Even more striking than all the words that are used in the historical sources is one word that isn't: interpretation. It's this one word that people today most associate with the concept of the 'conductor', and yet it had no place in the corporate music making of the 16th-18th centuries. The idea of the conductor-as-singular-interpretative-reference-point barely got a foothold even in the 19th - but that's another story. Another terrific video Elam.
I think you’re quite right about the 19th and 20th century idea of conductor as conduit for the composer’s vision being entirely absent from the goals of early music leaders/conductors. I wonder though about whether they had special decision making input over things like tempo and dynamics just as a practical consideration when leading ensembles. If they were directing from the harpsichord like CPE Bach then they were also interpreting in the sense that they were deciding how to realize the figured bass.
Actually, what I was trying to say was that even in most of the 19th century the conductor was not the single conduit: it really wasn't until Hans von Bülow in the 1870s that the conductor-as-singular-interpretative-reference-point became established. Before that every director had to indicate and maintain tempo, but beyond that...? Yes, they would interpret their own part (e.g. figured bass) but in that sense they were no different to every other player. Today's period directors may appear to be following historical practice by directing from the keyboard or violin, but if in rehearsal they try to establish a unified interpretation, they're stepping back into our own time. I suspect that the working practices of Miles Davis in 'Kind of Blue' (for example) give a better insight into the workings of earlier ensembles. @@marywhittington4789
I remember trying to sing Tallis’ Spem in alium with a conductor making florid (interpretive?) hand gestures that only bore a passing resemblance to the beat.
Did you manage to go through it? I remember an ensemble singing Spem in allium couple of years ago, the choirmaster indicated tactus very clearly, but they had to start over after a whole minute anyway...
I love the winky cat giving the tactus to the group. Along with the very well presented content and the superb musical examples, these adorable details make this channel so unique and a pleasure to follow for laymen and experts alike. Thank you Elam Rotem for this gem!
I have to tell you that this channel is a life line. I consider your content equal or superior to most of the courses I took as a doctoral student. Thank you!
Seriously, Early Music Sources might be the highest quality instructional content on YT. The amazing thing about this channel is that it is content-rich for learned people (like yourself), while at the same time remaining accessible and interesting to novices (like me) I know very little about Renaissance & Baroque-- only that I'm hopelessly addicted to it. This channel helps me better appreciate what I'm listening to.
Great video (again)! I would add that Montéclair in his “Principes de musique” from 1736 (pp 20 and 24) describes a way to beat time that is quasi identical to modern conducting technique.
Your videos are always such a treat and very helpful- I've been doing a lot with hypermeter research (a lot of which is based just on score study) this reminds me to think of the people in the room!
What a fascinating history! It never fails to astonish me just how much was demanded of singers in these earlier centuries. I'm also very glad that conductors today don't whack their singers with a stick! (Though I laughed very hard at that little joke, trust me!) It's always a good day when I see an Early Music Sources video in my feed, and this really made a dreary morning MUCH improved. Thank you so much for all the hard work and great bits of humor you put into these!
Loooooved this episode, since being a conductor myself! I was aware of some historical techniques but not so quite in dept. Funny story: not so long ago I conducted a chamber choir in concert where I accompanied them in a few pieces on the theorbo. I figured it was convenient for the singers to move the instrument in time, not knowing then it was even a historical practice.
very interesting to see cultural and national differences in beating time. it says a lot about leadership, hierarchy, and perception of humans or society in the different countries. Germany: methodical, subtle, focused on the result as a whole, French: dominant, ensuring with agressive methods everyone walks in the line leaving ....just a thought of me...how did italians do that? english? Spanish? Turks???? it says, in my opinion, much if not all, about a countries culture, at that time ofcourse but still now....
Thanks for your great informative videos! Anecdote: when Lully was beating time with a staff - a concert in honor of the successful operation on the butt of Louis XIV - he hit his toe and died three months later of gangrene.
@@sw3783 perhaps more detail is needed because I dont understand your comment. plus, I have never seen a conductor for any jazz ensemble, regardless of size of the ensemble; I have seen the lead performer act as basic band director, or live-arranger at most.... I am not a fan of jazz (and am even anti-jazz in some contexts) though I have seen a lot of jazz performances and not ever with a conductor. I'll also add that the learning opportunities should not be church related as I hope to never step inside a church again. I have had the opportunity to be a conductor/music director for a couple acapella groups but responsibly did not take those opportunities because of lack of basic conducting skills which I have not found taught anywhere except inside academia and even then only rarely to specific chosen students (the same old situation of elitism in music academia). I probably could have arranged for private conducting lessons with local music professors (either classical professors or jazz professors) but I have found those professors to be completely untrustworthy due to their lack of historically-correct knowledge (same old problem with all music academia today) and also their very unprofessional approach to teaching.
I agree wholeheartedly. Conductors of small ensambles of but a few instruments and singers should first be required to tie both hands together behind the back. Otherwise, the conductor invariably becomes the center of the performance rather than the program itself.
Handel's idea was something else! It is sad that we don't have more information. And maybe the FATHER of all ( J.S. Bach) was right about the violin , because nowadays many orchestras have the violins in the first row.
What struck me is that in the late 20th and early 21st century we have better trained and virtuoso musicians and singers than ever before, yet we still have conductors who flap around like the swan described in me of the early sources. I find all those videos of small vocal ensembles of obviously brilliant singers (usually 1 on a part) with a conductor in front of them to be increasingly and risibly anachronistic. Let alone all of those earnest audience members who breathlessly fawn over conductors as if the conductors were somehow “connected” to the composer and “draw out great performances” of the music from musicians they perceive as mulish and dumb.
Reference paper on the development of conducting figures: ISHIHARA, Shinji(石原慎司) 2022 'The achievement of prewar Japanese musical conducting as seen in baton stroke patterns: Comparison of the earliest stroke patterns in Japan and the West' "Bulletin of the Japan MusicExpression Society(音楽表現学）." 20, The Japan Music Expression Society(日本音楽表現学会）, pp.1-22.
Very interesting. I'll start suggesting to the conductors of the ensembles I play in that they hold a roll of paper instead of a baton. I'm sure they'll be receptive to the idea. 😆
This quite puts to rest the canard that Mendelssohn in the 1830s was the first to conduct with a baton. (Also, George Frideric Handel anglicized his name when he went to stay in England, rather than keep the original German version.) Thank you so much for your expert research on this topic!
@ 14:00, it looks like you've highlighted in yellow a guitarist (facing the viewer and a theorbist, whose back is to us and facing the guitarist in turn). The remaining person in the lower right corner is holding the roll, I presume? Thanks.
Thanks very much for this, as this is a topic which I've been researching for some time now, and you've begun to fill in several gaps for me. About Handel: in 1985, William Gudger -- then faculty at the College of Charleston, and an editor for the Bärenreiter Händel Ausgabe -- published an article in _The American Organist_ about continuo practice in Handel's oratorios. He said that their surviving organ parts showed the organ playing _tasto solo_ in all instrumental portions, as well as in arias and recits. Then, in choral movements, the organ would do the same, except for passages in which the chorus sang, during which the organ would play a skeletal reduction of the choral parts. So, even if Handel had a harpsichord on which it was possible also to play an organ located at some distance, there was also an established practice of having a separate organist. In either cause, of course, we assume that Handel conducted from the harpsichord.
Some of those statements near the beginning make me wonder at what point tempo changes in music became acceptable--especially those done for expressive purposes. It describes the original rubato very well, where the beat is steady even when the melody is behind the beat.
That was particularly interesting! Thanks for all your hard work. For what it's worth, the best orchestral performance I've ever seen (only in video, sadly) was Murray Perahia playing - and conducting from the piano - Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. There was something coherent and intimate that seemed to derive from his "membership" of the performers. It also very nicely highlighted the special relationship between the leader and the 1st violinist, on whom Perahia visibly relied more than one generally sees when the conductor is only conducting, and not also playing.
It is always a huge pleasure receiving notifications to watch a new video released. Very instructive, fun, informative way for learning about early music.
Video davvero piacevole e divertente, pure nell'accuratissima serietà della documentazione! Notevole la vostra capacità di rendere al vivo aspetti della pratica musicale tanto lontani da noi nel tempo e nei modi! Moltissime grazie!!
Re the Zacconi quote at 2:25, and to put it in a modern context.... The best advice I ever got the first time I was a drum corps drum major came from one of our contrabass players..."Don't let US (the horn line) conduct YOU."
“Singers always take the licence to produce the note after the beat”: conductors roasting singers since the 16th century 😂
This channel is such a treat for early music buffs. The mechanical hand contraption is too funny.
What a wonderful morning surprise❤
Even more striking than all the words that are used in the historical sources is one word that isn't: interpretation. It's this one word that people today most associate with the concept of the 'conductor', and yet it had no place in the corporate music making of the 16th-18th centuries. The idea of the conductor-as-singular-interpretative-reference-point barely got a foothold even in the 19th - but that's another story. Another terrific video Elam.
Thank you Simon!
I think you’re quite right about the 19th and 20th century idea of conductor as conduit for the composer’s vision being entirely absent from the goals of early music leaders/conductors. I wonder though about whether they had special decision making input over things like tempo and dynamics just as a practical consideration when leading ensembles. If they were directing from the harpsichord like CPE Bach then they were also interpreting in the sense that they were deciding how to realize the figured bass.
Actually, what I was trying to say was that even in most of the 19th century the conductor was not the single conduit: it really wasn't until Hans von Bülow in the 1870s that the conductor-as-singular-interpretative-reference-point became established. Before that every director had to indicate and maintain tempo, but beyond that...? Yes, they would interpret their own part (e.g. figured bass) but in that sense they were no different to every other player. Today's period directors may appear to be following historical practice by directing from the keyboard or violin, but if in rehearsal they try to establish a unified interpretation, they're stepping back into our own time. I suspect that the working practices of Miles Davis in 'Kind of Blue' (for example) give a better insight into the workings of earlier ensembles. @@marywhittington4789
I remember trying to sing Tallis’ Spem in alium with a conductor making florid (interpretive?) hand gestures that only bore a passing resemblance to the beat.
Did you manage to go through it? I remember an ensemble singing Spem in allium couple of years ago, the choirmaster indicated tactus very clearly, but they had to start over after a whole minute anyway...
Fantastic research among rare early sources!
I LOVE how you included Professor McGonagall with her wand in the thumbnail :P
I love the winky cat giving the tactus to the group. Along with the very well presented content and the superb musical examples, these adorable details make this channel so unique and a pleasure to follow for laymen and experts alike. Thank you Elam Rotem for this gem!
Cat-tus lol
I have to tell you that this channel is a life line. I consider your content equal or superior to most of the courses I took as a doctoral student. Thank you!
Seriously, Early Music Sources might be the highest quality instructional content on YT.
The amazing thing about this channel is that it is content-rich for learned people (like yourself), while at the same time remaining accessible and interesting to novices (like me)
I know very little about Renaissance & Baroque-- only that I'm hopelessly addicted to it. This channel helps me better appreciate what I'm listening to.
Babe wake up new Early Music Sources video dropped
Thank you for doing this episode, it's a topic I've always been curious about
Wonderful video! Thanks so much.
Das ist Sehr Wunderbar ❤😊
This is the kind of YT content I root for... thanks !
Thanks for the delightful video!!!!
As always, your humor sense is my breath inspiration. Thanks from Valparaiso Colombia.
Very cool! Thank you!!
Wonderful!
Excellent, as always! Thank you, Elam!
Yes! Your videos never disappoint
Great video (again)! I would add that Montéclair in his “Principes de musique” from 1736 (pp 20 and 24) describes a way to beat time that is quasi identical to modern conducting technique.
Very, very interesting! Thank you!
Thanks
Thank you
Thanks 🙏👍
Thank you guys. You're a goldmine
As excellent and informative as ever. Thank you, Elam!
Excellent as always!
Thanks Elam, super interesting as always!
Excellent! Really enjoyed hearing the texts that described conducting.
Your videos are always such a treat and very helpful- I've been doing a lot with hypermeter research (a lot of which is based just on score study) this reminds me to think of the people in the room!
What a fascinating history! It never fails to astonish me just how much was demanded of singers in these earlier centuries. I'm also very glad that conductors today don't whack their singers with a stick! (Though I laughed very hard at that little joke, trust me!)
It's always a good day when I see an Early Music Sources video in my feed, and this really made a dreary morning MUCH improved. Thank you so much for all the hard work and great bits of humor you put into these!
absolutely fascinating!
bravo!
Outstanding video! Very informative and entertaining!
is that cat for good luck?
no its just for good rhythm
thanks, yet again, dear Elam
Fabulous! Great content!
So interesting, great informations and montage, thank you!
This was an amazing video! Thank you!
Yes ...rimettitore! Zenobi describes exactly what I do, since our director/ conductor left our little choir😅
Hey hey! It's Elam Hotem
Very informative, very entertaining = very good -- thank you!
Thank you for this !
thank you!
Loooooved this episode, since being a conductor myself! I was aware of some historical techniques but not so quite in dept.
Funny story: not so long ago I conducted a chamber choir in concert where I accompanied them in a few pieces on the theorbo. I figured it was convenient for the singers to move the instrument in time, not knowing then it was even a historical practice.
Great work as always =)
Conducting in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
Or in other words, conducting before electricity.
lovely episode. As all yours! :)
Yay for rimettitore!
very interesting to see cultural and national differences in beating time. it says a lot about leadership, hierarchy, and perception of humans or society in the different countries. Germany: methodical, subtle, focused on the result as a whole, French: dominant, ensuring with agressive methods everyone walks in the line leaving ....just a thought of me...how did italians do that? english? Spanish? Turks???? it says, in my opinion, much if not all, about a countries culture, at that time ofcourse but still now....
Tous les matins du monde ❤
Is that a lego model of the Frari in the background?
Yes 😍
well not lego really - but close: www.signorblum.it/item/CHIESA-DI-SANTA-MARIA-GLORIOSA-DEI-FRARI/424
@@EarlyMusicSources very cool! Might ask for one for Christmas!
Can we hope to see a metronome in the form of a maneki neko? Perhaps giving the time to a matryomin band?
I know some musical directors who learned everything they know about conducting from a maneki neko
Thanks for your great informative videos!
Anecdote: when Lully was beating time with a staff - a concert in honor of the successful operation on the butt of Louis XIV - he hit his toe and died three months later of gangrene.
8:18 can somebody sang that melody wriiten?
But how does one learn conducting for small ensembles today, outside of academia?
@@sw3783 perhaps more detail is needed because I dont understand your comment. plus, I have never seen a conductor for any jazz ensemble, regardless of size of the ensemble; I have seen the lead performer act as basic band director, or live-arranger at most.... I am not a fan of jazz (and am even anti-jazz in some contexts) though I have seen a lot of jazz performances and not ever with a conductor. I'll also add that the learning opportunities should not be church related as I hope to never step inside a church again. I have had the opportunity to be a conductor/music director for a couple acapella groups but responsibly did not take those opportunities because of lack of basic conducting skills which I have not found taught anywhere except inside academia and even then only rarely to specific chosen students (the same old situation of elitism in music academia). I probably could have arranged for private conducting lessons with local music professors (either classical professors or jazz professors) but I have found those professors to be completely untrustworthy due to their lack of historically-correct knowledge (same old problem with all music academia today) and also their very unprofessional approach to teaching.
In England, commonly by conducting church and school choirs.
I agree wholeheartedly. Conductors of small ensambles of but a few instruments and singers should first be required to tie both hands together behind the back.
Otherwise, the conductor invariably becomes the center of the performance rather than the program itself.
Handel's idea was something else! It is sad that we don't have more information.
And maybe the FATHER of all ( J.S. Bach) was right about the violin , because nowadays many orchestras have the violins in the first row.
What struck me is that in the late 20th and early 21st century we have better trained and virtuoso musicians and singers than ever before, yet we still have conductors who flap around like the swan described in me of the early sources.
I find all those videos of small vocal ensembles of obviously brilliant singers (usually 1 on a part) with a conductor in front of them to be increasingly and risibly anachronistic.
Let alone all of those earnest audience members who breathlessly fawn over conductors as if the conductors were somehow “connected” to the composer and “draw out great performances” of the music from musicians they perceive as mulish and dumb.
Watch your toes!
Violinists approve this video.
The books from which you find your source material do not exist in my country. If you compile a list, i will do my best to obtain them
The way they keep dunking on the French 😂
Reference paper on the development of conducting figures: ISHIHARA, Shinji(石原慎司) 2022 'The achievement of prewar Japanese musical conducting as seen in baton stroke patterns: Comparison of the earliest stroke patterns in Japan and the West' "Bulletin of the Japan MusicExpression Society(音楽表現学）." 20, The Japan Music Expression Society(日本音楽表現学会）, pp.1-22.
So … how many of you have hit yourself in the back of the head while conducting ? Lol
By the way, conducting is the root of musical scripture: the chirographic one!
Very interesting. I'll start suggesting to the conductors of the ensembles I play in that they hold a roll of paper instead of a baton. I'm sure they'll be receptive to the idea. 😆
Excellent, as always!!!
Your pacing is superb. It holds my attention so easily from the start to the strangely satisfying "this was ..." cadence that always makes me smile.
Another entertaining and important video! 👏👏👏
Always so interesting and informative.
Those Duolingo sounds give me flashbacks...
Finally a new episode!!
This quite puts to rest the canard that Mendelssohn in the 1830s was the first to conduct with a baton. (Also, George Frideric Handel anglicized his name when he went to stay in England, rather than keep the original German version.) Thank you so much for your expert research on this topic!
I suspect that the reference at the end of the Handel section to a "baton" could refer to a stick used to tap or beat on the ground, as with Lully.
@ 14:00, it looks like you've highlighted in yellow a guitarist (facing the viewer and a theorbist, whose back is to us and facing the guitarist in turn). The remaining person in the lower right corner is holding the roll, I presume? Thanks.
Ha that exact scene from _Tous Le Matin Du Monde_ came into my mind early in the video
The Lucky Cat is a true maestro!
Thanks very much for this, as this is a topic which I've been researching for some time now, and you've begun to fill in several gaps for me.
About Handel: in 1985, William Gudger -- then faculty at the College of Charleston, and an editor for the Bärenreiter Händel Ausgabe -- published an article in _The American Organist_ about continuo practice in Handel's oratorios. He said that their surviving organ parts showed the organ playing _tasto solo_ in all instrumental portions, as well as in arias and recits. Then, in choral movements, the organ would do the same, except for passages in which the chorus sang, during which the organ would play a skeletal reduction of the choral parts. So, even if Handel had a harpsichord on which it was possible also to play an organ located at some distance, there was also an established practice of having a separate organist. In either cause, of course, we assume that Handel conducted from the harpsichord.
Some of those statements near the beginning make me wonder at what point tempo changes in music became acceptable--especially those done for expressive purposes.
It describes the original rubato very well, where the beat is steady even when the melody is behind the beat.
We'll dedicate an episode to this subject at some point 💫
@@EarlyMusicSources That's really interesting!
lmao the Duolingo sounds
That was particularly interesting! Thanks for all your hard work. For what it's worth, the best orchestral performance I've ever seen (only in video, sadly) was Murray Perahia playing - and conducting from the piano - Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. There was something coherent and intimate that seemed to derive from his "membership" of the performers. It also very nicely highlighted the special relationship between the leader and the 1st violinist, on whom Perahia visibly relied more than one generally sees when the conductor is only conducting, and not also playing.
Handel used MIDI ! Another genius video by EMS. Thank you a million times
This is great-THANK YOU!
This episode was absolutely wonderful, but I love all your content.
After listening to the solmisation video’s intro I literally can’t unhear it in all of the other intros
It is always a huge pleasure receiving notifications to watch a new video released. Very instructive, fun, informative way for learning about early music.
Is there an EMS video somewhere where a choir sings while all beating their own tactus? I remember seeing this, but can’t find it!
More myth-making about Early Music by back-formation, etc.
Always a great pleasure to listen to these. Bravo 👍
Video davvero piacevole e divertente, pure nell'accuratissima serietà della documentazione! Notevole la vostra capacità di rendere al vivo aspetti della pratica musicale tanto lontani da noi nel tempo e nei modi!
Moltissime grazie!!
FANTASTIC T-SHIRT!!!
Is that a bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask behind you?
Yes, sadly empty
Re the Zacconi quote at 2:25, and to put it in a modern context....
The best advice I ever got the first time I was a drum corps drum major came from one of our contrabass players..."Don't let US (the horn line) conduct YOU."
❤☕️Danke
❤❤❤❤ amazing as always, thank you so much
This channel is gold! Super interesting, as always! Thx Elam
Thank you for another illuminating episode.
People back then were funny af. They didn’t like people waving the hands at all!
Oh, so taktus must be where the metrognome brand name Taktell comes from.
the Philomathes is just so funny
Super fantastisch, as usual!! Thank you so much the tree of you!❤❤
Sorry, the three of you
❤😊the nun is actually professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter films. She is holding her magic wand. She does look like a nun, though.