Editing Conducting (section)

==History==
===Middle Ages to 18th century===
The beginnings of conducting as a form of beat-keeping can be traced back to ancient times in the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman societies. Through examining historical records – notably [[Egyptian hieroglyphs|hieroglyphics]] – there is evidence that points to many early societies using visual and aural cuing to maintain a sense of beat, rhythm, and shape. The earliest documented forms of conducting arose out of a variety of musical needs in regions around the world.

An early example of using gesture to influence a performance was [[cheironomy]]. Documented as early as the 11th century, the practice entailed a leader using subtle motions of their fingers and/or hands to dictate melodic shape and contour. Typically a theme in vocal music, the practice predated many notated forms of rhythm and therefore acted as a way for performers to visually understand when to move together, although it was also used to memorize music.

As notated rhythm and beat, as well as more complex rhythmic figures, became more prominent in the early baroque era, performers relied on other indications to understand the intent behind their parts. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the role of the {{lang|de|[[Kapellmeister]]}} in Germany was someone who audibly tapped the beat on a hard surface using a [[Staff of office|staff]], rolled sheet of paper, or other object and took many other forms throughout Europe. Having an audible source of beat allowed ensemble members to maintain consistency and execute rhythms with precision before the invention of the [[metronome]] many years later.

In instrumental music throughout the 18th century, a member of the ensemble usually acted as the conductor. This was sometimes the [[concertmaster]], who could use their [[Bow (music)|bow]], or a keyboard player (often harpsichordist) using their hands, who would direct the tempo/rhythm of the music in patterns similar to those we are familiar with today. Although effective in smaller ensembles, the increasing size of instrumental ensembles in opera and symphonic performances meant the players were increasingly less able to follow along. This was temporarily addressed by using two conductors, with the keyboard player in charge of the singers while the principal violinist or leader was in charge of the orchestra, however, this did not prove to be a sustainable effort in the long run. Moving out of the eighteenth century, it was clear that music was growing too complicated and performances too refined, to rely purely on aural skills to stay in time.

===19th century===
[[File:Verdi conducting Aida in Paris 1880 - Gallica - Restoration.jpg|thumb|[[Giuseppe Verdi]] conducting his opera ''[[Aida]]'' in 1881]]
By around 1820, it became the norm to have a dedicated conductor who did not also play an instrument during the performance. While some orchestras protested against the introduction of the conductor, since they were used to having a concertmaster or keyboard player act as leader, eventually the role was established. The size of the usual orchestra expanded during this period, and the use of a baton became more common as it was easier to see than bare hands or rolled-up paper. Among the earliest notable conductors were [[Louis Spohr]], [[Carl Maria von Weber]], [[Louis-Antoine Jullien]] and [[Felix Mendelssohn]], all of whom were also composers. Mendelssohn is claimed{{by whom|date=May 2025}} to have been the first conductor to use a wooden baton to keep time, a practice still generally in use today. Prominent conductors who did not or do not use a baton include [[Pierre Boulez]], [[Kurt Masur]], [[James Conlon]], [[Yuri Temirkanov]],<ref>Libbey, Theodore (2006). ''The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music'', p. 44. Workman. {{ISBN|9780761120728}}.</ref> [[Leopold Stokowski]], [[Vasily Safonov]], [[Eugene Ormandy]] (for a period), and [[Dimitri Mitropoulos]].<ref>Galkin, Elliott W. (1988). ''A History of Orchestral Conducting: In Theory and Practice'', p. 521. Pendragon. {{ISBN|9780918728470}}.</ref>

The composers [[Hector Berlioz]] and [[Richard Wagner]] attained greatness as conductors, and they wrote two of the earliest essays dedicated to the subject. Berlioz is considered the first [[virtuoso]] conductor. Wagner was largely responsible for shaping the conductor's role as one who imposes his view of a piece onto the performance rather than one who is just responsible for ensuring entries are made at the right time and that there is a unified [[Beat (music)|beat]]. Predecessors who focused on conducting include [[François Habeneck]], who founded the [[Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire|Orchestre de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire]] in 1828, though Berlioz was later alarmed at Habeneck's loose standards of rehearsal.{{cn|date=May 2025}} Pianist and composer [[Franz Liszt]] was also a conductor. Wagner's one-time champion [[Hans von Bülow]] (1830–1894) was particularly celebrated as a conductor, although he also maintained his initial career as a pianist, an instrument on which he was regarded as among the greatest performers.{{cn|date=May 2025}}

Bülow raised the technical standards of conducting to an unprecedented level through such innovations as separate, detailed rehearsals of different sections of the orchestra ("sectional rehearsal"). In his posts as head of (sequentially) the [[Bavarian State Opera]], [[Meiningen Court Orchestra]], and [[Berlin Philharmonic]] he brought a level of nuance and subtlety to orchestral performance previously heard only in solo instrumental playing, and in doing so made a profound impression on young artists like [[Richard Strauss]], who at age 20 served as his assistant, and [[Felix Weingartner]], who came to disapprove of his interpretations but was deeply impressed by his orchestral standards. Composer [[Gustav Mahler]] was also a noted conductor.{{cn|date=May 2025}}

===20th century===
Technical standards were brought to new levels by the next generation of conductors, including [[Arthur Nikisch]] (1855–1922) who succeeded Bülow as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1895. Nikisch premiered important works by [[Anton Bruckner]] and [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky]], who greatly admired his work; [[Johannes Brahms]], after hearing him conduct his [[Symphony No. 4 (Brahms)|Fourth Symphony]], said it was "quite exemplary, it's impossible to hear it any better." Nikisch took the London Symphony Orchestra on tour through the United States in April 1912, the first American tour by a European orchestra. He made one of the earliest [[Sound recording and reproduction|recordings]] of a complete symphony: the [[Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)|Beethoven Fifth]] with the Berlin Philharmonic in November 1913. Nikisch was the first conductor to have his art captured on film—alas, silently. The film confirms reports that he made particularly mesmerizing use of eye contact and expression to communicate with an orchestra; such later conductors as [[Fritz Reiner]] stated that this aspect of his technique had a strong influence on their own.

Conductors of the generations after Nikisch often left extensive recorded evidence of their arts. Two particularly influential and widely recorded figures are often treated, somewhat inaccurately, as interpretive antipodes. They were the Italian conductor [[Arturo Toscanini]] (1867–1957) and the German conductor [[Wilhelm Furtwängler]] (1886–1954). Toscanini played in orchestras under [[Giuseppe Verdi]] and made his debut conducting ''[[Aida]]'' in 1886, filling in at the last minute for an indisposed conductor. He is to this day regarded by such authorities as [[James Levine]] as the greatest of all Verdi conductors. But Toscanini's repertory was wide, and it was in his interpretations of the German symphonists Beethoven and [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]] that he was particularly renowned and influential, favoring stricter and faster tempi than a conductor like Bülow or Wagner. Still, his style shows more inflection than his reputation may suggest, and he was particularly gifted at revealing detail and getting orchestras to play in a singing manner. Furtwängler, whom many regard as the greatest interpreter of Wagner (although Toscanini was also admired in this composer) and Bruckner, conducted Beethoven and Brahms with a good deal of inflection of tempo—but generally in a manner that revealed the structure and direction of the music particularly clearly. He was an accomplished composer as well as performer; and he was a disciple of the theorist [[Heinrich Schenker]], who emphasized concern for underlying long-range harmonic tensions and [[Resolution (music)|resolutions]] in a piece, a strength of Furtwängler's conducting. Along with his interest in the large-scale, Furtwängler also shaped the details of the piece in a particularly compelling and expressive manner.[[File:Holland Festival dirigent Leonard Bernstein zal het met het Concertgebouworkes, Bestanddeelnr 933-3400.jpg|thumb|left|[[Leonard Bernstein]] conducting the [[Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra]] in 1985]]

The two men had very different techniques: Toscanini's was Italianate, with a long, large baton and clear beats (often not using his left hand); Furtwängler beat time with less apparent precision, because he wanted a more rounded sound (although it is a myth that his technique was vague; many musicians have attested that he was easy to follow in his own way). In any event, their examples illustrate a larger point about conducting technique in the first half of the 20th century: it was not standardized. Great and influential conductors of the middle 20th century like [[Leopold Stokowski]] (1882–1977), [[Otto Klemperer]] (1885–1973), [[Herbert von Karajan]] (1908–1989) and [[Leonard Bernstein]] (1918–1990)—the first American conductor to attain greatness and international fame—had widely varied techniques.

Karajan and Bernstein formed another apparent antipode in the 1960s–80s, Karajan as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic (1955–89) and Bernstein as music director of the [[New York Philharmonic]] (1957–69) and later frequent guest conductor in Europe. Karajan's technique was highly controlled, and eventually he conducted with his eyes often closed, as he often memorized scores; Bernstein's technique was demonstrative, with highly expressive facial gestures and hand and body movements; when conducting vocal music, Bernstein would often mouth the words along with the vocalists. Karajan could conduct for hours without moving his feet, while Bernstein was known at times to leap into the air at a great climax. As the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Karajan cultivated warm, blended beauty of tone, which has sometimes been criticized as too uniformly applied; by contrast, in Bernstein's only appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1979—performing Mahler's [[Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 9]]—he tried to get the orchestra to produce an "ugly" tone in a certain passage in which he believed it suited the expressive meaning of the music (the first horn player refused and finally agreed to let an understudy play instead of himself).

Both Karajan and Bernstein made extensive use of advances in media to convey their art, but in tellingly different ways. Bernstein hosted major prime-time national television series to educate and reach out to children and the public at large about classical music; Karajan made a series of films late in his life, but in them he did not talk. Both made numerous recordings, but their attitudes toward recording differed: Karajan frequently made new studio recordings to take advantage of advances in recording technique, which fascinated him—he played a role in setting the specifications of the compact disc—but Bernstein, in his post-New York days, came to insist on (for the most part) live concert recordings, believing that music-making did not come to life in a studio without an audience.

In the last third of the 20th century, conducting technique—particularly with the right hand and the baton—became increasingly standardized. Conductors like [[Willem Mengelberg]] in Amsterdam until the end of World War II had had extensive rehearsal time to mold orchestras very precisely and thus could have idiosyncratic techniques; modern conductors, who spend less time with any given orchestra, must get results with much less rehearsal time. A more standardized technique allows communication to be much more rapid. Nonetheless, conductors' techniques still show a great deal of variety, particularly with the use of the left hand, facial and eye expression, and body language.

===21st century===
[[File:full score.jpg|thumb|Conductor's score and batons on a lit, extra-large conductor's music stand]]
[[Women in music#Conducting|Women conductors]] were almost unheard of in the ranks of leading orchestral conductors through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, but today, artists like {{interlanguage link|Hortense von Gelmini|de}},<ref>David Mutch: "The gathering critical judgement of Hortense von Gelmini, Germany's only woman conductor, is that she has not only the talent but the education, energy, and persistance to make her mark in this difficult and competitive profession" – 1976 in: ''[[The Christian Science Monitor]]'' {{Full citation needed|date=October 2017}}</ref> [[Marin Alsop]] and [[Simone Young]] lead orchestras. Alsop was appointed music director of the [[Baltimore Symphony Orchestra]] in 2007—the first woman appointed to head a major U.S. orchestra—and also of the [[São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra|Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo]] in 2012, and Alsop was the first woman to conduct on the last night of [[BBC Proms|The Proms]]. Young scored similar firsts when she became head of the [[Hamburg State Opera]] and [[Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg|Philharmoniker Hamburg]] in 2005; she is also the first woman conductor to record the [[Der Ring des Nibelungen|Ring Cycle]] of [[Richard Wagner]]. ''The Guardian'' called conducting "one of the last [[Glass ceiling|glass ceilings]] in the music industry".<ref name="motherjones.com">{{cite web|author=Hannah Levintova |url=https://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/09/women-conductors-gap-charts-marin-alsop-proms |date=September 23, 2013 |title=Here's Why You Seldom See Women Leading a Symphony|work=[[Mother Jones (magazine)|Mother Jones]]|access-date=2016-01-20}}</ref> A 2013 article states that in France, out of 574 concerts only 17 were conducted by women and no women conducted at the [[Paris Opera|National Opéra in Paris]].<ref>{{cite news | author=Victor Tribot Laspière | title=Une main ferme à l'Orchestre national de France | url=http://www.francemusique.fr/actu-musicale/ou-sont-les-femmes-dans-la-musique-7766 | work=France Musique | date=2013-10-02 | access-date=2016-10-17 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161018212908/http://www.francemusique.fr/actu-musicale/ou-sont-les-femmes-dans-la-musique-7766 |archive-date= Oct 18, 2016 }}</ref> "''Bachtrack'' reported that in a list of the world's 150 top conductors that year, only five were women."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.classical-music.com/article/11-of-best-female-conductors |title=11 of today's top women conductors |publisher=Classical-Music.com |date=2015-03-06 |first1=Rosie |last1=Pentreath |access-date=2016-01-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151120162025/http://www.classical-music.com/article/11-of-best-female-conductors |archive-date=2015-11-20 |url-status=dead }}</ref> While Mexico has produced several major international conductors, [[Alondra de la Parra]] has become the first Mexican-born woman to attain distinction in the profession.

Similarly, conductors of East Asian descent have become more prominent within the contemporary orchestral landscape—notably [[Seiji Ozawa]] who was thematic director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1973 until 2002 after holding similar posts in San Francisco and Toronto. [[Myung-whun Chung|Myung-Whun Chung]], who has held major posts in Germany and France, is bringing the [[Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra]] to international attention. Notable [[black conductors]] include [[Henry Lewis (musician)|Henry Lewis]], [[Dean Dixon]], [[James DePreist]], [[Paul Freeman (conductor)|Paul Freeman]], and [[Michael Morgan (conductor)|Michael Morgan]]. According to [[Charlotte Higgins]]' 2004 article in ''The Guardian'', "black conductors are rare in the classical music world and even in symphony orchestras it is unusual to see more than one or two black musicians".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/aug/10/edinburgh04.arts|title=Black conductor fears he will remain exception|date=10 August 2004|access-date=19 June 2017|work=[[The Guardian]]|first=Charlotte|last=Higgins|author-link=Charlotte Higgins}}</ref>