I have a feeling that I don’t write often about conducting, but since I recently delivered some conducting performances that I was vaguely satisfied with, I’ll expound a bit:

For one thing, it’s always great to conduct from memory. It’s hard and it takes long hours to imbibe the score to the point where you can ethically ditch the music, but I like it for a number of reasons: 1) it allows you to be more connected and attentive to the performers, 2) it forces you to learn the music to your maximum capacity and 3) it’s fun.

[I have a secret fourth reason for memorizing masterpieces: since my goal as a composer is to write masterpieces, it’s the best way to learn my craft.]

Memorizing choral-orchestral works is particularly challenging, and this is only the third time I’ve done it with a major, multi-movement work. The first time was with Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem, a piece I did not choose to conduct, nor would I ever, because I don’t particularly care for it*. But I learned it unto memorization because a) I wanted to give the piece the benefit of the doubt and b) I was doing it with young musicians and I wanted to be able to give them my full attention. The next time I did it was with the Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

Learning the Dona nobis pacem was particularly challenging because I don’t much care for Whitman, and make no mistake: if you conduct a vocal work from memory, you’d better start by learning every last word of the text.

With the Mozart Requiem, lots of the text was straightforward, because it’s part of the regular mass: Kyrie eleison, Sanctus sanctus, sanctus Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini, Agnus dei, etc. But the weird thing about the requiem is the “Dies irae.“

The “Dies irae” is a genuinely weird text. It’s what’s known as a “sequence,” which is a genre that essentially grew out of vamping. (“Vamping” as in stretching a musical phrase to cover stage action, not as in Hard-hearted Hannah.) Sometime around the 12th century, some person or person wrote this spooky-ooky 18-stanza poem all about hellfire and damnation, and the church elders were like, “hmm the mass for the dead needs some spicing up… let’s go with it!”

The “Dies irae” has proven to be catnip for composers, of course, since it’s full of earthquakes, trumpets, infernal flames, tremendous kings, and tearful pleas.

You’d think it would be fun to memorize a text like this, but it’s kind of not, because the order of these various images follows no logical progression. It’s not like you can memorize it a stanza at a time by thinking “ok, first the fires, then the floods, then the king, then the queen of heaven” etc.

But hey, it definitely improved my understanding of the Latin case endings, so that’s a win!

*With each passing year, I become more and more convinced that Herbert Howells was the only truly great 20th century English composer. It’s a shame that nobody knows his music, but if you’ve always sort of liked RVW and Britten but felt that they were lacking something important, you might want to look into his stuff.

I wrote rather extensively about Tár in the Classical Gabfest Newsletter this week. [If you haven’t been paying attention, my beloved podcast, The Classical Gabfest, is sadly on a hiatus that is probably going to be permanent, but never say never. However, it has morphed into The Classical Gabfest newsletter on Substack, so if you’re hankering for a weekly dose of news & opinion about the world of classical music, head on over and subscribe!]

I have still more to say, but first, the trailer:

Things I can identify with about Lydia Tár:

• She sits in her faux bois-lined childhood basement watching VHS tapes of Leonard Bernstein, crying at his genius. Extremely relatable content.
• She demands that matcha lattes be delivered at a moment’s notice.
• She unthinkingly and illogically switches between languages while running a rehearsal.

The fits

Lydia’s style — and the actual scenes of bespoke tailoring — are one of the true highlights of the movie. Major props to the costume designer, Bina Daigeler, whose other credits include Volver and Todo Sobre Mi Madre!!!

Did I cringe watching Cate Blanchett conduct?

Actually, no. That’s not to say her conducting wasn’t bad — it was terrible. But there wasn’t much of it, and in a way, when she was conducting, it functioned as a bit of comic relief and distracted me from the utter insanity of the rest of the movie.

The REAL cringe moment was the scene wherein Lydia addresses her orchestra and proposes that they pair Mahler’s 5th with Elgar’s cello concerto. It would actually be a bit of a spoiler to explain the circumstances surrounding this, but suffice to say, nothing in the real world works this way, and I was chewing my knuckles in discomfort.

Other things that don’t make sense

In a pivotal early scene, Tár criticizes a Juilliard conducting student in the context of a masterclass for conducting a work by an Icelandic composer (Hildur Guðnadóttir, the actual composer of the score) for a small, 7 or 8-instrument new music ensemble. And here she was right — it did suck — but then she asks him why he didn’t choose Bach’s Mass in B minor.

This is just patently absurd. For one, when you participate in a masterclass, you don’t get to pick the repertoire. But let’s say this wasn’t a typical masterclass — perhaps this young conductor was preparing for a performance, and the rehearsal was used as the setting for a masterclass. But even then, I can not emphasize the absurdity of the idea that the student’s repertoire choices would have been a) a contemporary chamber work, or b) a sprawling, hours-long Baroque oratorio for voices and orchestra.

If she wanted him to conduct Bach, she should have suggested a Brandenburg concerto!

What’s my motivation?

My lingering question is this: Was Todd Field trying to express something about contemporary society, and then decided that the classical music milieu was the correct setting? Or was he attracted to the world of classical music and decided to explore it, and this is what he came up with? I guess I could read an interview or something, but I don’t feel like it.

Details and tickets!

Balance

MENOTTI Amelia al ballo Overture
BARBER Violin Concerto
BEYER, Huntley World Out of Balance (world premiere oratorio)

Unfinished

SCHUBERT Symphony no. 7 in B minor
MOZART Requiem (Süßmeyr completion)

Messiah

HANDEL Messiah

Concord & Discord

BRISTOW, Sheila When Music Sounds (world premiere)
KECHLEY, Robert Hard Times: Antiphonal Conversations (world premiere)
BACH Magnificat

Symphonic Legacies

STILL Poem for Orchestra
MASON Symphony No. 5 (“Harmonia”)
STILL Threnody in Memory of Jean Sibelius
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 3

Choral Echoes

A mix of choral works grouped in pairs: by Purcell & White; C. Schumann & Brahms; Tavener & Britten; Esmail & Kim; others TBD

Hope & Joy

GARCIA Vast Array
PRICE Song of Hope (West Coast premiere)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9

I’m just back from Europe and wanted to collect a few thoughts here. This was a mixed work/pleasure trip, the main event being a London recording of my Concerto for Choir, an a cappella piece in seven movements that I composed during the final days of the pre-vaccine era. I will have much more to say about this later.

My itinerary included stops in the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. I heard a couple of Proms concerts and two performances at the Concertgebouw, including a phenomenal new piece called The Redcrosse Knight by the young Dutch composer Xavier van de Poll. I also saw a play in Frankfurt. And most happily, I visited old friends and met new ones.

Here are some tweet threads I did about visiting the Ravel house museum, the city of Bonn (a Beethoven town that’s secretly a Schumann town), and visiting the grave of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Before crossing the Atlantic, I stopped in New York for a different recording project, where I got to see Into the Woods during its limited run on Broadway after transferring from City Center (superb, especially the orchestra) and an American Symphony Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall (about which, more below in the Gabfest episode.)

Then it was a week-long stint guest teaching at the Pierre Monteux School. This invitation came in the wake of the passing of my dearly beloved teacher, Michael Jinbo, so it was both thrilling and surreal at the same time. I taught Brahms’ 3rd symphony, Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps, Rachmaninoff’s 3rd symphony, and two of the movements of Dvorak’s 7th. Can’t ask for much better than that.

Much of these travels were memorialized on… what else? The Classical Gabfest!

In the middle segment, Tiffany and I discuss Pierre Monteux’s Rules for Young Conductors. I’ve gone ahead and posted them here, since they’re a bit challenging to find online.

RULES FOR YOUNG CONDUCTORS

by Pierre Monteux

EIGHT “MUSTS”

1. Stand straight, even if you are tall.
2. Never bend, even for a pianissimo. The effect is too obvious behind.
3. Be always dignified from the time you come on stage.
4. Always conduct with a baton, so the players far from you can see your beat.
5. Know your score perfectly.
6. Never conduct for the audience.
7. Always mark the first beat of each measure very neatly, so the players who are counting and not playing know where you are.
8. Always in a two-beat measure, beat the second beat higher than the first. For a four-beat bar, beat the fourth higher.

TWELVE “DON’TS”

1. Don’t overconduct; don’t make unnecessary movements or gestures.
2. Don’t fail to make music; don’t allow music to stagnate. Don’t neglect any phrase or overlook its integral part in the complete work.
3. Don’t adhere pedantically to metronomic time — vary the tempo according to the subject or phrase and give each its own character.
4. Don’t permit the orchestra to play always a boresome mezzo-forte.
5. Don’t conduct without a baton; don’t bend over while conducting.
6. Don’t conduct solo instruments in solo passages; don’t worry or annoy sections or players by looking intently at them in “ticklish” passages.
7. Don’t forget to cue players or sections that have had long rests, even though the part is seemingly an unimportant inner voice.
8. Don’t come before the orchestra if you have not mastered the score; don’t practice or learn the score “on the orchestra.”
9. Don’t stop the orchestra if you have nothing to say; don’t speak too softly to the orchestra, or only to the first stands.
10. Don’t stop for obviously accidental wrong notes.
11. Don’t sacrifice ensemble in an effort for meticulous beating — don’t hold sections back in technical passages where the urge comes to go forward.
12. Don’t be disrespectful to your players (no swearing); don’t forget individuals’ rights as persons; don’t undervalue the members of the orchestra simply because they are “cogs” in the “wheels.”