, published certainly before 1725, shows a music-conductor with a roll of music in each hand directing the performance of a motet from a score. There is an inscription in verse which shows very plainly that this was a real conductor. “Silent myself, I cause the music I control,” is one of the lines whose meaning is not doubtful. There are other pictures, of about the same date, which show the church-music conductor standing in the midst of a group of singers and players in front of the organ and directing with a roll of music. In some cases the leader of the choir used a violin, with which he could keep the singers on the pitch.

But it seems as if the quiet style of conducting at the harpsichord, as practised in the opera-houses, must have commended itself to the German church musicians as eminently suited to the sanctuary, for, after 1730, the conductors of sacred music ceased to stand and beat time continually. The custom of conducting all kinds of performances from the harpsichord spread. Sometimes the time was indicated by motions of the hand, at others by the sound of the instrument. Thus, in Germany, undemonstrative harpsichord conducting became popular, while in ever-theatrical France, where the eye must always be fed, the practice of conducting with the baton became general. This led to the scathing remark of Rousseau: “The Opera in Paris is the only theatre in Europe where they beat the time without keeping it; in all other places they keep time without beating it.” The influence of Hasse’s conducting of the Dresden orchestra had much to do with the common adoption of the harpsichord method in Germany. In the [diagram of the Dresden orchestra] given in Chapter XV. the reader will see that there were two harpsichords. The conductor sat at the one in the centre; the player who performed the figured bass part sat at the other.

In his famous “Life of Bach,” Dr. Philip Spitta, to whose indefatigable labors of research I am indebted for the above information as to methods of church conducting, says: “When Bach entered on his duties he had the harpsichord in the Thomaskirche [in Leipsic], which had become useless, set in order forthwith, and got the Council to expend the sum of six thalers a year upon keeping it regularly tuned, but it was out of use again in the year 1733.” In regard to the use of the harpsichord for conducting. Dr. Spitta quotes the words of Bach’s son, Philipp Emmanuel, who wrote:

“The notes of the clavier [the German name for any instrument of the piano family], which stands in the middle, surrounded by the musicians, are clearly heard by all. For I myself know that even performances on a large scale, where the performers are far apart, and in which many very moderate musicians take part voluntarily, can be kept in order simply by the tone of the harpsichord. If the first violinist stands, as he should, near the harpsichord, it is difficult for any confusion to ensue.... If, however, anybody begins to hurry or drag the time, he can be corrected in the plainest possible way by means of the clavier; while the other instruments have enough to do with their own parts because of the number of passages and syncopations; and especially the parts which are in tempo rubato by this means get the necessary emphatic up-beat of the bar marked for them. Lastly, by this method—since the musicians are not hindered by the noise of the clavier from perceiving the slightest nuances of time—the pace can be slightly lessened, as is often necessary; and the musicians who stand behind or near the clavier have the beat of the bar given out in the most evident, and consequently the most emphatic, way before their eyes by both hands at once.”

These words are singularly enlightening as to the exact methods and advantages of harpsichord conducting, and they go far toward explaining the reasons why this method survived as long as it did. It continued to be used, as we shall presently see, long after the time-beater had become a fixed institution and even in conjunction with his work. Undoubtedly, this was because the older orchestral players had become so thoroughly schooled to follow the harpsichordist that they could not be induced to give their whole attention to the time-beater and the counting of their own rests. Gradually, however, as the wind choir of the modern orchestra increased in power, the harpsichord was unable to make itself heard, and it had to give way to a method of conducting which appealed wholly to the eye. It was doubtless owing to the continued existence of old musicians trained in the early school that for a time the harpsichord and the baton were employed simultaneously. It is not at all unlikely that in some instances a distinguished composer, whose work was undergoing the ordeal of a first hearing, was invited to sit at the harpsichord, where he pretended much and did little, while his presence added to the interest of the public, and someone else really conducted the performance with a baton. The first violin, too, played an important part in the conducting of an orchestra, so much so that to this day he is known either as the concert-master or the leader, although his functions have wholly changed.

At one time he was the only conductor that some orchestras had. Part of the time he played, leading the others by the motions of his bow and by raising and lowering the neck of his violin on the beats. Again he would cease to play and conduct with the violin bow. He was known as the leader of the orchestra, and his descendant exists in the contemporaneous theatre, where the first violinist of the little orchestra of eight or ten pieces is the leader. Some concert-goers will doubtless recall the fact that both Johann and Eduard Strauss conducted their dance-music in this manner.

In Haydn’s day the performance of symphonic music enlisted both harpsichordist and time-beater, and at the famous London concerts for which the genial master composed some of his best symphonies, he himself sat at the harpsichord, while Salomon, the manager of the entertainments, beat time. That a similar method should have been employed in the performance of vocal works even in the present century is not surprising, but we must bear in mind that it was applied to compositions whose scores contain no clavier parts. At Vienna, in 1808, Haydn’s “Creation” was performed with Kreuzer at the harpsichord and Salieri conducting. In 1815 Beethoven’s “Mount of Olives” was given in the same city with Umlauf at the piano and Wranitzky conducting. At the Berlin Singakadamie Zelter used to beat time while one of his pupils was at the harpsichord. The practice of conducting from the piano, even without the time-beater, clung tenaciously to life, for it is on record that Mendelssohn, at a concert of the London Philharmonic Society in the Argyll Rooms, on May 25, 1829, conducted his symphony in C minor from a piano. It may be as well to note here that the eminent composer, Ludwig Spohr, in 1820 introduced the modern manner of conducting in England. He stood at a desk at the front of the stage and directed with a baton. He describes in his autobiography the general opposition of the Philharmonic musicians which he had to overcome in order to begin this practice. “Henceforth,” he says, “no one was ever again seen seated at the piano during the performance of symphonies and overtures.” He was not informed of Mendelssohn’s piano conducting.