Conducting the Wind Orchestra: Meaning, Gesture, and Expressive P ...

However, if, as Nicholas Cook suggests, the score does not reveal all there is to know about the music, how can we presume to reach a full understanding of the music from the score alone? What part do performers play with regard to the score’s ambiguities? Do they have some voice regarding the shape and ultimate form of the interpretation, or are they merely intermediaries between work and listener?

Cook argues that the role of the performer is much more involved than Schuller suggests:

This would imply that the questions of interpretation posed earlier exist in a continuum that is ever changing. The answers to these questions are only applicable within the context of a given work by that interpreter and do not necessarily follow the work from one performance to the next.

So, how, then, do conductors confront the ambiguity of the score’s notation in forming an interpretation of a given work? Hermann Scherchen writes, “More than any other artist, the conductor must be a master mind, with an imagination capable of conceiving and materialising a musical image. Only when a work has come to absolute perfection within him can he undertake to materialise it by means of an orchestra”.³ Imagination, as understood by Scherchen, implies an individuality of interpretative voice, which Schuller seems to deny. While Scherchen argues that the conductor’s interpretation is derived from an “ideal conception” of the work, this conception lives within the individual conductor and is a manifestation of his/her personality, experience, and musicianship.