Maestros And Their Music:  The Art And Alchemy Of Conducting, by John Mauceri

This book was a fascinating one to me for several reasons.  For one, I have long been involved in choral and orchestral music, since my youth in both cases, and have a great experience in dealing with conductors.  In addition, I have on a few occasions been a conductor myself, an experience I have generally enjoyed, although I have no formal education in it.  This particular author is someone I had never heard about personally although he works in circles that I am familiar with and is writing about a compelling and interesting subject.  This book certainly makes me want to pay attention more to the work of conductors and to examine the subtle influence that they have on the way that music is played, a certain style that they tend to encourage in the orchestras and other groups that they lead.  And any book that makes me want to know more about someone or something is generally one I can appreciate and recommend to others, especially those in the NPR-listening set or who enjoy going to concerts.  Then again, it seems unlikely that anyone would want to read a book like this unless they appreciated the work that conductors did anyway.

At any rate, this book is about 250 pages long and is divided into ten chapters.  The author begins with an introduction that puts himself and his own career and education as a conductor into context.  After that he provides a short history of conducting (1) as well as some discussion of the techniques that are used in conducting (2).  The next two chapters answer obvious questions that someone would have about conducting, namely how one learns an orchestra score (3) and how one learns to be a conductor in the first place (4).  After that the author ponders the question of what makes one conductor’s performance different from another’s and looks at the individual sense of style that great conductors have (5).  The next, and by the far the largest, chapter examines relationships (6), such as the relationship a conductor has with the music, with musicians, with the audience, with critics, and with owners and management.  The author then deals with the thorny question of who is in charge in a given performance (7), which varies depending on the circumstances.  The author gets personal with a discussion of the loneliness of the long-distance maestro (8), discusses recordings vs. performances vs. recordings of performances (9), and then closes the book with a discussion of the mystery of conducting (10), after which there are acknowledgements, notes, and an index.

What does one get out of this?  Well, for one, the growth of performances of classical music to the point where music became part of a repertoire and wasn’t merely occasional music led by the composer created a niche for the development of a profession that quickly attracted a lot of power-hungry people to it.  That said, conductors themselves have had to deal with a lot of complex expectations where being true to the music is by no means straightforward, and where the interests of management, vocal or instrumental soloists, and production directors (in the case of opera) often trump the desire of the conductor to do things their own way.  The author is also very moving on the struggle that conductors face to make a living themselves when dealing with the itinerant life and its expenses as well as the lower money that pops conductors make when compared to those who limit themselves to the more prestigious classical repertory.  All of this makes for some deeply fascinating reading about a profession that few people know about in detail.