BY KATHY HALL
Correspondent
JOHN SZPARA Marina Alexander, conductor of The Arcadian Chorale, leads a conducting workshop for the Monmouth Conservatory of Music in Red Bank. Anyone who has ever attended a symphony, opera or Broadway musical has seen conductors at work, but just what are they doing up there?
“People often ask me, ‘Is this person really necessary?’ ” said Marina Alexander, of Matawan, musical and artistic director of the Arcadian Chorale and the Richmond Choral Society. “All they see is a person’s arms moving. They have very little understanding of what the conductor is doing.”
Alexander is certainly qualified to help clarify the conductor’s role. She holds a master’s degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, teaches conducting and music history at CUNY-Staten Island, and often appears as a clinician and guest speaker at choral workshops and music festivals. She recently presented a workshop on “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Conducting” for the Monmouth Conservatory of Music in Red Bank.
According to Alexander, conductors are a fairly recent invention, having first appeared during the early classical period in the early 19th century.
“Orchestras were evolving and becoming larger, and they needed someone to keep things together,” she said. “The modern conductor makes sure all the musical elements that are required to bring the piece to life are happening at the right time.
“Everything that you are doing is in service to the composer’s intention and genius,” she said. “When people are watching us perform, they are evaluating what we are doing, but ultimately they should be captivated by what Mozart was doing. The conductor’s job is to read the score and re-create it as a living experience.”
The conductor’s work begins well before the concert with an analysis of the piece to be performed, she explained. There are standard gestures for each of the musical directions contained in a score that indicate how the composer wished particular sections to be played. Although the movements are codified, each conductor interprets them in a slightly different way, based on their individual bodies and training. The way a conductor moves is critical to the sound that will be elicited.
“People think it doesn’t really matter how you move, you are going to get the same sound. That is definitely not so,” she said. “If you put a different conductor in front of the same ensemble, the sound will be different.”
The act of conducting is basically communicating the conductor’s idea of how the work should sound to the ensemble in real time via movement.
“The ensemble reacts to absolutely everything you do, so you have to make sure the sound you ask for is the sound you want,” she said. “The ultimate goal is a closer and closer marriage between what one hears and how that transmits to actual gesture.”
For Alexander, clarity of the movement is most important.
“You will see some conductors who bounce or dance on the podium. My experience is that undermines clear communications,” she said. “There has to be one central place that people look for information in your gesture. If you start creating multiple points where do they look? You undermine that focus.”
Hand independence is a critical skill for conductors who use their right and left hands to perform entirely different functions.
“Music is sound in time,” Alexander explained “The right hand is where the main definition of the event lies; it is the hand that regulates the beat and defines time. The left hand becomes more of an expressive or regulating hand and a support hand. In any piece of music there is a complexity of events, entrances of different parts and dynamic changes; most of that is done with the left hand.”
In addition to the ability to move clearly, conductors must be able to listen diagnostically. According to Alexander, the higher level of hearing, the better the conductor.
“You have to hear everything, be able to differentiate what is going on in every section of the ensemble,” she said. “It could even be individual players you need to react to and correct.
“The interesting thing about a conductor’s actual performance experience is the conductor is living in two time frames,” Alexander observed. “You are hearing what is happening at this moment and thinking about what will happen next, constantly shifting back and forth.
“A big part of conducting is creating a gesture that is anticipating what is coming next and being able to react very, very quickly. I need to show with my hands and body the sound that should be coming at any point and constantly evaluate the sound that is coming forth at any minute.”
Alexander advises future conductors to obtain the broadest possible education, including music history and facility in at least one musical instrument.
“You are a much better artist if you have a broad understanding of your art form,” she said.
Conservatory-trained conductors learn the mechanisms of each of the classes of instruments: strings, woodwinds, etc., in order to help individual musicians create the sounds they want. Most conductors also serve an apprenticeship with a master conductor, who teaches them the fundamentals and helps them develop their personal conducting style.
Different types of ensembles have different relationships with their conductor and require different conducting techniques, according to Alexander.
“With a chorus, there is more talking during the rehearsal process, more sharing,” she said. “In an orchestral setting everything is done through playing; the conductor speaks very little. You need to be aware of the differences. If I talk a lot in a symphony rehearsal, they will be very bored.”
Conducting a large piece for orchestra and chorus is more complex than conducting either group on its own because the gestures that a symphony reacts to are a little different from the gestures for a chorus, she explained.
“The conductor has to marry those two and proceed in a way that will work for both. If you are clear about what you want, you can achieve this,” she said.
“Most ensembles respond to good leadership, clarity of instruction and what they perceive as a conductor who understands the repertory and has a passion for it. Passion is absolutely critical,” Alexander asserted. “If I do what I do with knowledge, commitment and absolute passion, all these people, who are kind enough to be there, will follow me, and it will be a successful experience. If you don’t do this with passion, you might as well mail it in.”
Local audiences will be able to see Marina Alexander conduct at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank on April 24 as part of the Monmouth Conservatory of Music’s 40th Anniversary Celebration and on May 15 when she will conduct the combined forces of the Arcadian Chorale, The Richmond Choral Society and the Monmouth Symphony in Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.”