One of the most frequent questions that children ask teachers from their early years of musical schooling is: "what is the conductor for?". Normally the teacher tries to give as an explanation, for example, that the conductor is the one who "beats time" or who "coordinates the musical performance". In reality, no one has the courage to say the total truth: the conductor, most of the time, is useless!
Obviously I'm taking this statement to the extreme. By now the professional orchestras have reached such high levels of musical perfection as to have a "harmony" that allows them to play together, even just by perceiving the halo of a breath, or simply automatically acquiring a thought and a strong internalisation of the music played. So why do we rely on the conductor?
The conductor (and this is the correct answer to give to young musicians) is the one who has the task of "playing" the orchestra, or of transmitting his previously internalised thought, through the gestures of his arms, hands and face. In order to be able to conduct an orchestra, it is also necessary not only to correctly prepare and assimilate a thought inherent in the piece to be conducted, but also to have a clear and firm knowledge of conducting technique.
As for a pianist, the study of scales or arpeggios is fundamental, also for a conductor, every gesture is the result of a rational and scientific study that greatly exemplifies the actual activity of conducting, for example during a phase of concentration.
Very often, orchestras are used to being led by conductors who have prepared and internalised a piece well, but whom for example, have several technical deficiencies. At other times the exact opposite can occur, in fact there may be conductors who know how to more or less rationally solve the technical aspects of a piece, but perhaps have not elaborated a musical thought so well as to be "convincing" during a concert.
So, to be a good conductor, you need to have an exact amount of talent, knowledge of the score and ultimately (but not least) of conducting technique.
The conducting technique is nothing more than a practical and effective tool that allows the conductor to communicate his thoughts through gestures. Most conductors of the past probably did not have a clear understanding of what conducting technique was. They had instinctive gestures driven largely by their musicality. It is clear that instinct, as in all musical disciplines, is one of the fundamental elements that contributes to the artistic maturity of a subject. In the case of conducting, this instinct must be rationalised so that there is no unnecessary and sometimes counterproductive expenditure of gestural energy.
The person who investigated the real foundations of the relationship between the conductor's gesture and the production of the sound by the orchestra with highly convincing results, was Ilya Musin.
Teacher and pedagogue, born in 1904 in Kostroma and who died in 1999 in Saint Petersburg, Ilya Musin developed a system of decoding and coding of gestures for the conductor by formulating through a rigorous basic technique, a simple yet semantically rich gestural language. In Musin's elaborate technique each gesture has a specific value: the arms, in particular, as the main vehicle for the transmission of language, govern the character of the performance, revealing to the listeners the intimate essence of the melody through a few precise movements .
In light of these considerations, it is clear that Musin's work can inevitably be approached by another great Russian personality, a leading figure in twentieth-century theatrical dramaturgy: Kostantin Sergevich Stanislavskij. In fact, the principles of Stanislavsky's system, elaborated for the actor's propaedeutics, deeply inspired the formulation of the principles of the Musinian school, to the point that we could consider them as the theoretical presuppositions of "Technica dirizhirovania".
The consideration of the Stanislavsky system within Musin's school is not to be considered casual. In fact, many factors contribute to establishing a particular equivalence between the two different schools. The work done over the years by these two masters is fueled by the achievement of the same goal: to identify the principles that oversee the realisation of an artistic form. The respective systems, in fact, arise from the need to make the description of executing technique "tangible". In the treatise "The actor's work on the character" (K.S. Stanislavsky - edited by F.Malcovati, Rome-Bari, Laterza ed. 1997) Stanislavsky identifies four periods necessary to identify with the character to be interpreted: the period of knowledge, that reviviscence, that of personification and finally communication. Similarly, in the Musin system, we find the presence of four preliminary stages for conducting an orchestra:
Study of the score - This phase can ideally coincide with the period of the actor's knowledge of Stanislavskij. In this first moment the conductor has to establish a sort of "link" with the score and with the composer's thought. He must know its structure and understand its compositional form; must be aware of all the compositional procedures used by the author. In this phase, the conductor gradually develops a formal analysis of the passage in front of him.
Riviviscenza (perezjvanie) - During this phase the conductor must search within himself for the emotions of the composer, make them coincide with his own, reliving them in the piece of music. This phase follows in a completely automatic and unconscious way, phase n.3
Personification - During this phase the conductor has already acquired and internalised the musical thought of the author. Thus, through the music itself, the "passing of the baton" from the author to the conductor takes place. The latter thus unconsciously inherits the "meaning" of the score by dressing it in a suit that he must show to the orchestra and consequently to the public. In this phase, gestures and mimicry take on a predominant role. Where the arms alone cannot express the sense of music, the eyes, mouth, facial expressions and posture intervene. Stanislavsky himself declared in his treatise that at this stage "the personification of relived feelings is accomplished more easily if you resort to the help of the eyes, face, and mimicry; what the eyes are unable to suggest is explained and clarified by the voice, words, intonation, speech. The gestures must also illustrate emotions and feelings; physical action takes place when the creative will carries out its aspiration ".
Communication (management) - This phase can also be considered as the "verification" or performing phase. It represents the moment of the actual conducting, both during the concentration phase and in concert. Wanting to paraphrase Musin's words, in this phase "the heart intervenes". Directing with the heart does not mean abandoning yourself completely to the ecstatic sensation of being enveloped by a large sound mass, but to dominate it and at the same time contemplate its beauty to "reveal" it in the best possible way.
As in the Stanislavsky method, in the Musin system the absolute principle is linked to reviviscence and an emotional flow: one can render time perfectly in 4/4, simply conducting each movement like a good ‘solfeggiatore', but that is something that anyone can do with a little rhythmic sense. Beating time and creating a mood is much more difficult.
Some conductors use images associated with the pieces. As in programmed music, they invent situations and fantasies that stimulate the creation of an atmosphere which, in the performers, generates an identification of extraordinary emotional effect, similar to that of the Stanislavsky system. In this way, an invisible thread is created that connects the conductor's thoughts to his arm, the arm to the orchestra and the orchestra to the public through the music produced. The conductor's interpretation must clarify the content of the work. He must show the audience the progress of the piece, maintaining an uninterrupted gestural line of action; a fluidity of gestures generating sounds that can keep the audience's attention alive.
From the analysis of the preparatory stages of conducting work emerges how functional a good gesture is for the orchestra; to unequivocally elaborate the same musical thought which will then transform into sound. However sometimes if an orchestra is musical enough and the conductor does not provide the preparatory gestures required to obtain the "right” sound, then the orchestra will automatically "correct" the conductor, interpreting and realising the sound he has in mind: the final result will not be exclusively the result of a relationship between cause and effect (as happens for example for a string or percussion instrument) but will be "altered" by the factors that contribute to the "successful outcome" of the musical performance. Paradoxically, if there is a discrepancy between the gestural action and the conductor's thought, the orchestra could also unconsciously decide not to look at the conductor whose gestural "message" would be wrong or annoying for the successful outcome of the performance; in doing so - with a good dose of group irrationality - the orchestra would help the conductor to obtain what his thought actually produced at that moment.
Musin's theory, developed in his 70 years of teaching in St. Petersburg, was not a mere form of academicism or of current stylistic-musical thought, but rather, it represented a tool of fundamental use for the study of orchestral conducting which has spread widely in Europe and in the world.
His students (mostly devoted today to concerts or teaching his technique) therefore, had the opportunity to take advantage of a collection of very precious artisan tools, with which to form their own artistic figures. It is clear that the Musin technique is to be considered only as a useful and functional guide for the realisation of conducting thought; it must be seen as a support plan on which to build one's own artistic and gestural world.
"In conducting the orchestra - Musin recalls - you need to know how to use your gestures, use casual, soft, plastic movements. A gesture could be grotesque if forced ".
Each conductor can use Musin's technique to find his own gestural language and to make it unique because it is built on himself and not "stolen" from someone else.
It will be up to the musical sensitivity of each conductor to suggest to himself the right way of achieving the exact balance between thought, gesture and sound that he wants to produce.
