BBC Learning Zone video: Donald Runnicles’ Approach to Conducting. Watch from the beginning to 2’40’’ and then from 6’05’’ to 7’00’’.

In this short film, the conductor Donald Runnicles talks about two main ways of putting across information in orchestral music:

1. The composer giving the musician information via the score (“the composer has given you a blueprint indicating what s/he wants to hear”).

2. The conductor giving the orchestra information (largely through gesture).

In a performance situation, the conductor must:

• convey information about the music to the musicians in a non-verbal way.

• There are certain techniques that can be learned – such as how to beat time in particular time signatures – but other methods are sometimes quite personal to the conductor.

Watch this clip of great conductor Leonard Bernstein conducting (without using his arms).

• First, watch the clip without the sound. Can you tell anything about what the conductor is trying to get across?

• Now watch the clip with sound: Is Bernstein doing anything to help the instrumentalists, or is he just smiling and nodding?

• Now watch again, notice where he looks at particular instruments shortly before their entries, indicating tempo by bobbing up and down, indicating a louder, fierce, dark passage with a stern look, helping get chords in time by moving his head and sniffing, etc.

Then try beating time with (short excerpts from) the following pieces, feeling the strong downbeats in each case:

● Try conducting 2/4!! This is a recording of Radetzky March, by Strauss, Austria (1848).

● Try conducting in 3/4!! This is a recording the Godfather Waltz by Nino Rota, Italy (1972) (from the soundtrack to the film The Godfather). It’s particularly tricky to find the beat during the trumpet solo.

● Try conducting 4/4!! Try conducting from 1’25’’ to 3’24’’ of this recording Suite No.2 from Romeo and Juliet: Montagues and Capulets, by Prokofiev, Russia (1935). Listen in particular to the strong first and third beats provided by the tuba.

As you become more confident at maintaining the beat, they could start to introduce some more elaborate gestures, indicating dynamics and articulation, while still maintaining the beat with the right hand.

● In what ways do gestures such as these help to communicate your intentions more clearly and precisely?

● In what way do they help make the resulting performance more effective?

In 2008, eight celebrities learned how to conduct on a BBC show called Maestro. Each week, they learned to conduct a piece of music, with one contestant being voted off.

This YouTube clip shows the DJ Goldie, one of the Maestro contestants, conducting The Hall of the Mountain King, by Grieg, Norway (1876).

● What is the time signature of this piece?

● What other things does Goldie convey through his conducting?

● Does Goldie communicate successfully with the orchestra in this clip?