Conductors: Respect Them.

For a couple of minutes now, I have sat here, trying to figure out whether or not I have ever had a more terrifying musical experience than the one I had on Thursday night. 

I have concluded that I have not. 

As I mentioned before, I am studying advanced conducting this semester.  This involves an actual conducting class, where five of us meet to discuss style, clarity, and other issues in conducting, and it also involves a practical component, where we are placed with either a choir or the orchestra for a semester, and get hands-on experience working with an ensemble.  Pretty amazing opportunity, hey?  (Yet again, I have to ask where else undergrads get a chance like this!)  The thing was, I had NO idea what I was getting myself into by signing up to work with the orchestra this semester. 

When you watch a conductor, it doesn't look terribly difficult, right?  You can appreciate some of the challenges of keeping things together, but it generally looks like the musicians are doing all the work, and the conductor is just flapping his or her arms while everyone is buried in their music.  After all, they're just playing what's on the page, aren't they?? 

Once you play or sing in an ensemble yourself, you learn otherwise.  You begin to realize that the way your conductor rehearses the group, tweaks details that you never would have noticed otherwise, and handles the performance itself is something like the way a jeweler takes an uncut stone and turns it into something absolutely stunning that reflects light in a unique and brilliant way.  You start to appreciate their skill in listening through layers and layers of nuance and detail, and shaping a piece of music to sound just like the ideal version they are hearing in their mind's ear.  Which is all well and good, but couldn't anybody with a pointy stick and some knowledge of music do the job??

Well, I never thought of conducting quite that flippantly, but I did think that I was prepared to handle this task.  Conducting is not new to me.  I took a Fundamentals class for a semester a couple of years ago, learning about prep beats, fermatas, tempo changes, and melding.  And, for goodness' sake, I've been watching the conductors I have been working under in bands, choirs, orchestras, wind ensembles, and handbell choirs for half my life!  So when our orchestra director gave me my first score and my first set of instructions last week, I accepted them with very little trepidation.  "Here's the conductor's score," he told me, handing me a forty-page book.  "Study it.  Next week, you will start working with the orchestra.  But - you will not be allowed to use your hands.  At all.  You will be listening and making comments, but don't you dare move a muscle."  Well, that seemed like a strange start to a conducting practicum, but I agreed quite gladly.  After all, it would take an awful lot more guts and skill to actually have my hands involved correctly than to just stand there and make remarks, wouldn't it??

I studied my score with great enthusiasm.  (The piece, I should tell you, is the Overture to the Barber of Seville.  You do know it.  Trust me.  If you don't think you do, YouTube it.  If you have listened all the way through, and honestly don't recognize a single theme, I owe you a coffee.*)  I pored over it in my room, on the bus, and while I was walking (which may have been dangerous), and then I came to rehearsal, nervous, but as prepared as I could have been.  What I didn't realize was the fact that absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I faced there.

Our director worked us through two-thirds of the Overture, and then called me up.  "Stop them when you hear something you don't like," he told me, and then took a seat, turning the podium and the rehearsal over to me.  "Okay, let's take it from rehearsal J," I said.  I gave a downbeat, the only gesture I was permitted until I cut them off, and as the orchestra took off, I was promptly slapped with the most overwhelming feeling of sensory overload I have ever experienced.  The music began flying past, and I was hanging on for dear life.  It was just as though I had grabbed onto the tail of a galloping stallion, and was being dragged, white-knuckled, behind it.  Fourteen simultaneous lines of music began speeding by.  Fourteen independent threads being woven together into an intricate whole, which I was now in charge of somehow dissecting as it all screamed past in blinding, living colour.  My hands shook as I turned the pages of the thick score.  With a texture fourteen lines thick, the page turns happened every few seconds.  Knowing that if I got the slightest bit lost, all hope would be gone, I focused hard on the most prominent musical lines as they passed from instrument to instrument, zig-zagging up and down the pages.  Entries, solos, and rich chords flooded past my overwhelmed ears, which observed their coming and going, but were utterly incapable of cutting through for any conductor-ly analysis.  Bows surged up and down.  Wind and brass instruments bobbed with their independent lines.  Some players watched occasionally, but no meaning or communication lay behind any eye contact I frantically returned before my gaze clung to the score again. 

Pages passed, and I began to realize that unless I found a good reason to stop them, and did so right away, they would play clean through to the end of the piece - which was not a good thing at this point in rehearsals.  From my seat back in the woodwinds section, I could always hear other sections' trouble spots.  Places where quarter notes were being played with differing lengths.  Places where a great solo was being drowned out.  Why was I completely unable to hear anything at all from up front??  I glanced frantically at our director, who was seated casually in a chair to my right, and issued a silent plea for help.  But he merely smiled, gestured back at me and at the orchestra.  "It's all yours!" he said lightly, and resumed staring into the distance thoughtfully.  The orchestra surged on.  Finally, a flute soloist fumbled a run, and an entry was missed somewhere shortly afterwards.  That, I could catch.  I called the piece to a halt, and took a moment to catch my breath as thirty musicians stopped at my command, waiting for my instructions.  Orchestra etiquette dictates that you cannot point out a soloist's errors in rehearsal, for their dignity's sake.  But the missed entry...where was it?? 
"Why did you stop them?" asked our director.  
"Well, there was a missed entry...somewhere..." I said, scanning the maze of notes. 
"What instrument?"
And then I found it - the bassoon had missed their cue!  I realized this, unfortunately, at the exact same moment that I realized that we do not have a bassoonist in orchestra this year.  I sheepishly confessed my error, and our director told me to continue. 
"From where??" I asked. 
"Wherever you think they should take it from." 
I had no idea.  And as I hesitated, I got a half dozen opinions from the orchestra. 
"Can we start at rehearsal I?"
"Start at rehearsal F!  The trumpets hardly have any notes after that!"
"No!  We already did that part!"
I made a completely arbitrary decision, out of necessity.  "We'll start at rehearsal H."  Everyone settled down, and with another downbeat, they were off playing again.  More agonizing stretches followed by mostly-unnecessary stops followed, and I was becoming progressively more flustered and frustrated.
"If I locked you in a room for the next thirty years with a recording of this playing, would you be satisfied with it?" the director asked me when we had reached the end of the piece.
"...No." I said, purely because I knew it was the right answer. 
So we began again, but this time, our director slipped around behind me. 
"Are the brass and strings attacking those quarter notes at the exact same time?" he asked me.
"No..." I admitted.
"Can you hear the flutes here?"
"Oh...no, I can't" I said again.
"What about these chords?  Is everyone playing them the same length?"
With my focus completely wrenched from the score, my ears started to open a little more.
"Don't let them play through to the end!" he warned me as we approached it.  "They'll feel like they've passed the climax, and you'll have lost their energy."
I held up my hand and called for a stop.  We worked on those uneven chords, and they were better.  I asked the strings to listen for the winds, and that was better, too. 
We reached the end again, and thirty players stopped as my hand circled around.  I would have liked to have fled the room right then, but the orchestra graciously showed me their support with big smiles and a round of applause. 

I slipped back to my seat as quickly as I could, and had begun packing up my clarinet, when our director came around and sat across from me.
"Well??" he asked with a smile.
"I...I was just so overwhelmed, I didn't even know what to do!!"  I blurted.  "It was just so much happening so fast...I couldn't keep up or even do anything!"
He grinned knowingly and said with a little shake of his head, "Welcome to the world of conducting!  No one has any idea how hard this is until they have to stand up there and do it themselves."
I exhaled hard and raked my hand through my hair shakily. 
Our director cut me off before I could remark disparagingly on my efforts.  "Next time," he told me, "I want you to get up there and just trust your instincts more.  The last time you called a stop, you caught the error right when I did.  I would have done the exact same thing.  So I know you can hear it - it's just a matter of letting go and letting it happen." 

Yes, I will be waiting for next Thursday with a great deal of nervousness.  But all I can do is try my best, and in an environment like this, that's all anybody expects you to do.  To learn through trying.  What I can tell you is this: appreciate your conductors!  The job they do is a job that requires so much skill, only a select few can manage it well.  There's a reason why a good conductor gets paid more for a concert than the entire orchestra put together!  A good conductor has to be three steps ahead of their ensemble at every moment. A good conductor has to have a more precise idea of the sound they want than any of the musicians, and they have to know exactly how to evoke that ideal sound. A good conductor has to lead their rehearsals with conviction, skill, and sensitivity.  Here's hoping I can gain a sliver of these abilities through this experience.  One thing's for sure - it's going to be quite the ride!


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*While we enjoy said coffee, I will show you the Bugs Bunny version of this piece.  And quite possibly help you discover some other classical pieces that are absolute gems which your life is utterly incomplete without. 

Two Thousand and...Ten??

The Music of Chopin & Liszt!  Conducting!  A piano concerto!  Those are just a few of the highlights of my upcoming semester here.  The first two are classes, of course, but...a piano concerto?? 

One of the most incredible opportunities an Ambrose music student can have is the opportunity to perform as a soloist in a full-blown concerto with orchestra.  Once a year, we hold a Concerto Concert, and those who have prepared a concerto may get the chance to have theirs on the program.  I have been working on the Grieg Concerto in A Minor for almost a year now, and had the honour of being picked to play in this year's performance.  Let me tell you, it's thrilling, terrifying, and mind-blowing all at the same time.  In what other university does an undergrad student ever have a chance to solo with an orchestra??  Basically, none.  It's incredibly special, and something I will remember for my entire life.

But in the meantime, preparing a concerto is far, far, far more work than most people ever realize.  A normal piano performance is challenging enough.  But let me tell you a secret - rarely, if ever, does any performer come through a concert or recital with absolutely no mistakes.  Out of necessity, we all just become experts at hiding our errors.  Because, as every good musician knows, if your expression doesn't give you away, and if you keep playing, almost nobody will ever know you missed a note...a measure...a page...honestly!!  I will personally confess to having done that, even in my end-of-semester jury.  (Don't tell my profs!)  But here's the thing with concertos: you CANNOT skip, skimp, or stretch any passages, nor can you stumble, pause, and take another try.  The orchestra will just keep sailing right along without you!  So there is no room for forgiveness or second tries at 'that lovely bit right there.'  Preparing a concerto consists of a lot more guts and a lot less glory than you'd think.  Hours alone in the practice room.  Hard work with little immediate gain.  Frustration, panic, and exasperation.  There are tough lessons, too.  I had one yesterday.  My teacher spent a solid hour drilling apart all my weakest areas, and systematically deconstructing places I thought I was confident in.  It was hard, but those kind of lessons are necessary once in a while, especially when the concert date creeps this close.  The best thing you can do is check your pride and excuses at the door, humbly accept the criticism, take away all the value you can, and work on it for another week, knowing you will be a better musician for it.

Tonight, the orchestra starts rehearsing their parts.  In a few weeks, I will be rehearsing with them.  And the big day itself is March 12.  7:30 PM at First Church of the Nazarene, incidentally, if you are interested in showing up to hear what will be a fabulous performance - provided I can work my part up to being worthy of the incredible music we will be playing!