Signata (Dec 2015)
What Is Conducting? Signs, Principles, and Problems
Abstract
This article discusses the function and position of the conductor in the long chain of communication from composer to audience. It is exemplified, how the conductor’s use of language and word-signs to express musical meaning can cause serious trouble, and a list of alternative — non-verbal — tools is provided and discussed. A central part of the article examines, whether conducting is a universal language or an individually improvised choreography, and whether the gestures of a conductor can be taken at their face value — and in which respect. Dependent on design and timing, conducting gestures either represent a unambiguous sign system with a syntactic structure, or they will have to be interpreted by the executants before they transform the contained information into sound. In case of the latter it is discussed how and to which degree the interpretation and transformation is carried out. An attempt is made not only to describe the unique features and aims of the conductor’s gestuality but also to list a hierarchy of musical parameters, which a conductor might desire to — and under certain circumstances indeed can — decisively influence. In the course of this the nature and structure of the so-called ‘beat patterns’ found in educational material are analyzed in detail with the aim to determine, whether beat patterns provide the means needed for the control of musical parameters in real-time, and several traditional gestural “macros” and designs are put under critical scrutiny.Conclusively the article shortly mentions on-going conducting research and points out, how apparently minor differences in gestural design can radically affect scientific results and twist crucial conclusions within this still ‘virginal’ field of research.
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