In the twenty-first century the world of classical music has evolved into one of great diversity. Technology has opened the doors of cultural experience on a scale which could not have been envisaged in previous centuries. The facility to listen to music of our own choice at any time of day or night is a great asset, but it cannot take the place of live performances. Transferring the spirit of the concert hall or opera house to a recording studio is an art in itself, as far as it is possible to achieve a comparable representation of a live performance. But it is the prerequisites of live performance which this book addresses, specifically in the adventurous repertoire of progressive music from 1950 onwards. Since then, the role of the conductor has become a more complex matter in a cultural world of rapid changes and developments.

The labelling of artistic movements such as ‘post-modern’ or ‘minimalist’ cannot hide the fact that national musical identities have been overtaken by the impact of the world becoming the ‘global village’ which technology has created. Rapid communication has made composers search more widely for a distinctive vocabulary which can be fed by international rather than national characteristics. This wideranging diversity of style and language is a challenge to conductors, who must recognise the need for greater technical resources than were once required.

In the nineteenth century conductors consistently performed the music of their contemporaries. This was not the case in the first half of the twentieth century, when many conductors achieved celebrity with little concern to perform the music of their own time. The technique they used to conduct a Beethoven symphony could be applied to Tchaikovsky, Elgar and even to early Schoenberg, but not to Stravinsky. Le Sacre du printemps created the need for a wider range of technical procedures, especially in relation to irregular pulse, which became a hallmark of the language of music and its evolution throughout the twentieth century. The bitonal harmony of the work also required a more intensive analytical capability in aural perception on the part of the conductor.