Many of you will have found yourself in the situation of having to conduct a “stringendo” or “accelerando”.

Initially, it is most likely that you will have experienced the feeling of wanting to move the orchestra forward, but to no avail and to have felt a mass of sound under your hands, that is difficult to push forward from the speed in which they play.

Generally in these situations, a beginner starts to beat the beats more quickly little by little, but without getting great results.

The attack is divided into three stages

- UP ( upward movement and breathing in)

- DOWN ( downward movement ) or falling

- UP AGAIN or re-ascent  ( upward movement , during this last phase we have the emission of sound )

Initial attack and breathing, to be more precise: the intake of breath , are two elements which cannot be ignored and are strictly linked together.

After all, breathing is the main driving force of the attack and the first stage - the upward movement - could be considered its visualization.

You will  feel the contact with the sound during the third phase

Patterns in quick time

The patterns depending on the context both in the staccato and in the legato can very often undergo considerable variations.

It would take us too long to examine the various cases, and it could generate a sensation of panic and confusion for a student left with no guidance.

Ilya Musin in his book “Technika dirizhirovanja” (St. Petersburg 1967) gives us a clear and simple explanation of the pauses and their casuistry. We could enumerate an infinite number of cases but, in fact, there are six main types, which in their turn may be divided into two big groups:

1) Pauses followed by a downbeat

2) Pauses followed by an upbeat Inside each group we can differentiate as follows:

a) A pause followed by a rest (with a close, with a new attack)

b) A pause with caesura (with a close, with no stop)

c) A pause and the music starts again (with no close, with no caesura, with no stop)

Closing a pause is not a problem, just as it is not for keeping on a chord or a rest. In pauses the problem might be in showing what comes next, how to go on.

The first time I met Antonio Ballista he was very frank with me: “I studied orchestral conducting with Antonino Votto at The Academy of music in Milan, a wonderful musician as few.

During my first lesson he told me: “This is the pattern of 2, this of three and this of four, that’s all!”

It’s already been 30 years I have been conducting contemporary music, I never met difficulties, for me it’s important have a clear control of the metric structure, but If I have to conduct Brahms I don’t know what do… In 1994 Carlo Maria Giulini came to St.Petersburg (Russia) on the occasion of his 80^th birthday.

The anacrusis attack does not present great problems when the note or the chord that comes before the beat is of the same length as one of the notes that follow.

But when the note in front of the first beat is not as long as a one beat we might have difficulty in giving the attack.

Often an inexperienced conductor gives a very sharp stroke to indicate he beginning of the performance.

Very frequently an orchestra is asked to perform a clear and sharp attack, especially in the Forte.

The gesture that offers most chances to suggest and obtain this effect is the held back attack.

This is one of the most important basic gestures, and to master this attack is very useful as its use can be very frequent.

The absence of control on the rebounce of hand - and arm -  after the beat is one of the most frequent defects and difficult to eradicate.

In the technique of the orchestra conducting there are dozens of basic gestures which can be applied in corresponding contexts.

The codification of these gestures by Ilya Musin is of great help to resolve certain moments. Solutions that aren't banalities or arid technicalities, but always stand out for being able to combine in a single gesture expressiveness, clarity, musicality, simplicity, technique. With time and practice obviously the student learns to recognize casuistry and gesture to apply.

Ilya Musin firmly argued that any technical issue had its gestural solution.

In front of steps which for us students constituted real brain teasers the solutions that he found left us always speechless.

A pattern is correct if the beats inside it are all of the same and neutral character.

We often encounter patterns that connect vertical gestures to lateral diagonal gestures, to the left and to the right,  and even others, that provide in the final part  a "Christmas tree" which narrows upwards:  These patterns must be avoided. In fact if a student shows an sf and it is basically set up with an oblique lateral gesture, those aren’t the  conditions under which to realise it and to show it clearly to the musicians.