Don’t they practice? is the conductor really necessary?
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Wow. While there are some gold nuggets in this thread, there’s a lot of misinformation here. As a former orchestral musician, here’s my take.
Orchestras perform from sheet music primarily because of the quantity and complexity of music an orchestra is expected to perform.
Quantity – A rock band may have a repertoire of a few hours of music they may perform on any given tour while an orchestral musician will be called to perform tens or hundreds of hours of unique pieces of music in an orchestral season. Plus, these same musicians will be performing tons of other music in lots of different settings (solo, small group, other orchestras, etc.) during that same time frame.
Complexity – In general, rock/pop music has a measure of uniformity in its construction. Songs tend to work in alternating verse/chorus form, with repetition that reduces the amount a musician needs to memorize. There are exceptions, of course, but it’s generally true. In contrast, an orchestral work from Mahler or Stravinsky is very complex in its form and may have similar sections but will have very little actial repetition. It’s also generally more complex in musical language (tonality, rhythm, dynamics, etc.). Add to that the complexity involved with having 100+ musicians playing 30+ unique parts vs. a much smaller group in rock. Sheet music helps all those people stay on the same page (literally) about what they are trying to accomplish at any moment.
Conductors are important to orchestras for several reasons including helping the musicians manage complexity (keeping them together), balancing the orchestra’s sound in real time (especially as it relates to adjusting the volume of each instrument when necessary), setting and adjusting the tempo, and most importantly providing an interpretation of the piece that is common to all performers for that performance. It may help if you think of the conductor as the person who plays the orchestra. Early orchestras didn’t have conductors. The music they played was less complex, so they were generally led by a member of the ensemble. Some modern early music ensembles that play that repertoire still follow that tradition. In general, though, it would be very difficult to perform orchestral literature from the 19th century on without an actual conductor.
You didn’t ask about why orchestral music is expensive and why people don’t just print their own, but it was a big topic in the posts I read, so I want to touch on that too. Orchestral musicians don’t play from scores. They play from individual parts (1st violin, 2nd clarinet, 4th horn, etc.), and there are never more than 2 muscians playing from a single stand of music. This means that a set of parts for an orchestral piece can run to hundreds (or even thousands) of printed pages. The editions created by publishing houses account for the fact that the parts will be bound and need manageable page breaks. I’ve performed from home-printed music before, and individual unbound pieces of paper are really difficult to manage during a performance. Add to this the fact that orchestral parts are usually printed on much larger size stock, and self-printing or copying parts becomes expensive and/or impractical. Most importantly, generally speaking, orchestral works aren’t available anywhere to self-print. Most of them predate notation software, and it would take way, way more time and effort to get them in a printable form than anybody, anywhere would be willing to pay for. Yes, the music itself is public domain, but no one has an incentive to make an open source or generic version available. The reason the cost of orchestral music is so high is that publishing houses put an extraordinary amount of effort into making plates for every part for each piece in their library – dozens or scores of individual pages for dozens or scores of unique parts for each piece. And these aren’t high volume items – many pieces only get played a handful of times (or less) around the world in a year. The economics involved in the printing, selling, maintaining, storing, and renting of orchestral music are not great. It’s a miracle that so much music is actually available to groups.
By the way, there are instances where orchestral musicians play without conductors and without printed music. Often times small professional ensembles (string quartets, brass quintets, etc.) perform in a style that looks more like what you see in a rock concert – more physical movement, more visible interaction between performers, more individual control of the experience and more adjustments during the performance, more audience engagement. When this happens, they generally are performing a smaller repertoire with a smaller number of people, very much like rock bands.
This went way longer than I intended, but I hope it helps. .
Edit: This really blew up overnight. I’ve never had a post get this many likes. Thank you all for your awards and up-votes. Thank you even more for your interest in a subject area I love deeply. I never would have thought a thread on orchestral music would garner this much attention. I responded to a few commenters, but not all. It’s great to see so many wonderful perspectives being voiced here. Thank you!
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