The orchestra and its instruments . an idea of what the Conductor has to do. He has tobring out the melody, get the right accents, give theright shading (the pianos and fortes), and make theright crescendos and dimuendos, besides adding a poeticconception, so as to render the melodies flowing andgraceful and to bring out the composers inner meaning. What a quick and trained eye a Conductor musthave to read the score, both perpendicularly andhorizontally at the same time! Of course, an acute ear must be another of his gifts;and his natural ear is trained and rendered more acuteby experience. An
The orchestra and its instruments . an idea of what the Conductor has to do. He has tobring out the melody, get the right accents, give theright shading (the pianos and fortes), and make theright crescendos and dimuendos, besides adding a poeticconception, so as to render the melodies flowing andgraceful and to bring out the composers inner meaning. What a quick and trained eye a Conductor musthave to read the score, both perpendicularly andhorizontally at the same time! Of course, an acute ear must be another of his gifts;and his natural ear is trained and rendered more acuteby experience. An innate sense of rhythm must belong to a Con-ductor. He must have also an appreciation of melodyand an intuition that divines the subtle melodies,melodic phrases, and beautiful harmonies that liehidden in the score. He must also have some of thequalities of a painter to bring out light and shade andvarieties of color —; glowing hues and delicate tints —from the instruments that are ranged before himready to obey his magic PAGE FROM CONDUCTORS SCORE Beethoven s Fifth Symphony THE CONDUCTOR 277 The Conductor must also have a literary and a poeticsense to understand the romantic and historicalsubjects, which composers so often select as themes;and he must have imagination to visualize a picturein his own mind before he can make his own Orchestraand his audience follow the music, or the phrases, thatgo to make up that picture, or that musical impression0/ a picture. In a certain sense, the Conductor leads his audience,though most of us are unconscious of his powerin this particular. We, to a certain degree, see themusical picture that the Conductor sees; for we haveonly the threads he gives us—the scarlet and blueand green and purple and lilac and golden threadswith which we may weave as we listen the beauti-ful musical tapestry, the cartoons for which may besaid to lie in the pages of the score. Though it is often said that the virtuoso-con-ductor was practically
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