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The document discusses two textbooks that take a kinaesthetic approach to teaching conducting without focusing on traditional beat patterns. It summarizes Farberman's textbook, which provides physical gestures for conductors to communicate intentions. It also discusses Colin Durrant's book which focuses on communication and sees two elements to conducting gestures: literal and connotative. Durrant believes kinaesthesia is undervalued in classical music.

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159 views1 page

D

The document discusses two textbooks that take a kinaesthetic approach to teaching conducting without focusing on traditional beat patterns. It summarizes Farberman's textbook, which provides physical gestures for conductors to communicate intentions. It also discusses Colin Durrant's book which focuses on communication and sees two elements to conducting gestures: literal and connotative. Durrant believes kinaesthesia is undervalued in classical music.

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Anonymous MNzpTtIHAY
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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48

Although this is a system that could take time for beginner conductors to
assimilate and incorporate, Farberman’s textbook is a comprehensive departure
from traditional beat pattern dominated instruction, as acknowledged by
conductor Leon Botstein, who writes in The Music Quarterly:
Farberman’s approach is designed to provide the conductor with a highly varied and
subtle repertoire of physical gestures that can be adapted to the fresh ideas, talent, and
intentions each individual conductor should bring to the score and podium. He has
analysed the space the conductor occupies and the dynamics of gesture and created a
textbook that can help an individual develop a command of the elaborate rituals of
pantomime that conducting must be, whose underlying grammar is recognised by
musicians the world over. He offers a way out of the trap of mere time beating so that
the conductor can create sound, line, and musical meaning through physical motion
(Botstein 1997:10).

The book incorporates effective kinaesthetic suggestions to re-define the


conductor’s space, linking expressive gesture to the demands of the music, and
encouraging the music to create the conducting gestures.

In a similar manner to Farberman’s textbook, one choral conducting textbook


that was not identified in the surveys also needs to be covered as part of this
review, as Colin Durrant in Choral Conducting: Philosophy and Practice
(2003)(1st edition) takes a highly kinaesthetic approach to the learning of
conducting.
This book is essentially about communication. For this reason, although it is
aimed at choral conductors, I believe that all instrumental conductors would find
it of value.
The text is laid out in two sections: philosophy and practice, with the first six
chapters covering the philosophy of conducting, and the last five covering the
practice of conducting. There is no instruction at any stage on beat patterns, the
author referring the reader to other books to find these (Durrant 2003:139).
Durrant describes two essential ingredients to a conductor’s gestures, the first
being a ‘literal’ element, such as time beating, pulse and cueing, while the second
element is described as ‘connotative’ gesture, creating the expressive character of
the music (Durrant 2003:138). It is the second element that Durrant is
particularly concerned about throughout the book.
Durrant describes kinaesthesia, or feeling through movement, as ‘an underused
and undervalued sense in Western classical musical culture’ (Durrant 2003:97).
Phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty outlines the benefits of
‘bodily experience’ to kinaesthetic learning in the next chapter of this thesis.

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