Relaxed, elegant and expressive

I did more teaching of choral conducting last spring than I had for quite some time. It was particularly interesting to see a fair many students of conducting in a short time – one cannot help but notice certain patterns developing. The most important of these was a strange stiffness that takes over when otherwise fairly relaxed and coordinated people start conducting. Mostly this stiffness seems to be located in the upper shoulders, but at times it seems to be a larger phenomenon that is initiated in the abdominal area. 

As often happens, I started noticing something similar in my own conducting. I had previously noticed my upper body being quite tense at the end of a more demanding work but had just explained it to myself as something emanating from being so focused and having to work hard to help the singers. But seeing the same in others left me thinking that there must be some broader explanation to this unwanted tenseness. After all, I cannot think that any of us would find being tightness and stiffness ideal in conducting. Waving one’s hands and arms is actually quite easy to do relaxedly, so why the stiffness when conducting?

Because the symptoms are so clearly physical, I thought it might be worthwhile to think about this through physical activity. And to make the picture clearer, I began by considering what it is I do versus what the singers do when we perform. Quite apparently, the singers sing. I know this sounds very shallow, but bear with me. When we say that the singers sing, we do not think that they ‘just sing’, but rather understand that behind this natural human action is a mountain of training, skill, experience, concentration, simultaneous listening and consideration, as well as emotion. But despite all this, what the choristers do is that they sing. Their physical activity is singing.

But what does the conductor do? Well, conducts, right? But what is conducting as a physical function? I do not think that conducting is compatible to singing. Singing is a natural physical activity whereas conducting is a series of movements to be learned. No doubt there are many intuitive and natural elements involved in conducting, but it is still more like tai chi than running. You need to learn it to do it, whereas the basic skill of how to sing is in-built. If conducting is not a natural function, what natural function is it built on? I can only come up with one answer: moving one’s arms. What we do as conductors is that we move our arms. The singers sing and we move our arms.

I can imagine that this revelation might not feel all that novel or meaningful. But it actually was for me, for several reasons. The first thing I understood was that I need to be aware that what I am doing is different to what the singers are doing. I cannot sing for them; I can only try to make their job easier. The moment I forget this, tension will creep into my body because I am trying to do something I cannot do. It is a little like watching your child performing. You want them to do well but there is nothing you can do. The result: tension. I believe part of the tension in conducting quite simply comes from trying to do the wrong thing and forgetting what your physical activity is. Instead of moving our hands, we concentrate on something the singers are doing and, in our will to help, we actually hinder.

The second chain of thought was less immediate but no less important. The ‘moving of one’s hands’ was too vague to capture what the conductor does, so I needed to look a little deeper. What is the specific way of moving one’s hands that makes this set of movements conducting? It is actually quite simple: we draw beat patterns in the air. Before someone protests that this is far too simplistic and mechanical, I would refer to what I wrote about singing above. In the same manner as we include skill, experience and intention in singing, we should consider conducting in the context of skill, experience and intention. We do not just draw beat patterns; we express ourselves within and with these patterns. 

This might sound like a clever distinction without practical consequences. For me, however, this was not at all the case. Think of it in relationship to Body mapping. The theory there goes that an incorrect or incomplete understanding of our bodies can lead to incorrect movement patterns and result in less efficient, graceful and coordinated movements than would be natural, ultimately even lead to serious physical problems. Understanding what conducting is, i.e. having a correct mental picture of conducting, tends to lead to much greater relaxation, grace, coordination and efficiency. I noticed that I had a tendency to force the issue instead of creating the space for the singing and the music to happen. Try it yourself: think of a choral work you know well and start conducting from the top concentrating on the result. After that, repeat the same concentrating on your own movements. You will probably notice that in the latter you tighten up less. If this is so, spend a little time considering why this might be. I suggest it stems from trying to do the wrong thing, i.e. trying to make singing happen instead of moving your arms and making room for it to happen and giving hints about the music within a relaxed beat pattern.

If this all feels unconvincing, what would better explain the incredibly common pulling of beats, a movement that looks a little like someone tugging a yo-yo? This is a beat where the energy of the beat is away from the beat rather than towards it. I have not ever heard anyone teach this type of beat as the default ideal, yet it seems to me to be the most common type of beat to be found. This is probably the finest example of doing the wrong thing when conducting. I believe it is the result of the conductor trying to pull the performers toward the desired tempo, dynamic or expression. And it almost never works. Indeed, the gesture itself is one cause of the stickiness it is meant to erase. The fix is simple: remember that our job is to paint a beat pattern in the air in a relaxed, elegant and expressive manner.