It always feels strange once the orchestra stops playing annd its the composer that bows for the applause.
Conductor, we have a problem.
I feel this video of Jacob Collier conducting an orchestra from scratch may be the best representation of what conductors do.
Funny thing is you can actually conduct pretty well with just your hand.
Also a good conductor is usually an astoundingly good player of multiple instruments themselves.
It’s kind of like how football (soccer) team managers are retired players that can still play better than the entire stadium wearing loafers and a suit.
Composers write the music, musicians play the music, and conductors wave around a stick to keep the musicians playing the composition at the right volume and tempo, and to make sure the different sections of the orchestra (the different groups of instruments) come in and out at the right times.
Try coordinating all that without a conductor and it’d be a crazy cacophonous mess…
Fun fact, if you’ve ever watched a string quartet performance, the first violinist basically conducts the other three with their body and bow while playing. Most people have some natural tempo, but keeping multiple people on track usually requires visual queues and well-timed breathing.
At the highest levels of proficiency, knowing “when to play” doesn’t rreeaallyy require a conductor.
An orchestra of professionals mutates into this crazy combined organism. A hive mind, with thousands of signals being generated and consumed among the members. Negotiations all over the place.
The conductor stands in the front not just because it’s convenient, but because they’re in the best relative position to understand what the audience will ultimately hear. If I’m in percussion, positionally I’m getting a skewed take on the relative dynamics of the piccolos. As a professional, they’d have a good “gut feel”, but thier ears are simply not in the right spot to know for sure. The conductors are.
The acoustics of a performance space are drastically different when the seats are full of meat, too.
The conductor is acting as the source of truth and feedback for that hive mind, from a physical position which gives them the best understanding of the complete sound being produced. While professionals CAN do a very passable job of distributing that work, it’s an additional burden and with an imperfect set of inputs. Having one person set the tone and act as that authority frees up capacity on the individuals to do thier best work.
I do wonder why just one person though - couldn’t it be more distributed to avoid all the ego bullshit conductors seem to almost inavoidably suffer from?
Oh, don’t worry about that. The inflated egos are distributed across all the musicians too. It takes a special kind of personality to achieve that level of singular proficiency.
I think it’s one other reason to HAVE a conductor, is to have an ultimate authority on some matters where musicians egos get involved.
In many (most?) compositions, there are going to be some banger little licks in many different sections. It honestly kinda sucks sometimes when you’ve got one… but you gotta hold it back because it’s still just a supporting component. To you, as the musician… you might fall in love with it, wanna push it, take the opportunity to shine and generate some goosebumps. And, obviously, since you’re God’s gift to the world, you SHOULD. The composer was WRONG to hit you with a mp. Maybe the composer’s French Horns couldn’t lead with it, but they never envisioned your talent.
The trumpets shoot you a look to calm down? Fuck 'em. They always get the spotlight.
Having a structure with an ego to rule all egos helps (does NOT eliminate) these kinds of things.
Haha as a child of musicians - you are so right about the egos. Great writing too. I still think/dream that an anarchist orchestra could work, with appropriate rethinking of the whole musical career climb crap… Someday, maybe, people will play for joy, and just to share that joy with each other and with others. No doucherie needed or encouraged.
In addition to all the good answers previously given, a conductor interprets what the composer has written. And different conductors may create very different interpretations of the same piece. They can set the basic tempo faster or slower, they can get the orchestra to really lean in to a particular musical phrase or de-emphasise it, they can bring out the horns at one point or hush them a bit and let us focus on the oboe or piccolo… A good conductor has studied and notated the entire score for some time before they and the orchestra even begin to rehearse.
So, part of that bow at the end can be to say, “what do you think of this interpretation compared to all the other times you’ve heard this famous symphony?” Then they usually turn around and wave the orchestra members to stand, which means, “and didn’t these guys do a great job executing it!?”
They wear VR contacts and are tapping little people on the “screen” to make the noises.
Essentially, musicians in an orchestra play the instruments, while the conductor plays the musicians. In both contexts they guide the instrument to make a specific note at a specific time, intensity and timbre, for a specific duration.
As for how the musicians interpret the movements, not sure. Perhaps it’s unique to every orchestra and relies on the familiarity between musician and conductor.
As someone who used to be in a (casual) orchestra, I can tell you that the musicians can interpret the conductor because they’ve rehearsed it extensively beforehand. The conductor is really just there is remind the musicians to do the things that they’ve practiced beforehand.
As for the baton’s movements, that’s meant to indicate the speed that the music is played at. Nobody can keep perfect rhythm, and in a large orchestra, the echoes and travel speed of sound becomes especially disorienting. It will start to sound like you are playing off-time from the rest of the orchestra. In those cases, everyone has to ignore the sound of their music and only use the conductor to figure out where in the song they are, and they just have to trust that it’ll sound correct to the audience
The secret is in the practice before the concert. Over many weeks, months the conducter truly “sets the tone”, listening to each individual instrument, their interplay, the tempo, the balance. The conductor knows the weaknesses and strengths of the orchestra, and during the concert uses the stick to create accents, to control the speed, to make sure any hurdle is removed. It doesn’t have to be a stick, some use just their hands.
If you want to ruin a concert’s day, change the thermostat a few clicks lol.
It is the conductor.
I didn’t know orchestras had trains.
You’ve never heard of the Trans Siberian
RailroadOrchestra?Now I just want to listen to an orchestra play on a train.
I dunno, that sounds like a fast track to being the subject of a murder mystery. I think I’m good.
As long as the train doesn’t go through any tunnels, or the lights go out briefly, you should be fine!
