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

Chapter 1:  Conducting in Theory and Practice
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Goehr concludes, “when we strive to embody one conception of perfection sustained by a performance tradition we should not demand that that tradition be homogeneous or singular in such a conception; different conceptions of perfection can, and sometimes have to, coexist within a single tradition”.31 The conductors discussed here give evidence that, however unintentionally, they embrace both conceptions. Leonard Bernstein acknowledges the need for duality in this regard when he writes, “actually, both attitudes are necessary, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and neither one is completely satisfactory without the other”.32

This duality of approach was recognised by Karajan through his encounters with Furtwängler and Toscanini:

I admired two sounds: one was the whip-like sound that Toscanini could produce, with utmost clarity and flexibility. But he was very direct. Finesse was not his cup of tea. And he always lacked that line, that in-between thing, that elasticity, that Furtwängler had and which I also admired enormously…Now I said to myself that it must be possible to combine these two things: precision and elasticity. I don’t think that one excludes the other, only that in some music you need more of one, while other music may require more of the other.33

In conducting, clarity and precision are often associated with the objectivity of Toscannini and elasticity with the subjectivity of Furtwängler. Are these two extremes mutually exclusive? How can these two contrasting approaches coexist? We may describe these two dominant conceptions as existing within a continuum in which the emphasis on one over the other is in a constant state of flux and dependent upon context. The overlap and tension created by their conflict is necessary. Goehr agrees:

I believe that creative performance—new problems and solutions, new activities, and greater learning—may emerge precisely from the constructive recognition by a practice’s participants of the precise points of difference between its conflicting conceptions.