6 ms·

What do conductors do?

68 points by zck 12y ago

theorique 12y ago
Well, in a metal, it has to do with free electrons at the Fermi surface ... oh, you mean music. Never mind. But more seriously, cool article. I think I understand the conductor's role in the orchestra better now.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  HN readers, please raise your hand if the first thing you though about when reading the headline was not electricity. Now put your hands down if it was something to do with thermal energy. Now put them down if you were thinking about trains. If your hand is still up, please remove all metal items, swallow this, step into the fMRI, and hold still.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I thought buses ... it's very late and I've had a drink, I'm not really that old either but I'd heard that London Transport were thinking of having conductors again, so ...
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    So, basically, whoever thought "orchestra conductors" needs an fMRI?
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      The elements of the joke are as follows. I assumed that HN readers have a higher probability than the general population to associate words with scientific or engineering meanings. I further assumed that as this site has a high association with electronics, the electrical meaning of conductor would be most prevalent. This was reinforced by the parent post, who stated nearly exactly what I had been thinking, right down to the smirking overcleverness with which it described to motion of elecromagnetic charge. Before clicking on the link, I thought of other things that could be meant by "conductor". I came up with heat transfer and train tickets. I didn't even think of orchestras, probably because I had always been in bands, where the leaders were overwhelmingly directors, band leaders, and drum majors. The second element of the joke is that I presumed that HN readers, having a variety of esoteric hobbies, might also have an interest in cognitive science and linguistics (particularly the AI folks), and might want to analyze the brain of an outlier. I then decided that, while less accessible to a home hobbyist than brain surgery or in-depth psychological profiling, fMRI imaging conveyed the point of the joke in shorter, more recognizable wording, without actually being a very probable outcome. In reality, you would probably be wired up to a home-made sensor array and presented with a series of time-indexed sensory inputs via headphones and a computer screen, and perhaps asked to press certain button sequences in response. So, in short, no, those people do not need a fMRI. You, however.... I would like to analyze your physiological response to traditional comedy and contrast that with nerd jokes....
  - narag 12y ago
    I looked at the domain. Telegraph? Of course it's about electricity!
- zck 12y ago
  If the subtitle (Do orchestras really need someone flapping their arms on a podium?) had fit in the 80-character limit, I would have added it to the title here. I probably should have titled it something like "What do orchestra conductors do?". So it goes.
- tkirby 12y ago
  Metal has air guitar.
tunesmith 12y ago
(I was expecting an article about electricity.) Having done a little of both, I found it easier to write for full orchestra than to conduct one. Conducting is extremely hard. Just the simple practice of conducting ahead of the beat (where you're motioning beat 1 while they're still, roughly, on beat 4) is a bit of a brain bender. The first time I tried to conduct a student orchestra, that alone was enough to make the tempo get slower and slower over time, as I kept trying to correct to their beat while they would in turn correct to mine. Add on to that all the emotive requirements - you need to be a special kind of extravert to take to conducting naturally, I think. At any rate, conductors are essential to the rehearsal process, as they're responsible for the interpretation, which is rehearsed. By the time performance comes around, the conductor is less essential, serving a more of a coach that gives cues, triggers, and reminders about the shape and interpretation that the ensemble has worked up.
- zwieback 12y ago
  That's how I remember it from high school - by the time the performance comes around you can play the piece without looking at the conductor. I've heard that many pro orchestra/conductor combos only have one or two rehearsals, maybe the night before and day of the performance. In that case I could imagine it takes a lot of skill on both the conductor and musicians part to pull off the performance. I found it interesting to hear that conductors didn't play a huge role until after Beethoven. The older I get the more I feel that post-Beethoven symphonic music is a little over the top and often hard to enjoy. Maybe the need for a conductor is a sign that things simply got out of hand. I do enjoy a good Strauss or Verdi opera, though, and that's even crazier in terms of complexity.
  - vanderZwan 12y ago
    Isn't that a natural progression in many fields though? Developing ever more complex and challenging material to show off you're "better" than the previous generation or "building upon their work" so to speak? Regardless of whether the added complexity is much of an improvement. It kind of makes sense that you start needing a conductor - it is basically dividing the growing complexity into lower and higher level tasks because the full task is too much to bear for a single individual.
stevetjoa 12y ago
You can think of the orchestra as a meta-instrument. Just like a violinist plays the violin, a conductor plays the orchestra. Someone has to make the musical decisions. In a string quartet, it might be the first violin. In a baroque ensemble, as the article stated, it might be the harpsichordist. In a symphony, it's the conductor. Sure, a conductor keeps time, but not so much during the performance itself. With enough practice, any professional orchestra should be able to keep time on its own, but during rehearsal, someone still needs to say exactly what that tempo is in the first place. Having played with many amateur orchestras, currently rehearsing with one weekly, I've seen good and bad conductors. Just like a CEO or basketball coach or political leader, the conductor shares his/her vision of "success" yet knows the low-level technical details of the craft required to lead them there. The part about waving one's arms on stage has little to do with it. An organization -- any organization -- acquires the characteristics of its leader. Therefore, one must not underestimate the importance of a good conductor.
- sgeisenh 12y ago
  What is excellent about chamber music, in particular, is that no individual makes the musical decisions. Each musician is talented enough to be able to react and expound upon the decisions of each of the other players. Honestly, chamber music is often more of a social challenge than a technical or musical one.
  - solistice 12y ago
    I've been told the same thing by people who do Jazz, that they just sit down and go with it because everyone there is talented enough to run with it.
lam 12y ago
They're also called maestros (to disambiguate for those technically inclined). Great ones are heard instead of being seen. By the time we see them on stages, most of the things great conductors do have already been done, and they're basically metronomes. The even better ones have a showmanship in them to help the audience to appreciate the music even more. Check out (rehearsal) performances by Szell, Solti, von Karajan, and our very own Michael Tilson Thomas.
bananas 12y ago
My music teacher at school called conductors "meat sequencers". After reading this, perhaps it was a little bit of an understatement!
PaulJulius 12y ago
The drum major of Stanford's Band is pretty exceptional: http://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Stanford-band-s-spiritual-leader-drum-major-5102715.php http://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Stanford-band-s-... I auditioned for the job this year in a King Tut costume but didn't get it. I can't say that I know exactly what the drum major does either, but I think spiritual leader is a good way to put it. While it may be hard to describe the exact purpose of the drum major, some definitely stand out. This year was the 50th anniversary of the Band and many old drum majors came back to play with us. At one point each of them got to conduct a song, and some of them were just incredible.
GoRudy 12y ago
The Grammar of Conducting: http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar-Conducting-Comprehensive-Interpretation/dp/0028722213 http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar-Conducting-Comprehensive-I...
moioci 12y ago
Here's a worthwhile TED talk on the topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors http://www.ted.com/talks/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_con...
bane 12y ago
I played in orchestras from 6 to about 23, from small professional quartets to huge 100+ piece complete symphonies - mostly enthusiastic amateur ensembles, but I did manage to get hooked onto a small tour ensemble that hit a handful of cities in just post Iron Curtain Russia and took part in some national level Orchestra competitions. plus made a little bit of spare change playing weddings and benefit events for a while. Had to give it up due to medical issues, but nothing beats sitting in the middle of a Symphony Orchestra going at full-steam. I'm pretty convinced that the act of a symphony doing their thing is one of the most impressive split second coordinated acts of cooperation humans have every achieved. A conductor is really important for this, especially as the number of players gets larger. A small trio/quartet can get by just by themselves. Even moderately sized chamber orchestras can manage "ok" with maybe a lead instrumentalist kicking off a tune with an exaggerated nod -- you just rehearse a lot and listen to each other. But once you break maybe 30 or 40 people trying to synchronize complex sound production, manually, with 1/100th of a second precision, it starts getting hard. Conductors are really critical also in setting the "tone" or interpretation of a piece and the program that the orchestra plays. It's why some orchestras play a piece soft and loud in some bits, or another might play quiet and fast. Or one might use a version of the piece where the oboes pick up a flute harmony in the third movement, etc. In many orchestras they also set the position of players, usually through section auditions. It's how one violinist ends up near the conductor and another one ends up in the back row of the 2nd violins trying to hear themselves play over th e bassoons. Rehearsal is harder at scale. It's hard getting 100 people together over and over, so there's section rehearsals where maybe just the violins break off and work, or just the brass instruments. At that level maybe just the section leader runs the rehearsal with the conductor dropping in to set vision. Then you build a bigger part of the orchestra and rehears that, maybe with an assistant conductor or the conductor proper. And maybe you do the full thing a couple of times than go out and perform. A pro-level orchestra can get an all new program of music and turn it around into a performance inside of a week or two. Think how hard it is to coordinate just a half dozen programmers.
- politician 12y ago
  After reading your comment, and considering Serf (the docker coordination thing), I wonder what it would sound like for musicians to coordinate over a gossip protocol (rather than through a centralized conductor which as you note struggles to scale). What would that even look like? EDIT: Or, as sgeisenh points out below, that's chamber music.
jberryman 12y ago
> They know that at bottom, there is something deeply primitive and instinctual about the ability to make 70 people breathe, move and feel as one. This is absolutely true. The rest of the article is random observation that explains very little.
mike_esspe 12y ago
Where can I listen to the same composition, by the same orchestra, but with different conductors?

68 points by zck 12y ago

Well, in a metal, it has to do with free electrons at the Fermi surface ... oh, you mean music. Never mind. But more seriously, cool article. I think I understand the conductor's role in the orchestra better now.

logfromblammo 12y ago
HN readers, please raise your hand if the first thing you though about when reading the headline was not electricity. Now put your hands down if it was something to do with thermal energy. Now put them down if you were thinking about trains. If your hand is still up, please remove all metal items, swallow this, step into the fMRI, and hold still.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  I thought buses ... it's very late and I've had a drink, I'm not really that old either but I'd heard that London Transport were thinking of having conductors again, so ...
- StavrosK 12y ago
  So, basically, whoever thought "orchestra conductors" needs an fMRI?
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    The elements of the joke are as follows. I assumed that HN readers have a higher probability than the general population to associate words with scientific or engineering meanings. I further assumed that as this site has a high association with electronics, the electrical meaning of conductor would be most prevalent. This was reinforced by the parent post, who stated nearly exactly what I had been thinking, right down to the smirking overcleverness with which it described to motion of elecromagnetic charge. Before clicking on the link, I thought of other things that could be meant by "conductor". I came up with heat transfer and train tickets. I didn't even think of orchestras, probably because I had always been in bands, where the leaders were overwhelmingly directors, band leaders, and drum majors. The second element of the joke is that I presumed that HN readers, having a variety of esoteric hobbies, might also have an interest in cognitive science and linguistics (particularly the AI folks), and might want to analyze the brain of an outlier. I then decided that, while less accessible to a home hobbyist than brain surgery or in-depth psychological profiling, fMRI imaging conveyed the point of the joke in shorter, more recognizable wording, without actually being a very probable outcome. In reality, you would probably be wired up to a home-made sensor array and presented with a series of time-indexed sensory inputs via headphones and a computer screen, and perhaps asked to press certain button sequences in response. So, in short, no, those people do not need a fMRI. You, however.... I would like to analyze your physiological response to traditional comedy and contrast that with nerd jokes....
- narag 12y ago
  I looked at the domain. Telegraph? Of course it's about electricity!
zck 12y ago
If the subtitle (Do orchestras really need someone flapping their arms on a podium?) had fit in the 80-character limit, I would have added it to the title here. I probably should have titled it something like "What do orchestra conductors do?". So it goes.
tkirby 12y ago
Metal has air guitar.

tunesmith 12y ago

(I was expecting an article about electricity.) Having done a little of both, I found it easier to write for full orchestra than to conduct one. Conducting is extremely hard. Just the simple practice of conducting ahead of the beat (where you're motioning beat 1 while they're still, roughly, on beat 4) is a bit of a brain bender. The first time I tried to conduct a student orchestra, that alone was enough to make the tempo get slower and slower over time, as I kept trying to correct to their beat while they would in turn correct to mine. Add on to that all the emotive requirements - you need to be a special kind of extravert to take to conducting naturally, I think. At any rate, conductors are essential to the rehearsal process, as they're responsible for the interpretation, which is rehearsed. By the time performance comes around, the conductor is less essential, serving a more of a coach that gives cues, triggers, and reminders about the shape and interpretation that the ensemble has worked up.

zwieback 12y ago
That's how I remember it from high school - by the time the performance comes around you can play the piece without looking at the conductor. I've heard that many pro orchestra/conductor combos only have one or two rehearsals, maybe the night before and day of the performance. In that case I could imagine it takes a lot of skill on both the conductor and musicians part to pull off the performance. I found it interesting to hear that conductors didn't play a huge role until after Beethoven. The older I get the more I feel that post-Beethoven symphonic music is a little over the top and often hard to enjoy. Maybe the need for a conductor is a sign that things simply got out of hand. I do enjoy a good Strauss or Verdi opera, though, and that's even crazier in terms of complexity.
- vanderZwan 12y ago
  Isn't that a natural progression in many fields though? Developing ever more complex and challenging material to show off you're "better" than the previous generation or "building upon their work" so to speak? Regardless of whether the added complexity is much of an improvement. It kind of makes sense that you start needing a conductor - it is basically dividing the growing complexity into lower and higher level tasks because the full task is too much to bear for a single individual.

stevetjoa 12y ago

You can think of the orchestra as a meta-instrument. Just like a violinist plays the violin, a conductor plays the orchestra. Someone has to make the musical decisions. In a string quartet, it might be the first violin. In a baroque ensemble, as the article stated, it might be the harpsichordist. In a symphony, it's the conductor. Sure, a conductor keeps time, but not so much during the performance itself. With enough practice, any professional orchestra should be able to keep time on its own, but during rehearsal, someone still needs to say exactly what that tempo is in the first place. Having played with many amateur orchestras, currently rehearsing with one weekly, I've seen good and bad conductors. Just like a CEO or basketball coach or political leader, the conductor shares his/her vision of "success" yet knows the low-level technical details of the craft required to lead them there. The part about waving one's arms on stage has little to do with it. An organization -- any organization -- acquires the characteristics of its leader. Therefore, one must not underestimate the importance of a good conductor.

sgeisenh 12y ago
What is excellent about chamber music, in particular, is that no individual makes the musical decisions. Each musician is talented enough to be able to react and expound upon the decisions of each of the other players. Honestly, chamber music is often more of a social challenge than a technical or musical one.
- solistice 12y ago
  I've been told the same thing by people who do Jazz, that they just sit down and go with it because everyone there is talented enough to run with it.

lam 12y ago

They're also called maestros (to disambiguate for those technically inclined). Great ones are heard instead of being seen. By the time we see them on stages, most of the things great conductors do have already been done, and they're basically metronomes. The even better ones have a showmanship in them to help the audience to appreciate the music even more. Check out (rehearsal) performances by Szell, Solti, von Karajan, and our very own Michael Tilson Thomas.

bananas 12y ago

My music teacher at school called conductors "meat sequencers". After reading this, perhaps it was a little bit of an understatement!

PaulJulius 12y ago

The drum major of Stanford's Band is pretty exceptional: http://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Stanford-band-s-spiritual-leader-drum-major-5102715.php http://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Stanford-band-s-... I auditioned for the job this year in a King Tut costume but didn't get it. I can't say that I know exactly what the drum major does either, but I think spiritual leader is a good way to put it. While it may be hard to describe the exact purpose of the drum major, some definitely stand out. This year was the 50th anniversary of the Band and many old drum majors came back to play with us. At one point each of them got to conduct a song, and some of them were just incredible.

GoRudy 12y ago

The Grammar of Conducting: http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar-Conducting-Comprehensive-Interpretation/dp/0028722213 http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammar-Conducting-Comprehensive-I...

moioci 12y ago

Here's a worthwhile TED talk on the topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors http://www.ted.com/talks/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_con...

bane 12y ago

I played in orchestras from 6 to about 23, from small professional quartets to huge 100+ piece complete symphonies - mostly enthusiastic amateur ensembles, but I did manage to get hooked onto a small tour ensemble that hit a handful of cities in just post Iron Curtain Russia and took part in some national level Orchestra competitions. plus made a little bit of spare change playing weddings and benefit events for a while. Had to give it up due to medical issues, but nothing beats sitting in the middle of a Symphony Orchestra going at full-steam. I'm pretty convinced that the act of a symphony doing their thing is one of the most impressive split second coordinated acts of cooperation humans have every achieved. A conductor is really important for this, especially as the number of players gets larger. A small trio/quartet can get by just by themselves. Even moderately sized chamber orchestras can manage "ok" with maybe a lead instrumentalist kicking off a tune with an exaggerated nod -- you just rehearse a lot and listen to each other. But once you break maybe 30 or 40 people trying to synchronize complex sound production, manually, with 1/100th of a second precision, it starts getting hard. Conductors are really critical also in setting the "tone" or interpretation of a piece and the program that the orchestra plays. It's why some orchestras play a piece soft and loud in some bits, or another might play quiet and fast. Or one might use a version of the piece where the oboes pick up a flute harmony in the third movement, etc. In many orchestras they also set the position of players, usually through section auditions. It's how one violinist ends up near the conductor and another one ends up in the back row of the 2nd violins trying to hear themselves play over th e bassoons. Rehearsal is harder at scale. It's hard getting 100 people together over and over, so there's section rehearsals where maybe just the violins break off and work, or just the brass instruments. At that level maybe just the section leader runs the rehearsal with the conductor dropping in to set vision. Then you build a bigger part of the orchestra and rehears that, maybe with an assistant conductor or the conductor proper. And maybe you do the full thing a couple of times than go out and perform. A pro-level orchestra can get an all new program of music and turn it around into a performance inside of a week or two. Think how hard it is to coordinate just a half dozen programmers.

politician 12y ago
After reading your comment, and considering Serf (the docker coordination thing), I wonder what it would sound like for musicians to coordinate over a gossip protocol (rather than through a centralized conductor which as you note struggles to scale). What would that even look like? EDIT: Or, as sgeisenh points out below, that's chamber music.

jberryman 12y ago

> They know that at bottom, there is something deeply primitive and instinctual about the ability to make 70 people breathe, move and feel as one. This is absolutely true. The rest of the article is random observation that explains very little.

mike_esspe 12y ago

Where can I listen to the same composition, by the same orchestra, but with different conductors?