Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T01:15:48.571Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Performance and tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Nicholas Cook
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
Get access

Summary

The rise of the conductor-interpreter

In 1845, Moscheles addressed a few words to the musicians of the Philharmonic Society orchestra at the start of a rehearsal:

Gentlemen, as we are here assembled together, I should like to compare your performance with the fingers of an admirably trained pianoforte-player's hand. Now, will you allow me to be the hand which sets these fingers in motion, and imparts life to them? May I try to convey to you all the inspirations I feel when I hear the works of the great masters? Thus may we achieve excellence.

In saying this, Moscheles was introducing a new, and distinctively Romantic, concept of the conductor's role; the conductor plays the orchestra as a virtuoso plays the piano, acting as an intermediary between composer and listener. Years later, Bruno Walter expressed the same idea in more overtly Romantic terms when he wrote that ‘only he who understands that, under Wagner's baton, the Ninth sounded entirely in the spirit of Beethoven and that yet Wagner's own personality fully lived in it … comprehends the essence of musical interpretation.’

And it is through Richard Wagner's eyes, and through his involvement with the Ninth Symphony, that we can best chart the rise of the conductor-interpreter.

Wagner the conductor

In the late 1820s, when he was in his teens, Wagner heard several performances of the Ninth Symphony at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. This was some years before Mendelssohn took over the orchestra; they played the first three movements under their leader, Heinrich Matthäi, with the conductor Christian Pohlenz taking up the baton for the finale.

Type
Chapter
Information
Beethoven
Symphony No. 9
, pp. 48 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×