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The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters

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Part of the moment, part of the performance … an audience at London’s Royal Festival Hall in March 2019 listening to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian He profoundly describes conducting as “a communion of private emotion,” and lyrically states, “… It is your relationship with the music that lies at the heart of your artistic identity. You are a musician first, a conductor second.” Wigglesworth constantly emphasizes the privilege and honor that come with the job of conductor, shedding light on his humbleness and gratitude toward his success in the craft. All-in-all refreshing and full of insurmountable perspective, this book is a must-read for conductors of all ages and levels. The researchers estimated expectations by building a statistical model that was fed with a huge variety of Western music. This model enabled the researchers to assess how well their participants’ brains were predicting the notes they heard or imagined. Their analysis showed that, regardless of whether music was actually audible, their volunteers’ brains predicted it in a very similar way. This truly underlines the complicated business of performing what a composer wrote honestly and is the constant challenge we as performers face.

A conductor is one of classical music’s most recognizable figures. Many people who have never actually been to an orchestral concert have an image of what one looks like. But rarely does such a well-known profession attract so many questions: ‘Surely orchestras can play perfectly well without you? Do you really make any difference to the performance?’ This book is not intended to be an instruction manual for conductors, nor is it a history of conducting. It is for all who wonder what conductors actually do. Exploring the relationships with the musicians and music they conduct, and the public and personal responsibilities they face, leading conductor Mark Wigglesworth writes with engaging honesty about the role for any music lover curious to know whether or not the profession really matters. The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters by Mark Wigglesworth – eBook Details Silverman, Kenneth (2010). Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 184. ISBN 9780307594570. silent; in three movements lasting a total of four minutes and 33 seconds, for any instrument or combination of instrumentsThe Misinterpretation of Silence and its Disastrous Consequences" by Type O Negative on Slow, Deep and Hard (1991) Reylon is a founding member of Tangram, a UK-based music collective of artists who play both Chinese and Western instruments. Through musical projects, Tangram seeks to ‘cross the China-West divide, and explore the richness of diasporic experience’. It was with this in mind that Reylon first conceived of their performance, while considering the benefits of silence to cross-cultural barriers.

It is with great joy and admirationthat I confess that this is the first book on conducting that I have read since the introduction to the Handbook of Conducting by Hermann Scherchen published in 1933 that not only finally bears resemblance to who and what a conductor actually is but puts into very readable and eloquent English prose exactly who and/or what a conductor is and/or isn’t. So, rests are used for short pauses, usually anywhere from a semiquaver (sixteenth note) to ten measures or so (this changes in different pieces of music – sometimes you’ll see a 64-bar rest symbol), and then anything above that would be a Tacet sign. The University of Manchester’s Julian Dodd doesn’t think so, however. Distilling the concept to its most basic definition, he believes that music must involve the organisation of sounds according to instruction planned by a composer and then executed by a performer. Since all the sounds – such as a baby crying or someone coughing – that might occur in a piece like 4’33” are incidental and unplanned by the composer, it cannot meet this essential criteria, Dodd says. Instead, he prefers to consider it a piece of conceptual art. When I was asked to review a book about conducting my first reaction was to say no thanks. Then I thought that even if I had to endure another book of two-dimensional pictures of beat patterns it would at least give me a platform to parade my wisdom and prejudices, so I said yes. There are challenges to working abroad. Humour can be a most valuable tool in creating and maintaining a positive atmosphere, and it is a very effective way of defusing tension. Disguising criticism with a cloak of self-deprecation can produce the right results while making sure the air stays free of any potential negativity. But you have to be careful. Not everybody’s sense of humour is the same. A joke in Manchester might not go down so well in Munich and what could be considered a light touch in Paris might well be thought of as superficial in St Petersburg.Extract From The Compassion & Humanity Of Margaret Thatcher", on the Cherry Red Records compilation Pillows and Prayers 2 (1984) This experience sits comfortably with the more philosophical aspects of qin theory, and with Cage’s intentions for 4’33’’. Later in life, Cage still recalled the sounds that were heard during the premiere, including the sound of the wind outside, and the sound of people walking out of the concert hall. In his book Listen to This, Alex Ross describes Cage’s life as ruled by the thought that “all sounds are music”. “He wanted to discard inherited structures,” says Ross, “open doors to the exterior world.” (13) Cage famously believed that “there is no such thing as silence”, a belief underlined by his experience in Harvard University’s anechoic chamber, a soundproof room where, according to the writer David Toop, he heard “the high singing note of his nervous system and the deep pulsing of his blood”.(14) To celebrate this, the musician Reylon will perform 4’33’’ on the yangqin, or hammered dulcimer, at London’s LSO St Luke. McMullen, Tracy – Subject, Object, Improv: John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Eastern (Western) Philosophy in Music, Critical Improv, vol. 6 no. 2 (2010)

An illuminating account of what it means to be [a conductor], how it feels, what’s required and why it’s a misunderstood job that has the potential to enrich and terrify in equal measure. The most fascinating sections are those in which Wigglesworth discusses the relationship between conductor and orchestra, one that can be fraught with struggle and blessed with joys. Carpenter, John T., Oka, Midori – The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018 (p. 85)Researchers at the ENS, part of PSL University, have gone a step further into the exploration of our brain's response to music. In a new body of work, they ask an unusual question that takes full advantage of the brain’s predictive abilities: what is our response to music that can’t be heard? The concept of emptiness or absence is also a central tenet of Zen Buddhism, which evolved in China during Tao Yuanming’s lifetime and spread to Japan in the 12th century. Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy teaches in the Heart of Wisdom Sutra that “form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form.” (10)

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