Conducting by the Book

Despite the existence of written notation, much of our knowledge about music is handed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, through formal teaching or mere anecdote. My colleague Hugh Wolff, for instance, can trace his musical lineage back nearly 300 years; Hugh studied piano with Leon Fleisher, who studied with Artur Schnabel, who studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who studied with Liszt, who studied with Czerny, who studied with Beethoven, who studied with Haydn. You get the idea.

 As strong as this oral tradition is, libraries are nonetheless filled with many dead trees’ worth of books about music. But while libraries are valuable repositories of printed music and historical information, they are not quite as helpful when it comes to understanding the nitty-gritty of performing.

 Among musical disciplines, conducting is perhaps the most resistant to verbal elucidation. We conductors wave our arms to silently transmit information, both profound and mundane, in a visual code that musicians learn to understand. Attempts to convey conducting’s mysteries in words are bound to be inadequate, but that has not stopped countless authors from trying. Given the media-driven superstar status (deserved or not) of modern conductors, there seems to be much interest in reading about conducting among students, professionals and audiences alike.

 Here then are some highly subjective recommendations for readers who would like to explore the craft of conducting and the lives of those who practice it. 

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HOW IT’S DONE: NON-PROFESSIONALS’ DIVISION

 For concertgoers interested in what conductors do, three recent books stand out: Mark Wigglesworth’s The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters; John Mauceri’s Maestros and Their Music; and Christopher Seaman’s Inside Conducting.

Seaman’s book is delightful; he even tells the reader—in vivid detail—how to construct a baton from scratch. Since in my hands even a piece of sandpaper is a lethal weapon, I’m afraid I can’t vouch for the practicality of Seaman’s instructions.

 For those with shorter attention spans, these well-written articles by Anne Midgette in the The Washington Post and Justin Davidson in The New Yorker offer accessible explanations of the basics of conducting.

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HOW IT’S DONE: PROFESSIONALS’ DIVISION

 I find most conducting textbooks to be fairly useless. There is, however, one classic book that, in my opinion, gets it completely right: Max Rudolf’s The Grammar of Conducting (3rd edition).  Methodical and detailed, Rudolf covers just about everything a conductor needs to know both on and off the podium. Every serious conducting student should read it from cover to cover multiple times, memorize as much of it as possible and sleep with it under their pillow. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I carried on a lively correspondence with Rudolf for many years and count him as one of my major influences).

 Two other books are valuable for aspiring professionals, but they both come with big “Buyer Beware” warnings. Gunther Schuller’s The Compleat Conductor is filled with wonderful insights into the issues conductors confront in a number of important masterpieces. But although I admired Schuller enormously, I can’t get past the fact that his book overflows—to an almost unbearable degree—with his frustrations, bitterness and anger toward famous conductors he considered unworthy of their success. My advice is to read the first chapter and then dip into the rest in small doses, accompanied by a big grain of salt.

Similarly, Erich Leinsdorf’s The Composer’s Advocate lays out a compelling philosophy of conducting, one with which I completely agree. But although Leinsdorf was undeniably an unusually intelligent musician, he was what the Germans call a besserwisser  (a know-it-all), and seems to rarely doubt the correctness of his own opinions. In addition, the book’s index is inadequate and finding Leinsdorf’s views about specific pieces is difficult, if not impossible.

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MEMOIRS

Many conductors—and instrumentalists and vocalists, for that matter—feel that their lives have been so incredibly interesting that the entire world would surely like to read all about them. The majority of these books are little more than collections of anecdotes and thus are of minimal interest to professionals and downright misleading to lay readers (“Just as the second flute missed the cue I had so perfectly given her, my baton broke; the splinters flew every which way and one of them sliced through my suspenders, sending my trousers tumbling to the floor.”). And all too many memoirs are an exhausting catalog of the author’s triumphs, interlaced with big dollops of self-indulgence, self-promotion and score settling.

But some conductor memoirs are entertainingly written (Erich Leinsdorf’s Cadenza), and others are interesting because the author had an unusual career or a valuable point of view about music (Michael Gielen’s Unbedingt Musik). Another very worthwhile book, Leonard Slatkin’s Conducting Business, is a unique combination of an informative memoir (imagine “Uncle Frank” Sinatra singing you to sleep when you were a kid), an eminently practical set of do’s and don’ts for conductors and an explanation of conducting for laypeople, all written in straightforward, engaging language.

(MORE FULL DISCLOSURES: Leinsdorf and I may have been distant cousins; Gielen was one of my most important mentors; I worked closely with Slatkin in St. Louis and he remains a valued friend. For more on these last two, see “Michael Gielen in Memoriam” and “On Leonard Slatkin” elsewhere in Unsolicited Advice).

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BIOGRAPHIES

 Conductor biographies seem to fall into one of two groups. Some are written by amateurs (or jacks-of-all-trades professionals) who write decently but know little or nothing about music. Others are written by one of the Great Maestro’s acolytes: students, assistants, administrative colleagues, friends or family members; what these writers have in proximity to their subjects they often lack in basic writing skills.

 The authors of the latter kind of biography usually succumb to at least some degree of hero worship, but that flaw is occasionally outweighed by their valuable first- hand knowledge. Among such reasonably well-balanced biographies are Michael Charry’s George Szell: A Life in Music; Oliver Daniel’s Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View; Philip Hart’s Fritz Reiner: A Biography; and John Canarina’s Pierre Monteux, Maître. Of the many inside views of that most glamorous of twentieth century conductors, Humphrey Burton’s Leonard Bernstein sticks to the facts and avoids the inevitable gossip.

 Among biographies by authors not directly associated with their books’ subjects, D. Kern Holoman’s Charles Munch is an elegantly written portrait, modest in scope but rich in detail.  William R. Trotter’s Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos does much to burnish the reputation of a now sadly neglected conductor. Peter Heyworth’s two volume Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times reminds one of Klemperer’s recordings: sometimes turgid or overstuffed, but almost always worth spending time with.

 However, the gold standard among all conductor biographies is Harvey Sachs’s Toscanini: Musician of Conscience. A 2017 updating of Sachs’s 1978 groundbreaking Toscanini, this newer book is undoubtedly the last word on the Maestro’s life and work. Don’t be put off its door-stopping 944 pages; it flows like a great novel. Regardless of how one feels about Toscanini, one finishes Sachs’s magnum opus with new knowledge about, and greater respect for, the most famous conductor of his time. Sachs’s book is a magnificent achievement, one for which posterity will no doubt sing his praises.

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The books mentioned here do not, of course, constitute a list of everything worth reading about conducting, but they’re a good starting point. So, happy reading! (And in case you’re wondering, no, I will never, ever write a book about conducting—or anything else!).

April 2021