If everyone has sheet music and all the timing information down, then what’s the composer’s role?
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The part that everyone overlooks is that the conductor is also usually the musical director.
It’s as true to say that ‘a film director doesn’t have anything to do, because the actors have the script and the cameramen have the cameras’ as saying the conductor doesn’t do anything because the players already have sheet music.
The conductor, as musical director, decides *how* the piece should be played. Tempo. Phrasing. Dynamics. Emphasise. Tone. This bit needs to be really bombastic so I need to hear more from the timpanis and tubas. This is a really sweet, tender moment so we’re going to just relax the timing very slightly when the soloist begins.
The input from the conductor/director is what makes one performance different from another.
An orchestra isn’t just trying to be a record player, accurately reproducing the music as intended. It’s a performance in every sense, full of creativity and interpretation. And the conductor is the one driving that.
Indeed, “conductor” is French for ‘driver’. More or less.
And yes, the stick is there to help keep time but that’s a really insignificant part of what the conductor is doing. You could have a blinking LED on a podium if they were just there to be a metronome.
Speaking as a former member of an orchestra who played an instrument that often had long breaks in pieces, one of the most important things that conductor does is point at sections when they are supposed to come in. 🙂 Think of the beginning of Pachelbel’s Canon.
Sure, I could sit there and count off my 157 bars of rests, or I could wait for my section to start getting ready and wait for the conductor to point at us.
Note: This was not a professional-grade orchestra. Those folks probably all count AND memorize every part to the piece, so they don’t really need this.
1. Conductors tell the players how fast the music is going. To play in sync, they need to know what speed to play at. The movements show when each beat is, so players know when to play their notes.
2. A lot of music is interpreting it in an interesting way. Composers will write down “get louder” or “gradually slow down”, but everyone has a different idea of how much. The conductor helps keep everyone together in interpretation. Even more than that, they can add variation where they think it is needed, like telling the players to get louder even if it isn’t written in (all conductors do this at higher levels).
The stick is there so that evetybody has a single point of reference for the tempo and exact placement of the start of a beat.
The part that everyone overlooks is that the conductor is also usually the musical director.
It’s as true to say that ‘a film director doesn’t have anything to do, because the actors have the script and the cameramen have the cameras’ as saying the conductor doesn’t do anything because the players already have sheet music.
The conductor, as musical director, decides *how* the piece should be played. Tempo. Phrasing. Dynamics. Emphasise. Tone. This bit needs to be really bombastic so I need to hear more from the timpanis and tubas. This is a really sweet, tender moment so we’re going to just relax the timing very slightly when the soloist begins.
The input from the conductor/director is what makes one performance different from another.
An orchestra isn’t just trying to be a record player, accurately reproducing the music as intended. It’s a performance in every sense, full of creativity and interpretation. And the conductor is the one driving that.
Indeed, “conductor” is French for ‘driver’. More or less.
And yes, the stick is there to help keep time but that’s a really insignificant part of what the conductor is doing. You could have a blinking LED on a podium if they were just there to be a metronome.
Could you still have a good sounding orchestra without a conductor?
The stick is there so that evetybody has a single point of reference for the tempo and exact placement of the start of a beat.
The closest answer is “real-time mixing”.
You know how DJs need to adjust a ton of elements from how fast a track is playing to how loud it is and they mix several tracks together? An orchestra is basically that, but each track is a group of musicians who play the exact same thing. You can have 13 violins in total, but not all 13 will play the exact same thing – you might have 3 play track A (Violin 1), 5 play track B (Violin 2) and 5 play track C (Violin 3). (Not an actual orchestral setup but just as an example.) Each musician in the orchestra knows what they’re playing – they know their own track to perfection by the time of the performance. But it’s not their job to know the other 40 or so tracks to perfection and to know how to adjust their own playing so that it goes well with the others. And they can’t really hear the other tracks that well either.
This is where the conductor comes in. The conductor is positioned with the orchestra in a semi circle in front of them so that they can hear each and every instrument well. They then “go ham” and wave their little baton (the stick) around and every movement is a cue to the musicians, even the tiniest movements. A good conductor has no wasted movements. Smaller movements indicate that the volume should be quieter. Huge movements demand louder volume. Swinging the baton or the entire arm in a circle tells the musicians to play faster. A palm facing the musicians tells them to slow down. Eye contact with a certain group tells them when they’re about to come in for a special part. And all of this happens while the conductor keeps a rhythmic movement of the baton to keep time in general – so that all 40 groups of musicians playing the 40 tracks don’t fall out of sync with one another.
It may seem like the musicians aren’t looking at the conductor, but in most orchestras, musicians look at the conductor about as much as they look at their music, if not more. It’s like driving – you’re not staring at the road, you’re looking at everything in front of you, like traffic lights and road signs, while keeping an eye on the road itself. Imagine the sheet music as the road and the conductor’s movements as speed limit signs and exit signs and traffic lights and stop signs. You still have to pay attention to them, but you can do so all while driving down the road. The musicians’ job really is to make sure they’re the best they can be at playing their instruments for that piece. The rest is up to the conductor.
The conductor also has a unique interpretation of each individual piece. No two conductors will make the same performance, just like how no two DJs will mix the exact same song. The conductor has to take into consideration the acoustics of the performance hall as well, and even the weather and climate (temperature and humidity affect the instruments and their sound!), which means that no two performances will ever truly be exactly the same.
Conductors add a surprisingly necessary human touch to an otherwise stiff orchestra. There are videos of robot or AI conductors but if you listen to that versus a professional orchestral recording of the same performed piece, you’ll find that the AI conducted performances are usually really stiff and stylistically bland in comparison. Even if you don’t know exactly what’s happening or what to look for when you listen, you might gravitate towards the human conductor just because it sounds more organic. Give it a try!
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Could you still have a good sounding orchestra without a conductor?
First off, the one waving the stick is the “conductor”, not the composer. The composer writes the music, and what the conductor does will be explained below.
Imagine you and a bunch of your friends all try to count to 100 in your heads, counting 1 every second. Everyone knows how long a second is, but there will be a very slight variation between people and by the time you get to 100, people will be off-sync with each other. Now imagine if you had a light in front of your group that changes color every second. Everyone has a visual indicator of exactly how long a second is, so it’s much easier to keep track of and (ideally) people will still be in-sync by the time they reach 100. That, in my opinion, is the main role of the conductor: Giving the performers a visual indicator of each segment of time.
The conductor can also help cue people in. Back to our example, imagine if you had to clap once you reach 55 seconds. You can count all 55 seconds (and you should), but just in case you lose track, the conductor can give you a cue on exactly when 55 seconds is, usually with some kind of point of their baton.
Another thing they are in charge of are special notes called “Fermata”. These notes specifically last for however long the conductor wants and are usually placed at the end of songs. The conductor can give a visual signal of exactly when to start, how long to hold, and when to stop these notes, allowing for clean cut-offs (Which generally are what you want). You can establish how long you are going to hold the Fermata beforehand, but again, people will have slight variations in how long that will be.
Of course, conductors can also do a ton of other stuff, but these are what I think of when I think of what they do.
TL:DR While they aren’t technically necessary for anything, they really help keep things in order.
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