The music is already written down the orchestra play what’s written, so what difference does the conductor make apart from the tempo?
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If you compare it to say, a 4 piece rock band where everyone is just catching the rhythm and speed from eachother, there are MANY more people involved and trying to eke out a consistent pace between all these people would end up being a complete mess. also they practice their songs much less thoroughly and with less advance notice than a rock band would. This adds up to needing a conductor that can make micro-adjustments (telling the trumpets to swell louder or be a little quieter, picking up the pace slowly or quickly, etc)
Think of a rock band. It’s more than just the performers on stage. You also have the guy doing the mixing, controlling the volume of each instrument. One of the functions of a conductor is to be the mixer for sections of the orchestra, bringing the volume up or down for different instrumental sections, or even individual musicians.
Another thing the conductor does is control the tempo and tempo changes. The conductor is needed to manage this because it’s harder for a 100-piece orchestra to coordinate themselves through tempo changes than it is for a 4-piece rock band who are all looking at each other for cues using the drummer as their tempo controller.
A conductor interprets the music and gives it nuances and emotion by performing mixing and controlling tempo. If everyone in the orchestra played their own interpretations, it would be chaotic and the music would sound really bad with everyone out of sync. In this way the conductor is like the director of a play or movie who tells the actors how the script should be conveyed to the audience.
Think of a conductor like a director for a movie. Think of the sheet music as the script for a movie.
Directors convey life into the script. They interpret the script and instill humanity and emotions into what are just words on paper.
Similarly, conductors instill life and emotion into the music.
Conductors do much more than just keep the beat. The take the bare music and give it life. Any computer can play the music but it will never sound as it does with a properly conducted orchestra. Conductors control the crescendos and decrascendos, the attack of the instruments, and even alter the speed at which they play certain passages, all to elicit the emotional response from the listener.
Each member of an orchestra plays their individual instruments. The Conductor plays the orchestra.
Pick a recognizable orchestral piece, preferably one you’re already familiar with. Something like the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Reqiuem, or Rossini’s William Tell Overture. Then, listen to a few different recordings of the same piece but by different orchestras (or even the same orchestra with different conductors). Now, you have to sort of mentally account for differences in the recording quality and the acoustics of the recording spaces – but the other differences in the recordings are largely because of the conductor. Variations in tempo, style, articulations, balance between parts, transitions, etc, are all decisions that the conductor makes.
Also remember that in a 4 piece band, an individual player can generally alter their part at will and play it a little differently without much consequence – but in an orchestra you have many players doing exactly the same thing and they have to all do it extactly the same way. Someone has to be the final authority on what that way is. The conductor is the band leader, mix engineer, and producer for the whole effort.
Studies have been done on this, with orchestras without conductor, with a novice conductor, and with an experienced conductor recorded. Then people were blindly asked to listen to them. The listeners overwhelmingly said the experienced conductor orchestras were better. The conductor doesn’t just drive the tempo, but also the strength and feeling of parts.
Conductor is a common denominator. Everybody’s trying to match him or her. If they weren’t there, everybody would try to match each other. Which, at typical human reaction speed of 200ms, would make 1 second delay for every 5 people if they’d be sequential, but more likely they wouldn’t, and it’d be even worse.
People are also empathetic. Conductor getting more passionate or rigid at parts controls volume and, in more signal-science kind of way, delay, attack, sustain, release, etc. People just don’t think about it in those terms, they put their emotions in instrument/music just like conductor does. You can move violin bow aggressively, or smoothly, make a short, rapid movement, or slow, sliding one and so on. That’s what makes live music art.
> The music is already written down the orchestra play what’s written
There’s a lot of stuff that’s up to interpretation in musical notation. Tempo marking might just say “allegro” (aka fast) rather than an exact bpm. There’s a marking that just means hold the note, but not how long. There are markings that mean slow down or speed up, but not how much or at what rate. Etc.
Conductor keeps everyone on the same page.
Thanks for all the replies! I get it now.
You’ve got lots of great replies, but one reason not mentioned: while the orchestra has full sheet music in front of them, a typical symphony performance involves 90 minute or more of material, and they don’t get a lot of time to rehearse. All but the largest symphonies *rent* the sheet music they perform, which is only in their possession for 4 or 5 days.
When it comes to popular pieces in the classical repertoire, veteran musicians likely have their part memorized. But for younger musicians encountering pieces they have never played, they really have very little time to familiarize themselves with it. In such a case having a conductor who is intimately familiar with the music is essential. I’ve seen skilled conductors lead long and complicated pieces from memory – they don’t even have a score in front of them!
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