History
Two Schools of Thought
- Felix Mendelssohn → Elegant || Apollonian
- Richard Wagner → Passionate || Dionysiac
Both of them can be badly abused → clear but dry, impatient but you don’t recognize the piece
Both are required. Conductors’ work embraces a very enormous range.
Authority, psychological insight, master of mechanics of conducting, profound perception of inner meaning of music
Mechanics
Master the beat
- measure/bars
- subdivisions/beats
- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 beats → anything higher can be constructed by these 4
- 1 to the bar (1 beat)
- Waltz typically go in 3 but then we would be conducting an endless number of beats which would be exhausting and less clear to the orchestra
- 2 beat
- one beats down
- another beats up (its like hitting the top)
- 3 beat
- one beats down
- two beats sideways
- three beats up, all three making a triangle