Being a conductor is a bonkers job?!

[WineIsMyCarb]

Watching Last Night is the Proms. Not musical at all myself.
But AIBU to think that being a conductor is a bonkers job?! I see how someone is required to keep everyone's timing together, encourage more volume, say, from some instruments and less from more enthusiastic orchestral... members (?)
But your job is to wave your arms around in front and look moved or serious at seemingly random bits of music.
Lighthearted, in case anyone thinks I'm suggesting conductors should be taken as political prisoners or anything ludicrous.

What's the career path here? Did they work their way up from being a lowly recorder player doing Twinkle Twinkle at the back?

Marin Alsop has done Last Night of the Proms. And there’s a very young woman, Mirga Grazintye-Tyla at the helm at the City of Birmingham orchestra.

The was an amazing woman conductor for the last night of the proms a few years ago Marin Alsop

x-post Frangible

This singer is in front of the conductor, what if she gallops on with Somewhere Over the Rainbow double time?!
She is also being conducted. If anything she relies on the conductor the most because she’s not looking at the sheet music!

But generally the musicians try to follow the singer if possible. I have seen some very clever conductors who, when a singer makes a mistake or is out of time, conducts the musicians to skip a beat or otherwise fiddles the music to get the singer back on track.

If the singer gallops on the conductor will follow and direct as needed - I’m a professional musician and have frequently accompanied singers, it’s less about looking and more about listening

Well thanks a lot for mentioning conductors and penis in one post. You have now made me remember the traumatic memory of the conductor in the skin tight Superman outfit at a performance I took my kids to last year.

The poor violinists didn't know where to look and neither did we!

He obviously got a lot of excitement out of conducting is all I can say!

Really appreciate all this info - really informative and is opening up a world I don't know a thing about.

But none of you disagreeing that it's a bonkers job

Interesting @Xitt - I can't imagine how to effectively mime "skip this bit, she's gone off on one!"

Jesus OhMsBeliever, how vomitous.

Definitely a bonkers job.

Some concert halls, eg the Royal Festival Hall in London, have choir seats behind the orchestra which they sell as audience seats when no choir is performing.

You get to see the conductor face on and follow what's going on.

So while I've got some musical mumsnetters here... how do you choose your instrument? Are you born a euphoniumist (euphoniumer? Euphoneumophile?) or violinist or whatever? Or is it pot luck what your parents suggested, or your primary school music teacher gave you a stab at? Asking as I suspect DD is musical (Dh is, but no instrument skill) and want to give her access to it if she has any talent/enjoyment/larks there

My dad I obsessed with conductors he loves getting the seat in the concert hall above/behind the orchestra where he can watch the magic happen.

I'm a professional musician. If I go and watch a concert myself (very rare these days) I also look at the conductor and think wtf!
When you're in the orchestra/ensemble it makes total sense.

If you have a group of 70 people on stage they need someone to get them to start together so this is the first issue. Yes most of the work is in rehearsals,you have to follow their interpretation of the music even if you don't agree with it.

When conductors are rubbish professional orchestras will just ignore them and not look up at all. The greatest conductors respect and trust the musicians and this works both ways. Professional orchestral musicians are highly trained,and if a conductor fucks up (waves the wrong beat for example) then they will be able to usually sort it out. Like everything there are some amazing conductors and some shit ones.

Does he want to take me motherforkin? New Years resolution is going to be "discover classical music" I think

@WineIsMyCarb
I'm not from a musical family,I began playing in a group lesson at primary school.

Well I got pulled aside at age 6 in primary school, tested to see if was tone deaf, then they looked at my height and hands. From that they decided to give me a bassoon to play for the next 12 years. I think they looked ahead to see where there would be gaps in the orchestra and tried to plug the gaps somehow in advance.

And yep, conductor is hugely important as they really understand and know the entire orchestral piece. It is an epic job, and your musical background would have to be pretty impressive to even attempt to conduct...

I remember that program, Faking It. They trained up a guy to do it in a month and he completely tricked everybody at a competition for conductors.

That's interesting SarahB. I hadn't thought that the orchestra might think "this miserable version of the Hornpipe isn't really working" but of course if conductor is there to set the mood (ahem!) then he/she may well get it right or wrong.

Will watch out for conductors being totally ignored now

this is the one

www.imperial.ac.uk/college.asp?P=3835

What do you play SarahB?

I like watching Vasily Petrenko at the Liverpool Phil - he is quite mesmerizing. IMO, the orchestra sounds completely different under him than they did under their previous conductor, Libor Pesek.

Last season I saw a female guest conductor, Jessica Cottis. I thought she was fab.

Female conductor here!
To try and answer a few questions asked here so far.
I have been a musician my whole life and have always wanted to be a conductor since watching my father play on his orchestra and watching his conductors with awe. I did gcse music, A level music, a degree in music specialising in composition and conducting. I did masters degree specialising in composition but I was required to conduct all my own music. So no MA in conducting per se.
My day job is private music teacher (piano and cello) I started out conducting small local orchestras on a voluntary basis and I still do but I'm also the musical director for a local theatre company.
Conducting is not flapping hands! It is so exhausting and demanding. After a rehearsal I literally have to be in quiet and dark for a little while afterwards. There are specific patterns and gestures which each mean different things, how fast or slow to play, loud, quiet, accents. The orchestra each have a part in front of them but only the conductor has everyone's part in front of them and is reading them all at the same time. The reason it looks so easy is because you only see the final performance, the conductor is responsible for directing hours and hours of rehearsals before this. When you're in an orchestra, you look at the conductor much like you look at your rear view mirror while driving. You're not staring at them the whole time, but without them you're totally lost.
Also, for some reason I feel compelled to say I'm not from a privelledged background. I'm from one of the most deprived northern towns in the country and my father literally worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week teaching the violin all around the county to support us. I don't know why I feel the need to say this but I think classical music is viewed as very elitist so maybe that's why.
I hope this has genuinely been interesting/helpful and not in anyway lecturey. Or something.

Chiming in with what everyone else has said, they have a lot of responsibility (aren't most resident conductors at major opera houses the Music Director as well?)

I've read a few opera singers autobiographies where they've mentioned how they have favourite conductors and a good conductor will help their performance tweaking the music - I think via key, tempo etc - again I'm not knowledgeable so can't really expand on that.

I really rate Antonio Pappano at the ROH, I love watching videos on his insights/interpretation of operas, he's down to earth and his enthusiasm is infectious. Iirc he learnt to play the piano accompanying singers as his dad was a music teacher.

It's usually a man because surprisingly the musical world is actually full of sexism and patriarchy.

Most of the anonymous composers in the early 20th century were actually women. But because they were women, their music would have been deemed inferior. So they chose the anonymous route.

The whole musical world Is filled with masculine = brilliant, feminine = a bit shit. Masculine cadences (perfect V-I, or dominant to tonic) end pieces of music perfectly. It sounds finished. Complete. Feminine cadences (imperfect IV-I, or sub-dominant to tonic) end pieces of music imperfectly. Like they're about to keep going rather than finish.

On top of that, more recently, there was a news article about the 1st violinist who was a woman getting rightly pissed off that her male equivalent before her would have gotten more pay than she did.

So, the reason why you see more mals conductors is because music, despite most of us musicians being quite forward thinkers, there's still a large part of it that revolves around sexism and inequality.

Sorry that was a waffle and a half

I’ve been a conductor for amateur groups, female and left handed! The concert is just the end result of the rehearsing with the conductor. They have a musical score ( book of music notes) and follow all of the instrumental parts at the same time. They indicate when a particular instrument group joins in, indicate the speed, volume etc.
The baton is really lightweight and an extension of the arm
They form patterns with it to indicate the type of piece it is, eg a sort of triangular movement for a waltz if that makes sense.
I was a violinist ( badly!), pianist and singer ( all very mediocre!) and music was my main subject during teacher training in the seventies. I did do a bit of conducting training but not much. I don’t suppose it was going to be an essential skill needed for infant teaching!