Albie Cabrera wrote::

>>.....  then watching Karajan's conducting, most of the time I hadn't the
>>foggiest idea what he was doing!  So rarely did a gesture coincide with
>>an actual beat (or even look like a beat at all), or he might look to
>>be beating out a different tempo to what you were hearing the orchestra
>>actually play...  I mean, I like most of the musical results, but WHAT THE
>>HECK WAS GOING ON???!!!:-P

To which Ian Crisp replied:

>.....  I have seen many conductors who have produced wonderful
>performances without making a single movement that could possibly be
>described as clear, unambiguous, rhythmical or in time with the orchestra.
>Obviously whatever it is that they do must be either done in rehearsal or
>done in ways so subtle that they can only be picked up by the orchestra
>and not by the audience.

The key word is 'subtle'.  Of course the whole process of communication
between musicians while they are performing is a subtle one.

It seems to me that tempo and ensemble are not just something that
musicians have to attend to while playing -- it is part of what they are
doing.  It affects their whole technique -- you don't play or breathe or
sing quickly the same way as you do slowly.  The tempo must be established
_before_ the first note is played.  It's no good trying to get the tempo
right at some stage during the opening bars, as you can sometimes hear.
Having established the tempo, usually from the initial upbeat, there should
be no problem maintaining it.  Variations in the basic tempo, sometimes
long and gradual, will be indicated by the conductor as and when.  A new
tempo, at the beginning of a movement or occurring during it, should again
be established in most cases by the upbeat immediately preceding it.

Beating time does not make for good music-making, at least in the Romantic
repertoire.  Musicians will have their own internal metronome or motor
running, and it is within that framework, and only within such a framework,
that the conductor can shape and phrase the music.  You can't get the tempo
just by watching a beat, you have to internalize it.  A good conductor will
aim to reduce the beating of time to the minimum, so as not to hamper the
flow of the music.

Obviously the players see more of the conductor than the audience can, so
will more easily pick up on nuances and subtleties (an eyebrow movement,
for example) that the audience will miss and therefore may be baffled by.
To the players, a good conductor is a colleague, someone they have worked
closely with (perhaps over a long period of time) and have established a
rapport with, so that there is a subliminal level of communication going
on which members of the audience may not pick up on.

And indeed, most of the work is done in rehearsal.  This is something that
audiences sometimes misunderstand.  Non-performers tend to think that what
they can see the conductor doing is all, or at least nearly all, there is
to being a conductor.  But as with any stage performance, what the audience
gets is just the icing on the cake.

Alan Moss