Conducting: Orchestral: Books/eBooks

Conducting instructor Gustav Meier presents his practical approach to preparing an orchestral score for rehearsal and performance. Well-illustrated with numerous music examples, charts, figures, and tables, Meier's methods, grounded in the rich body of his collected experience as a music director and teacher of conducting students, are explained in great detail. Meier covers all aspects of conducting from experimenting without the orchestra to creating signals that produce the desired sound. The methods he describes offer specific and readily applicable advice for virtually every musical and technical decision that occurs in the important phase between when a conductor first decides upon a specific score and the first rehearsal with an orchestra. And from ear training to working with musicians to programming, he also offers his expertise on the day-to-day aspects of conducting and musical performance.

A fresh, original look at the art of conducting, including Pattern Cubes, which is a three-dimensional system for charting baton movement. Through this book, both the aspiring and the experienced conductor will benefit from Harold Farberman's experience and ideas.

Appropriate for junior- to graduate-level courses in Introduction to Conducting (advanced techniques included), Band, Orchestra, Chorus. Requires background in Music Theory, Music History, and Music Analysis.Extensively refined and updated, this new edition on conducting posits that conducting is a time-space art. It builds basic manual techniques--and includes additional band scores excerpts, placed in proximity with the classic repertoire. The text adds new baton timing techniques, and shows the relationships of time, speed, and motion.

This book examines 43 great concerti and discusses, in detail, the technical, aural, rehearsal, and intra-personal skills that are required for "effortless excellence." Maestro Itkin wrote this book for conductors first encountering the concerto repertoire and for those wishing to improve their skills on this important, and often understudied, literature. Often misunderstood is the fact that both the physical technique and the score study process require a substantially different and more nuanced approach than with the major symphonic repertoire. In short, this is the book that Itkin wished had been available when he was a student and young professional.

A world-renowned conductor and composer who has lead most of the major orchestras in North America and Europe, a talented musician who has played under the batons of such luminaries as Toscanini and Walter, and an esteemed arranger, scholar, author, and educator, Gunther Schuller is withoutdoubt a major figure in the music world. Now, in The Compleat Conductor, Schuller has penned a highly provocative critique of modern conducting, one that is certain to stir controversy. Indeed, in these pages he castigates many of this century's most venerated conductors for using the podium toindulge their own interpretive idiosyncrasies rather than devote themselves to reproducing the composer's stated and often painstakingly detailed intentions. Contrary to the average concert-goer's notion (all too often shared by the musicians as well) that conducting is an easily learned skill, Schuller argues here that conducting is "the most demanding, musically all embracing, and complex" task in the field of music performance. Conductingdemands profound musical sense, agonizing hours of study, and unbending integrity. Most important, a conductor's overriding concern must be to present a composer's work faithfully and accurately, scrupulously following the score including especially dynamics and tempo markings with utmost respectand care. Alas, Schuller finds, rare is the conductor who faithfully adheres to a composer's wishes. To document this, Schuller painstakingly compares hundreds of performances and recordings with the original scores of eight major compositions: Beethoven's fifth and seventh symphonies, Schumann'ssecond (last movement only), Brahms's first and fourth, Tchaikovsky's sixth, Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" and Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe, Second Suite." Illustrating his points with numerous musical examples, Schuller reveals exactly where conductors have done well and where they have mangled thecomposer's work. As he does so, he also illuminates the interpretive styles of many of our most celebrated conductors, offering pithy observations that range from blistering criticism of Leonard Bernstein ("one of the world's most histrionic and exhibitionist conductors") to effusive praise ofCarlos Kleiber (who "is so unique, so remarkable, so outstanding that one can only describe him as a phenomenon"). Along the way, he debunks many of the music world's most enduring myths (such as the notion that most of Beethoven's metronome markings were "wrong" or "unplayable," or that Schumannwas a poor orchestrator) and takes on the "cultish clan" of period instrument performers, observing that many of their claims are "totally spurious and chimeric." In his epilogue, Schuller sets forth clear guidelines for conductors that he believes will help steer them away from self indulgencetowards the correct realization of great art. Courageous, eloquent, and brilliantly insightful, The Compleat Conductor throws down the gauntlet to conductors worldwide. It is a controversial book that the music world will be debating for many years to come.

Following on the heels of his Conducting and Rehearsing the Instrumental Music Ensemble, John F. Colson takes students to the next level in conducting practice with Rehearsing: Critical Connections for the Instrumental Music Conductor. Colson draws together the critical connections for those seeking to become fully capable and self-assured instrumental music conductors. As he argues, too often conductor training programs treat the problems and challenges of the rehearsal--perhaps the single most critical element in any effort to achieve competency as a conductor--as secondary. Colson supplies the missing link for conductors looking for advice that allows them to complete their training for reaching complete competency as a conductor. He demonstrates throughout the specific connections that the advanced conductor must know and regularly employ--connections that few, if any, other works on the art of conducting address or bring together. One connection, for example, illustrates the joining of music imagery, inner singing, and conducting technique to score study. Throughout, these connections describe the nitty-gritty of what it really takes to stand up in front of an instrumental music ensemble and successfully rehearse in order to achieve its highest performance level. Also, Colson argues and demonstrates the pitfalls of the commonly mistaken assumption among instrumental music conductors that score study alone is sufficient to prepare them for the rehearsal process. This grave error is regularly belied by the fact that a number of other steps precede the actual rehearsal process, from the use of instrumental pedagogy during the rehearsal process to teaching through performance concepts. Colson's work addresses the entire rehearsing process thoroughly and authoritatively.