| Chapter 1: | Conducting in Theory and Practice |
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Wherever one lies within in this continuum, the conductor’s convictions with regard to these two extremes will impact the way in which the interpreter views his/her role in the performance of a given work.
Leonard Bernstein attributes the beginning of this conflict to Felix Mendelssohn, who was a leading figure in the “elegant” school of conducting, and Richard Wagner, who inspired the “passionate” school of conducting. The contrast between Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Wagner may be summarised in Lydia Goehr’s notion of the “perfect performance of music” and the “perfect musical performance” in which the former “stresses the vehicular and structured Apollonian ideal of a performance qua performance-of-a-work”, while the latter “stresses the open, social, and spontaneous Dionysian ideal of musicianship involved in the performance event”.13 The former implies a presentation of the score, while the latter view suggests the expression of the score. Goehr writes,
The “perfect musical performance” is evident in Wagner’s approach to the art and craft of conducting and music in general. According to Goehr, he disliked the “overly literalized formalism” of the theorists of his day and their tendency to reduce a musical work to predetermined theory or a set of conditions.