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Title : The Complete Conductor

Author : Gunther Schuller

• When audiences overrate and musicians underrate conductors' abilities and accomplishments, it is because the former tend to confuse conducting with gestural histrionics, and the latter with mere time beating. There are, of course skillful time beaters, even among world-famous conductors, and equally skillful podium exhibitionists. But these for the most part demean the art of conducting, making it much less than what it can and should be.
• Ranging from the somewhat philosophical to the specifically technical, the requisite talents and skills needed to be a fine, perhaps even great, conductor are: an unquenchable curiosity about the miracle of the creative process and about how works of art are created; a profound reverence and respect for the document - the (printed) score - that embodies and reflects that creation; the intellectual capability to analyze a score in all of its myriad internal details and relationships; a lively musical, aural imagination that can translate the abstract musical notations of a score into an inspired, vibrant performance; and on a more practical level, a keen, discerning ear and mind; a versatile, disciplined, expressive baton technique; an efficient rehearsal technique; a precise and thorough knowledge of the specific technical limitations and capabilities of orchestral instruments not only as functioning today but in different historical periods; and finally but not least, a basic respect for the role the musicians - artists in their own right - play in the creation of the sounds that are ultimately transmitted to the audience, artists without those vital contribution (as many conductors in their self-glorification tend to forget) their own talents and efforts would not be expressible.

~pianist is weird~