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?

I'm fairly sure I've read it -- does it have a (brass?) musician called Viking Something?

Viking O’Neill. In my opinion the only remotely sexy Cooper man. Played the French horn. The sexiest of the instruments.....

It is a truth universally acknowledged (at least on this thread) that a single male horn player must be in need of a good Jilly-Cooper-ing.

This has been noted several times

Viking O'Neill.

When I was a cellist in the youth orchestra, I remember us strings as polite and on the repressed side, while the brass were considered crazy wild animals...

@Momaestro how long does it take you to prepare for a concert? Like just you, before you meet with the orchestra?

Haha frangible that definition would totally fit my offspring (one of whom plays brass and at the other strings )

*one of whom plays brass and the other strings

I played in some of the rehearsals for Maestro. Goldie was really very good. He couldn't read music so he'd memorised the score in detail. He'd worked very hard and he had great charisma and therefore rapport with the orchestra. Sue Perkins was ok but very nervous. Marcus du Sautoy could talk the talk but was weirdly stiff. The rest were absolutely atrocious. The main thing I learnt from it was that Mozart and Beethoven are virtually bulletproof. You can play a small section of their work multiple times in a session with an appalling conductor and still get something from it.

The best conductors give you confidence, make you laugh, teach you something and can single our those playing wrong notes without making them cry.

Despite the dodgy sexual politics, Jilly Cooper's Appassionata is not inaccurate on conducting. She did her research.

If anyone's interested, I've done workshops on this for people with no musical background and/or who've left music far behind in their lives.
It certainly does look like just arm waving and 'what the he'll is she/he there for?' but in my experience, when people have a chance to get stuck in, they love discovering how challenging, nerve-wracking and also how rewarding it can be.

@PaneerOfEvil it really depends on the program - anywhere between one intense day with a known rep, up to a full month for an opera or many long works at once.

@BarbaraStrozzi often I find such rehearsals to be tough and full of funny moments at the same time. Your name made me think of the wonderful composer and singer Barbara Strozzi, of course. :)

Phineyj that's so interesting because that's more or less exactly how I read the three of them just from watching the TV series.

OMG, my friend and I, both school music teachers at the time, bought choir seat tickets behind the orchestra so that we could watch Simon Rattle conduct. It was amazing..... And also, if you have never had to conduct, you don't know how difficult it is. I was rubbish! Whereas friend was brilliant. And PlinkPlink, all that talk about cadences has made me quite nostalgic for my music theory days ( O and A level Music, followed by three years at college). And don't talk about interrupted cadences....