What does a conductor actually do?

Question

Looking for the roles of the conductor during a musical performance, I mainly came across answers as the following, taken from Wikipedia:

"The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble."

Some issues are still unclear to me:

Unifying the performers: why do the performers need to be unified? assuming one performer somehow loses the others, can't he just listen to them and adjust? how does the presence of the conductor make this any better?

Setting the tempo: isn't the tempo set in advance? don't the performers rehearse and know the tempo?

If most things are known in advance, how much creativity is involved in the conductor's role? or in other words: what makes a conductor a good conductor?

Answer 1

A good conductor:

• Provides musical leadership
• Unifies the ensemble in the musical moment
• Decides on the how of music that cannot be communicated in the score
• Communicates to the ensemble non-verbally

At the top level of your question, indeed, there exist ensembles that perform without a conductor. These ensembles are often heavily rehearsed, and quite often the musical leadership (that is, who decides what to rehearse when) comes from a senior member of the ensemble. (Traditionally, the first violin/concertmaster.¹) However, once this is rehearsed, it is pretty much set in stone, and there is very little a large conductorless ensemble can change in the middle of a performance.

But keep in mind, high-level performing ensembles often do not have copious rehearsal time! Usually, just one session, and not uncommonly zero, before a performance. In these situations it is imperative to have someone at the front who will unify all of the different musicians' interpretations of the piece in question.

Furthermore, the music in the moment of performance will often require something different than what is rehearsed. The tempos might be a little bit faster, or the brass might give a bit more (or god forbid someone makes a mistake), and the conductor is there to take all of this information and synthesize it into the ensemble's performance.

The simple fact that the same orchestra will sound different with a different conductor should be proof enough of this.

The conductor is constantly asking himself "What information does the ensemble need from me?", answers that question using his ears and his internal aural image of what the music should sound like, and then executes a gesture to communicate this information nonverbally. At high levels of ensemble musicianship, the conductor may not even need to move his hands, if the music doesn't require it! See this video of Leonard Bernstein, but do realize that he is communicating and influencing the ensemble even without his hands!

Of course, at lower levels of musicianship, like in a middle school, the players are likely going to need very specific beat patterns to play together, even after copious amounts of rehearsal.

¹ _{Even in professional orchestras, it is still this first violin who makes many of the ensemble decisions like, "where, really, is our first downbeat." Many famous orchestra conductors are notorious for being very nonspecific with their opening gestures, and were the cameras trained a little down and to the left, you'd see the real preparatory gesture.}

Answer 2

You ask "if most things are known in advance"---but who made those advance decisions? A conductor's role begins long before the actual performance, even before rehearsals begin. S/he makes decisions such as what tempo "Allegra ma non troppo" really means, how loud forte really is, how to coordinate one hundred people to play rubato together, how to balance the sound of the whole orchestra versus the solo pianist of the week, etc.

And who coordinates the rehearsals? Who decides to begin today's rehearsal in the third movement, Bar 23, at that particularly tricky spot? Who's going to tell the cellos that they're too loud? Who stops one hundred people all playing simultaneously and says "that wasn't it; let's try it again"?

A conductor is sort of like a theater director. Aren't the words already in the script? Can't the actors listen to each other and know when to say them? Doesn't the set designer take care of the set and the lighting designer take care of the lighting? Yes to all of these, but you still need someone making the global artistic decisions that put these disparate components into a unified whole. At the performance, you probably won't even see the director until maybe the curtain call, but his/her handiwork is everywhere.

Answer 3

From my experience as a band musician, I can say that most of the importance of the conductor is during rehearsing. A well rehearsed orchestra composed of good musicians can play without a conductor in case of necessity, but without him they would probably never be able to successfully rehearse a piece of music. An orchestra is a very complex organism and music has lots of points in which subjectivity overrules objectivity, so, without someone to coordinate all the parts, chaos is inevitable.

Answer 4

Wagner, On Conducting

From the Amazon.com blurb:

Wagner initiated Romantic image of the conductor as fiery, omniscient dictator of the podium. Here are his eloquent essays on role of the conductor, musical interpretation, many other topics.

Wagner's role in the discipline makes this a valuable read for anyone studying conducting, or with an interest in the art.