Stuff You Should Know - Conductors: What the heck is going on there?

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

You've probably been to a symphony performance and wondered, what in the heck are conductors doing up there anyway? Well we're here to explain that as best we can.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Their stories are full of candor and hard-won wisdom, and you'll hear from scientists who teach us how we can be more resilient in the face of change. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.

There's Chuck. There's Jerry. And you put the three of us together, stick a bassoon, a tuba, and an oboe in our mouths. We'll pump out some stuff you shouldn't. Boom-pa-pa. Who plays what? I play tuba. Okay.

I guess I'll play the oboe. That leaves Jerry with the bassoon. Okay. I think that's fair. That sounds right. When I think Jerry, I think bassoon and vice versa. That's right. So we need to thank Livia for this one because she did a bang-up job. And we need to thank BBC Music Magazine and Andrew Green because Livia and us got a lot of help from Andrew Green's primer on conductors.

Yeah. And this one was my idea because I think I just saw, it wasn't from seeing the movie Tar, even though I did see that, I saw that in the theater a while ago when it was out. But it kind of hit me then even like, what is such a weird job that I know nothing about? And what are they doing up there?

And can anyone just get up there and wave their arms around? Sometimes from what I hear, yes, there are some people doing that out there. But I found this thoroughly enjoyable to research and hopefully talk about. Yeah, good pick. I'm not sure I ever would have gotten to this one, so good job. All right.

So I think you're probably in the majority of people who don't really understand what a conductor does aside from standing up there and waving their arms. Yeah. I know I was in that camp until fairly recently. But the stuff you see conductors doing, which is again, conducting a symphony, waving their arms. There's a lot of method to that seeming madness. And what you're seeing when you see that, uh, a conductor conducting a symphony

is the culmination of a lot of other work that's done behind the scenes before the performance that the conductor does. Like they really earn their money from what I can tell. Yeah, absolutely. And just to be clear, I'm not such a rube that I was like, what are they just waving their arms around? Because I grew up in choir singing tenor in the choir. And so I certainly had my share of choral conductors doing that stuff at me.

So I get what's going on there, but I'm just trying to make a joke. Okay. Yeah. I don't think anybody thought you were a rube. Well, you never know. Maybe a new listener, who knows, but you'd win them over by the end of the episode, guaranteed. I'm not a rube, I'm a tenor. You're a tenor, huh?

I've never really been much of a singer, even though I sang in a band, but as a reminder, the band broke up and reformed without me. Oh man. Yeah. One of the saddest Josh stories. But also one of the most telling, isn't it? No.

Should we go back in time, though? Please. To when you first joined that band? Yeah. I'm gonna take another shot at it. No, we're gonna go back in time to tell you about the history of conducting and this is sort of prehistory stuff because conducting an orchestra to perform a symphonic orchestral piece wasn't really a thing early on as far as using a conductor.

It started with what I was talking about, which was choral music and vocal music. And we're talking in the early century CE, there were people that would keep a beat and stomp a foot or wave their arms around to get a choir on point. Yeah. Because one of the really important things to remember throughout this episode is that when you're playing music by yourself, you have to

keep on tempo. But as you add other people, whether you're playing music or singing, as you add other people, they have to keep on tempo too, but you all have to keep on the same tempo. And it really does help to have one person who's keeping the tempo for everybody else, and that became apparent very early on. And that does seem to be kind of like the, the predecessor to the conductor.

But it wasn't until the, I think, uh, 18th and 19th century. Yeah. That, that kind of transition between the two, where what we think of as a conductor today kind of came along. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, choirs got bigger, orchestras got bigger. You know, early on you might have, you know, a six-piece ensemble or a four-piece, or maybe, you know, it would even climb as high as 15 or 20.

What? In those days, you would have somebody that was actually playing in that orchestra, keeping the time. A lot of times it was a violinist and they would use their bow to tap things out or wave the bow around a little. I think that's probably due to the fact that a bow you can see, even when you're sitting down, you can hold it up and people can see it. Also a violinist, a violin is very small.

It would, you know, you wouldn't ask the tuba player, even though the tuba is the bass and the bass is the beat. That would be you. It'd be hard to like keep the beat and play the tuba at the same, like indicate the beat to the rest of your orchestra while play the tuba at the same, like indicate the beat to the rest of your orchestra while playing the tuba. I would think it'd be hard to conduct while playing the violin too.

Well, you're not doing it while you're playing because the violin isn't always playing. Okay. You know what I mean? I think it's like during the time where the, like, because they're not waving their bow around and also playing at the same time. That's impossible. Okay. Let's get in the way back, and go see ourselves. Yep. Yep. There's someone, they've got a bow in their hand and they're playing the violin and they certainly are not able to wave it around at the same time. All right. Here's your five bucks.

Okay. Yeah, let's go forward. It does seem then, yes, to have started with the violinists who apparently did conduct while they weren't playing. Also the keyboardist, whoever was playing like the piano, the harpsichord or something like that, they might be doing it too. But the reason why, even as impressive as it is for somebody to be in the actual orchestra playing music and then also conducting whether they're playing at the moment or not, it's pretty impressive.

But one of the reasons it was possible is because technically speaking or comparatively speaking the music that was being made until the early 19th century was fairly predictable. Like it stayed on a general tempo. It didn't have all sorts of like sudden surprising changes and twists and turns. So you could actually keep an orchestra together while you were playing the violin or in between the moments you were playing the violin. It wasn't until Beethoven came along that the real need for a person whose entire job it was was to conduct everybody else playing the music that that really became a necessary role. Yeah, absolutely. In the classical era and that's not classical music is the broad term but classical with a capital C

which is to say the period from 1750 to 1830, a lot of times you had composers that would step in and conduct their own orchestras. Mozart certainly did things like that. And these were as orchestras were growing. I mentioned that the size of the orchestras being maybe as small chamber groups and things like that. As it got bigger and bigger and you had 30, 40, 50 people in an orchestra, it wouldn't do to have that violinist.

So the composer themselves would lead the orchestra. Then like you said, once Beethoven came along and brought his really groundbreaking compositions that they needed a conductor. A lot of times it was still the composer, but then came the idea of someone that didn't compose it, is not playing in it, and that the only job they have is to direct the orchestra. Yeah, and there's a great story that seems to be true and accurate

that when at the debut of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which is the Ode to Joy, which is the part of which is playing when they open the vault in Die Hard. BOWEN Right. That's what it's best known for, I think. PETER He wanted to conduct it himself, but he had fallen deaf by then. Well, he was Beethoven. This was his ninth.

He'd already made a name for himself even during his lifetime. So they let him, but they had another conductor, Well, he was Beethoven. This was his ninth. He'd already made a name for himself even during his lifetime. So they let him, but they, they had another conductor, the real conductor that the orchestra was instructed to follow because Beethoven was not able to keep on time and conduct the symphony correctly. So, um, apparently when the whole thing ended, he was still conducting and somebody had to tap him on the arm and be like, turn around. The audience is applauding for you right now. Yeah, that is, that scene is captured very, very well

in the Boogie Nights movie. Boogie Nights. In Immortal Beloved, the great movie about Beethoven, Gary Oldman. Oh yeah, is it good? Yeah, it's good. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I loved it back then. And also I was able, I was lucky enough, I was so broke back when I was living in New Jersey back in the nineties, but- How broke were you? So broke that the only way to get into Carnegie Hall,

not practice, to see Beethoven's Night Symphony performed by the New York Philharmonic was to hand out the. Now or later. No, not the bulletin, just the program for the performance. Yeah, like the playbill somehow got on that little volunteer staff. And they're like, you can hand out these playbills and then you can stay and see the performance. And so I got to see the Ode to Joy at the Carnegie Hall and with a full German choir. And it was just like unbelievable.

So you go, Hey, what's that guy doing? Waving his hands around. I did. Um, but back, let's get serious though, Chuck. Okay. Uh, we said that, um, Beethoven was the reason why conducting became a necessity We said that Beethoven was the reason why conducting became a necessity, because the music he was making was so complex that it required way more people, like you said, and the more people playing, the more you need a conductor. And so it was actually more about just

keeping tempo as it had been when you had the violinists like waving their bow or some dude when you had the violinists like waving their bow or some dude smacking his foot on the ground. Even before then, it was about like actually interpreting the music because the more dense and expressive and sophisticated the score, the harder it is to write out exactly what every single instrument is supposed to be doing at every single moment in exactly what way. So there, there was a lot of interpretation left and that role fell on the conductor. And here we finally reach what a conductor really does.

This is like the foundation, the basis of their job is interpreting the score and then getting the orchestra to produce the sounds that meet is like the foundation, the basis of their job, is interpreting the score and then getting the orchestra to produce the sounds that meet that interpretation. Yeah, exactly. You know, even something written by Beethoven or Wagner or something, it can be pretty detailed. But like you said, there's no way to indicate every single nuance that comes through in an orchestral performance by writing it down on paper.

And that's where interpretation can come from. In fact, I believe it was Haydn and Mozart both at times didn't indicate tempo like super clearly for things, and they had the expectation that, hey, the musician should get in there and understand the spirit of what's happening, and they will instinctively kind of go to what the right speed is. So that's where interpretation comes in.

You certainly not to change the actual notes, but there's so much more beyond the actual notes that goes into a performance. Right, right. There was a, I guess, I think Mahler had a second symphony where he noted that trombones, violins, and violas should only play if necessary to prevent the chorus from deflating. And I mean that who's going to decide whether the chorus is deflating or not?

The conductor. So as that music became more and more sophisticated, the need for a conductor became greater and greater. And I say we take a break and we'll rejoin the conducting profession afterward in about the 19th century. Great. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero and I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. We've known each other for thousands of years and we've been through it all together and we are totally killing it.

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Listen to A Really Good Cry with Rali Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ["A Really Good Cry"] All right. So I guess we'll talk a little bit about how this happens, right? Like what happens if you're a conductor and you're like, here's the piece that you're going to play for

the Christmas concert in Atlanta this December. Okay. First thing you're going gonna do as a conductor, and really wanna recommend this wired video on YouTube. That's an interview with a conductor named Kent Tritle, T-R-I-T-L-E. I can't remember exactly what the video is, but it's just a really good interview

with an actual conductor kinda talking about the job of conducting. And Kent points out that what you're trying to do when you first get that piece, and you're not in a room with the orchestra at this point, you're on your own, it's like a movie director or a play director getting a script. You want to really just figure out the architecture of the piece as a whole, and really dig into every instrumental part. Every single one, you have to know and understand where they come in, where they come out, where it should be a rising sound or falling sound. Of course, there's great Italian names for all this stuff,

whether it should be punchy or whether it should be flowy, and sort of notate just like you would break down a movie script or something or a play script. Right. Just the architecture and the feeling that you're trying to convey and really just take note of all that stuff. Yes. So, I mean, that's like the first step in putting on a symphony concert. Like, that's what the conductor has to do is go through and figure out how they're going to present it. And then comes the time where you have to teach or work with all of the musicians that are going to perform this with you to explain this is how we're going to do it.

And there's a couple of ways to do this. And one was practiced by some of the most well-known conductors of the 20th century, which is like the golden age of conductors. Um, one was that, uh, you could be a dictator and a jerk and, um, the, uh, what was known as now kind of derogatorily as a maestro. Um, that was one way to do it. Fortunately, there seems to be a much larger push

these days toward, um, much more communal, um, I guess a nicer, kinder, gentler way of approaching it, working together rather than bossing around. And that, um, that's kind of the way that composers seem to do it. Apparently there's a lot of, there's some old maestros still working. And that a lot of people are waiting

for them to die apparently. Yeah, I think the collaborative approach in general in the arts can be a great way to go. Although all tour ship and films and, I guess the maestro, maestroness, you know, some people made great work doing that stuff. So it's not to say that that can't work, but it just seems as a whole like the arts have become

a little more collaborative in the last 50 years, 40 years. Yeah, I read a really good description of that. It was a blog post from the Symphony Nova Scotia. Their director of music, their lead conductor, Holly Matheson, wrote Maestro, Maestra or Holly, and it's about which one does she want to be called. Oh, interesting. And she goes kind of into detail about, you know, the history of those ill-tempered mean dictatorial maestro, maestros.

I can't remember what the plural would be. I guess maestry. I think it would. No, I mean, that sounds right. All right. Well, I'm just going to keep with maestros. That, that like how that's changed and how, like you said, it's become much more collaborative over time.

So it was definitely worth reading. It gives a really clear picture of just a couple of different approaches to the whole thing. Yeah, for sure. What also can vary is how flashy they are and how much attention they might be trying to draw because if you've ever seen a conductor who is really getting down up there, they may just be feeling that passion and just getting into it. They may have an ego which is saying,

look at me, look at me. That certainly happens. But not always. Sometimes they're, you know, everyone has their own style. Sometimes there's not much emotion. Sometimes, you know, they have their back to the audience. So the only time you're gonna see their face is in like a televised performance or something,

like that's what your orchestra is seeing. But I do wanna recommend another video. I hope you watch this one. That was great. Um, just look up Candide dancing conductor on YouTube and his conductor named Joseph R. Uh, Olfairwitz, I guess. I am going with the Lefrewitz. Oh, okay.

I'm going with whatever he wants to be called because this guy is a treasure and the, the fun and emotion that he has while he's conducting is just infectious, and I just, I wanna like, I wanna hug this guy, I wanna have him over for dinner. Yeah, and I saw that, you know, he's kind of putting it on pretty thick because he knew that this was being filmed, but it does, I've seen other stuff of his too,

and he's, you know, a little more subdued, but compared to other conductors, he's, you know, very expressive. And yeah, you definitely want to hang out with him and maybe give him a hug here or there, just because he seems like a great guy. He seems like a good dude. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's what the public,

the concert-going public who don't really know what's going on tend to notice the most. But the behind-the-scenes work that leads up to that, again, when you're interpreting a score you have to figure that out yourself and then you start working with the musicians. You have to work with every single musician to get the absolute most out of them. You have to gain their trust and if you can gain their trust then you can

actually get them to play the way you want. If they don't trust you, they're going to kind of go around your back and collaborate together without you, kind of like me as the lead singer of that band I was in in high school, right? They were not listening to me or following my lead. And I saw a great quote about that. Um, there's an AMA on Reddit with a conductor

from 2018 and this conductor who I think was at the Flagstaff Symphony at the time. Um, they said that when a bad conductor makes a mistake, no one notices. When a good conductor makes a mistake, it's a disaster and that's because the symphony doesn't follow a bad conductor. So when he makes a mistake, it's a disaster. And that's because the symphony doesn't follow a bad conductor. So when he makes a mistake, it doesn't

translate through to the symphony. But a good conductor, if they make a mistake, the symphony is actually following them. And so that mistake gets telegraphed through the actual sound. So that's a huge part of it is gaining the trust and the respect of your, um, of your orchestra.

And one of the ways that you do that is working closely with them, but also knowing what you're talking about. You have to be a master, not necessarily how to play, but in understanding how every single instrument, what you can get out of it and how to do that. Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, backing up a little bit, if you want to get this job, the first thing you have to do basically is get a degree in music. I don't know that that's a requirement as far as a standard or anything, but I can't imagine anyone rising to the level of prominent conductor that didn't have a degree in music.

So you have your degree in music, you are almost 100% of the time a former player in an orchestra. You can just, you know, be someone who can play an instrument and decides right away you want to get into conducting. So you go to a civic group or a high school and you kind of start and work your way up. But chances are you have played in an orchestra and that you can play at least one instrument very, very, very well at a very high level,

probably like orchestral, professional orchestra level. Right. But chances are that conductor plays more than one instrument, you know, that can play a little violin, a little piano, maybe even little tuba every now and then, you never know. Oh. Well, then they've captured my heart.

But if you are that conductor, usually like in a, if you're the conductor for like a city and their symphony, then you are probably also the music director, so your job is not just like, all right, I gotta get this piece together. It's, I have a full-time job of running, being the musical director, running this program, working with the community, any sort of like, kind of stuff the conductors probably don't

love doing as far as like, oh, you gotta got to go to dinner with these funders and people who are raising money, like all the kind of stuff that goes along with just as you would if you ran a theater and you were directing plays. Like the directing of the play is the least of your job at times, I'm sure. Yeah, that's a really good analogy too. Imagine that you have a good playhouse in your town. Yeah. There's like one person who's like running the playhouse and they're probably also the lead director, they're the director, um, who has the

highest esteem among the directors, probably other directors that work for it too. Same thing with a symphony or an opera. You have a lead conductor who's probably also the musical director so that in addition to conducting symphonies, they have to do all the other stuff that you said too. And then there's assistant directors who might direct a symphony and they help in other ways, but they don't have the responsibility heaped on them that the

music, musical director does as well. I saw it down to things like helping design and approve those, those programs that you were handing out to get into Carnegie Hall. They have their hands in basically everything that's going on for a particular symphony that they're working on. They have their fingers in every woodwind hole. Yeah. This probably have a name. I think it's just holes. Oh, great.

Yeah, you nailed it. Let's talk about the baton a little bit, because when I asked Livia to help us with this article, I specifically said, what's up with the history of that thing, and what's it all about? Hopefully comes as no surprise that the baton

is not some magical wand that a magician might use. It's just something that's bigger and then you can see it better and it's more wavy and it allows you to make bigger gestures. Not all conductors use the wand or the baton, but most of them do these days and I think you generally kind of think of that baton being held in the hand when you think of a conductor. Yeah, apparently you can thank Louis Spohr, the German composer and conductor from the, I guess, early 19th century for adopting the baton first and it was a kind of a cone-shaped wooden implement at first and then I'm sure Louis Spohr and people who followed were like, I'm getting carpal tunnel here. Can we use something a little, a little lighter,

a little thinner? And so the baton kind of evolved, became longer, a little pointier. It used to be made of wood or ebony. Today it's much more likely to be made of like, like carbon fiber or something like that. Yeah. High tech stuff.

And I saw that they're between about 10 to 26 inches in length. Um, and what they're doing with that, it's like you said, it emphasizes gestures. And the reason why most conductors do use a baton is because the size of symphonies today are so huge, they, people in the back need to see your hands and what they're doing a lot better, um, are so huge, people in the back need to see your hands

and what they're doing a lot better than they would have if you had just like a 20 piece group that we're all sitting all close up on you. Yeah, exactly. Did I get that across? I wanna make sure, cause I can say it all over again. I think you got it across. Okay.

Again, I wanna recommend that Kent's Trititle wired video because over about 12 minutes, an actual conductor really breaks down what they're doing with their hands. And I'm not going to just repeat what he said or pretend to actually understand all of that. But overall, what's going on is because most people are right handed, the right hand is generally the one with the baton and it's generally the metronome it's the the timekeeper and that is one of the biggest parts of the job still is Keeping the time for everyone to see And you have to be

Really really really good at it. You got to have a great, great sense of tempo. You know, a drummer probably obviously is somebody who would be a little more prone to be a good conductor, I would imagine. But it's very hard to do because as Kent Tridle explains, keeping time period is hard. And when he has students, the first lesson is literally just keeping a 60 second beat.

So, lowering your hand and stopping at the bottom every second to a click track or a metronome and he said doing that is just hard enough but then when you add, you know, 120 beats a minute, that's still kind of easy because it's just double but what if it's 132, 141, right? 73. Yeah. And you're in this performance and your adrenaline is surging and somebody might mess up or do something and that makes your takes you out of your mindset. And you have to like throw out all that emotion and still be able to keep that perfect beat with your right hand for everyone to see. Yeah, because the point he was making was that when

somebody does mess up or when your adrenaline is surging, time starts to take a different shape than it does under normal circumstances when everything is calm and you're just rehearsing. But you have to be able to keep that sense of time no matter what the circumstance. I just think that's amazing. Yeah, like a drummer in a rock band, you know, it's very common when you perform like a show out that you play all of your songs faster

than you do in a rehearsal because you're up there, you're jazz, and all of a sudden that drummer behind you, instead of one, two, one two three four counting it out It's like one two three four and you're the Ramones right pretty great No, the ruins are great. Yeah, but that just that's just sort of a thing and It's kind of the same thing. You have to be able to block all that out You're keeping time with that right hand and then your left hand The other thing your right hand is doing

is not just tempo, but entrance. Like when you would wave for the strings to come in. Your left hand is generally indicating the exit. And then everything else, the emotion, the flow, the rising and falling, whether or not it's punchy and staccato or like really flowy. So smooth is Billy D. It's smooth as Billy D.

And while you're doing that with that left hand and pointing at, you know, the brass section to stop, you still have to be keeping that perfect beat with the right hand. So again, like a drummer, you have to have real independence of your left and right hand. Yeah, the left hand can't know what the right hand's doing and vice versa. Yeah. Um, and that takes a lot of practice too, not just keeping time, but like making your hands do different things at different time while also keeping tempo. It is like, like that's why there's just a, a really a handful of people running

around on the planet right now, who are qualified to conduct an orchestra because of all the effort and training and understanding that it takes to do that. I mean, I thought it was pretty neat before, but it was just so alien to me that I just kind of admired it out of its status in the world of art, high art. Now that I understand it even more,

I admire it even further. I mean, like just what they do is mind blowing. Yeah, it's super cool. And just to put a little button real quick, cause I know we'll probably get letters. You know, the right hand is keeping that beat. And I said, it's always sort of doing that, but the right hand can take breaks

from just that metronomic rhythmic thing that you're doing. Because sometimes you'll see a conductor using both hands kind of mirroring one another, but in opposite directions. That's when, you know, you might be a big sweeping sort of motion with both hands, but then it'll go back to kind of keeping that beat. But there are little breaks here and there with that tempo. Yeah, the only thing is, is if you're giving your right hand a break, you don't want to shake the wrist out or else it can really impact the score.

Oh, that's one thing I said, it impacts the score. The other thing about the conductor is they're the only person in that whole orchestra up there performing that has the entire score in front of them. All the other people are playing the violin parts or the tuba parts or the oboe or bassoon parts. That's what they have in front of them. They don't know, at least not on paper, what the people around them are playing. So they have to rely on the conductor to help to help them understand who's doing what by watching the conductor at any given moment. Yeah, you know what I couldn't find,

and I know someone will know this, because I know for sure we've had listeners that play in orchestras, but what actually do they have in front of them as like a violinist? I know it's obviously the violin part, but is it just the violin pages or is it like? Really like a hustler magazine.

Right. Or, or, or they're, you know, like you can't just only have your thing. You've got to know kind of what else is going on a little bit. No. Because it seems like that'd be like having only your lines in a script. Right. your lines in a script. Right, I think that's why some conductors are dictators or can be dictators because you are so reliant on them. And I think you figure it out during practice and rehearsal, like you understand, but I

think what I saw, they have just their part in front of them. So there's no, you know, spaces in between that says like woodwind part or anything like that. I don't know if it says that, but it wouldn't have the notes the woodwinds are playing. No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying anything to indicate where they are in the piece that's not only in their section. I see. I see. I see. Yeah, yeah. Like a framework. I have no idea. I can make up an answer if you want. Please do.

No, they don't have any frame of reference. Now we'll, we'll hear from someone and we'll follow up on that. Um, I say we take another break. I'm two for two for calling the breaks today. Nice work. Uh, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about, uh, we'll, we'll answer a question. Okay. I'm not even going to say what the question is.

Yeah, I think they know. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] More, more, more, more, more, better. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero, and I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television. Nine, nine. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. We've known each other for thousands of years.

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and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life. We're going to be talking with some of my best friends. I didn't know we were going to go there, Amir! I know, because this is people that I admire. When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life. Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right? And basically have conversations that can help us get through this crazy thing we call life. I already believe in myself. I already see myself.

And so when people give me an opportunity, I'm just like, oh, great, you see me too. We'll laugh together, we'll cry together and find a way through all of our emotions. Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to A Really Good Cry with Rady Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, Chuck, so here's the question. Do you really need a conductor to perform a symphony as an orchestra? Well, do you? Huh?

Yeah. Great question. Uh, because, you know, when you see that kind of showmanship up there, and you might think, I mean, for me personally, I'm there for that. Like, I want to see my conductor just going off. And I want to see hair flying around. And I want to see somebody really getting into it. Other people might be turned off by that.

We should mention that Tridel and others confirmed that, like, hey, that's part of it, but you can't let that, let that get in the way of things. But all that sort of leads to what you're saying is like, do we even need these people up there? And there have been efforts to find that out, right? Yeah. There's a very famous conductor named Andre Previn, who I've even heard of. He is or was, I'm not sure when he stopped. He was definitely performing up until recently, if he's not still. But he was the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra when a TV

documentary back in 1973 was made. It was called Who Needs a Conductor? Yeah. And he started out conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with Beethoven's Fifth. Do do do fifth, right? Yeah. And they get started and going and he's conducting them and then all of a sudden he just stops and

exits the stage and the orchestra just keeps going without literally without missing a beat and they perform Beethoven's fifth symphony for the rest of the time without any incident or hardship. And that does kind of lead to the question, like, could you, could you just do away with conductors? The answer seems to be to an extent, but you really wouldn't want the results as like a concert going public and really no, the answer is kind of no.

You don't want to do away with conductors. Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with everything we talked about that has everything to do with anything other than just standing there and waving your arms, like all the preparation, leading the rehearsal, being the director of the performance. And Livia points out that, you know,

that singular sort of vision for how you're gonna do the piece. If you don't have that, then it's not saying that people will all just be doing their own thing and it would be garbage, but getting everyone on the same page eventually, which is where you would have to get to to perform it in front of people, I would think, that would just be a nightmare, trying to get that many people on the same page as far as that interpretation goes. Right. I mean, think about it. If you've got a beef between your tuba player and your bassoon

player and everybody is talking about how this one part is going to be played and they're disagreeing, who's going to win out, right? That's where the conductor comes in. The conductor says, I'm winning out, both of you. Shut up. Shut up. And they sit down and shut up and they do what the conductor tells them to. Yeah. Tuba would win though. Cause the old saying in the, uh, in the symphony, you don't with the tuba player.

It's true. A goodbye sixth grade classes. Right. So should we mention a few, you mentioned Andre Previn, of course, should we go over a few of these other famous conductors? Yeah. Let's start with Toscanini. Yeah. You mean Arturo Toscanini?

Very nice. That is a spinning image impression of how Toscanini talked. So Toscanini was obviously Italian, directed the Met opera in New York, and Toscanini sort of spanned a couple of time periods, bridging the 19th and 20th centuries, and was a child prodigy, and kind of one thing he was known for was his photographic memory,

such that his eyesight failed later in his career and he still could conduct because he had these orchestral pieces, you know, just committed to his memory. Yeah. And apparently he was one of the ones who started to form this image of like the temperamental dictatorial conductor, right? Yeah. But I also read that he was very well known for working very closely with

musicians to help get things, you know, hammered out. Like he was a dedicated, um, leader, I guess. So he, he, you know, he was a very complex and complicated person and he helped kind of lay the groundwork for what the general public understood is the maestro and what was acceptable, some of which is kind of unacceptable. Right. But he overall seems to have been a generally, at the very least, a great conductor, if not a, you know, so-so person, but you know, who isn't. Yeah. Well, you know, it's a position of power. And have you seen the movie Tar?

I know. I don't know what you're talking about. It's a, of power and have you seen the movie tar? I know I don't know what you're talking about it's God ishtar no No, oh god immortal beloved No, people are screaming at me at me right now. It's it's a movie about a Woman who is a conductor? Made by Todd fields one of the the few movies he's directed.

Oh, Cate Blanchett, of course. Oh, you're talking about Tron. Oh, man. You're on a roll today, huh? No, this was out a couple of years ago, I feel like. No, I haven't heard of it. Yeah, 2022, T-A-R, and it's a movie about a woman, Lydia Tarr, who is a conductor, and kind of like a little bit of how power can go wrong in that position.

And it just seems like it is one of those positions where, you know, hopefully you use your power wisely, but like you mentioned with these temper tantrums and dictator, dictatorial sort of methods, it's definitely a position that can historically get out of hand. Oh, and Tuscany also was well known for, as a philanderer too, and I think that that was a big deal during the 20th century for some of those maestro conductors.

They were playboys to say the least for sure. Sure. And they did, and they found some of their conquests from their orchestra. And yeah, I mean, today we look back and we're like, yes, that's an abuse of power. You're abusing your power because you're in such a powerful position.

These people are looking up to you and you're leveraging that to sleep with them. So that's like one of the big criticisms that 20th century maestro Have leveled at them and then they say like hey We were all like boomers and boomers parents. This is what we did Well Tarkin and touches on that stuff, so I think you'd like it you and you me should watch it Oh, I like Cate Blanchett any day. She's great I'll mention Leonard Bernstein,

another famous conductor. Yeah, he's great too. Gentleman from Massachusetts, from Lawrence Mass, and was the first American conductor and musical director of the New York Philharmonic from 58 to 69, and really just sort of brought classical music to a really big audience. And one thing we haven't talked about is just the impact that

the recording industry and recording orchestras did, not only for just making classical music and orchestral music more popular, and bringing it to the masses, but making some of these conductors stars, because the record you got wasn't just Beethoven's Night, that was Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmon't just Beethoven's Night, that was, you know, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic to Beethoven's Night.

Yeah, pretty cool. We also, we can't not mention von Karajan, Herbert von Karajan, he was one of those bad boy maestros, but he was also well known as being like, one of the greatest that's ever lived too. Like that's the other thing too, that's why these guys got away with this is because they were so good at what they did.

Um, they were just looked up to in so many ways. It just excused all this other behavior. And then there's. Like being a Nazi. There's yeah. Yeah. That's one thing. I'm glad you brought that up.

Karajan was a literal Nazi. He was born in Austria. He was a member of the Nazi party. And, uh, he's like, we're just going to leave that behind in the past. Let's not talk about that anymore. Yeah. He was, to be fair, he was cleared by an allied tribunal, but that sort of followed him through his career. For sure.

As it does. Even though it didn't seem to hurt it that much. No. The, on the other side of the aisle is Carlos Kleber, whose father, Eric Kleber was also a conductor and they left Germany because of the, um, aisle is, uh, Carlos Kleber, whose father, Eric Kleber was also a conductor. And they left Germany because of the Nazis, because they were like, Nazis suck. So they moved to Argentina and Carlos Kleber developed his craft there and became a very well-known, um, that's his conductor, but recluse.

And Carillon said that, um, Kleber only conducts when the fridge is empty. Like he just, for the last like 10 or 20 years of his life, he just, he did not want to conduct. He conducted only what he wanted to, and he only did it when he absolutely had to, basically. Yeah. I want to shout out Yoel Levy, who this was the musical director at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, starting in 1988 for about 12 years. And I just remember it was a very big deal. Yolavi really kind of vaulted Atlanta Symphony into a world-class organization,

and really put them on the map as far as, you know, it was Atlanta and it was the late 80s. And so I think there was this idea of like, you know, the sort of the, the third area podunk symphony. Yeah. And he really, really changed that. And Atlanta is a world-class symphony.

Now being directed musical director and lead conductor by Natalie Stutzman who was the first woman to be musical director here in Atlanta. And it's a good time to talk about women because we probably said he quite a bit. The history of conducting is just rife with white European men in general. I think 11 percent of musical directors were women. This is in a 2023 report. That's changing more and more.

There have been women here and there. Cate Blanchett, certainly one of them. But we got one here in Atlanta, Natalie Stutzman. That's neat. She's French. Yeah. There was a woman conductor who was back in the early 20th century, Antonia Rico. She was like the first one,

but I read that like after the first decade or so of her, like the novelty kind of wore off and she had trouble finding work. So she's like, fine, I'll just found my own symphony and she did in Denver. And she kept that position for decades until her death in I think 1989. But she really opened the door

for female conductors to come. Yeah, absolutely. And we're talking about a lot of Americans too, considering where classical music came from, not surprising that Europeans are mainly conductors, but they've also pointed out that like, they don't do it well here in America as far as having a real system in place to get great young assistant conductors and things like that,

a real pathway to leading a major orchestra in the United States. And that's something that they're, I think, trying to work on and get better at. Yeah, which would be a big deal because among conductors and musical directors, it's mostly white European men. If you look at assistant directors, it's much more diverse. So if you can start figuring out how to promote talent from there, then yeah, you'd have the whole field would be a lot more diverse, which is great. Anytime you add diversity, things expand.

Yeah. And you're right. When you look at the ranks of assistants and then even on down the line, because there are many, many people that put it together, more and more people of color are getting involved. I think only four, the 25 largest ensembles in the United States, 21 of the 25 are European still. So still a lot of work to do. Yeah. Oh, one more person I want to shout out is Simon Raddle.

He's with the Berlin Philharmonic, which is typically either the first or second best symphony in the world, depending on who is rating it at the time. I also saw Cleveland very frequently falls into the top five to 10. Nice. Cleveland rocks. Yeah, exactly. Um, but Simon Redwell, I think is kind of, uh,

uh, emblematic of the way that conductors are going these days. He started instituting, um, free lunchtime concerts, um, educational programs for underserved communities, streaming stuff online. He's doing more 20th century composers, not just people who've been dead for a couple hundred years. So it's really like, it's just, it's expanding.

I think it's always good when things expand because it's not like they're going to just abandon all the traditional stuff. You can't, why would you? But that doesn't mean you can't also incorporate new stuff too. Why do you have to go see the same thing year after year? Casual Friday, flip-flop Wednesday. That's right. He's doing all kinds of stuff.

Taco Tuesday. Yeah. That's perfect, man. I want to be in that orchestra. Yeah, for sure. Uh, well, if you want to know more about Conduors, just go online and start watching some videos of them. It's pretty fun. And you'll hear some pretty good music too.

You might even hear something you heard in Die Hard. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, Hey, Let's Get Into The Weeds With Quartz Vibration. Oh no, I saw this one. There were a couple of these because there are some people out there that know a lot more about this than we do, thankfully. Hey guys, been a consistent listener for about 10 years. Your enlightenment and

witty banter has seen me through many good times and bad. I'm a computer design engineer and listened to the atomic clock episode yesterday. I want to clarify what seems to be a misunderstanding about the resonant frequency of quartz. You commented that quartz, repeatedly, vibrates at 32,768 Hertz when energized, which is often the case of many timepieces, but quartz does not inherently vibrate at 32.768 kilohertz. Yeah, that was just different than the Hertz. Sorry. There would have to be some sort of divine miracle for quartz to vibrate at 32,768 Hertz, which just happens to be a very computer-friendly number for a timepiece. As you know, almost all computers are designed to work based on ones and zeros,

and those binary numbers are stored as a vector of binary digits, bits, so they tend to support a number of range up to some value that's a power of 2.32768. Just happens to be 2 to the power of 15, which means 32,768 is the upper limit represented by a 15-bit number in a computer that can count the ticks in a digital watch before incrementing the seconds. Now I know how other people feel when I try to explain something. Scott finishes up by saying Quartz Crystal will naturally have a variable resonant frequency depending on its size though. It could be 32.768 kilohertz or 2 megahertz or 200 megahertz depending on its size. The mass-produced 32.768 kilohertz crystal commonly used in timepieces was specifically

grown and laser trimmed to the exact size and shape to make it computer and timepiece friendly. I actually finally understand. That is excellent, Scott. He says come see us in San Jose, California sometime. Yeah, nice Scott. Thank you very much. I'm going to have to go back and reread that one so I can absorb it fully. Sure you will.

I will. Okay. Fine. If you want to be like Scott and explain something to us in depth, we love that kind of thing. It just might take us reading it a couple of times. You can send that email to stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You may know us from television. Nine-nine. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. Join us as we take on topics like listening to yourself, the challenge of self-care, and making friends as an adult. We're gonna share our struggles, we're gonna speak to experts, and we're gonna share everything we learned with you. Listen to More Better with Stephanie and Melissa

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dioza.. I'm Diosa. And I'm Mala. We're the creators of Locatora Radio, a radiophonic novela, which is a fancy way of saying A podcast. Welcome to Locatora Radio, season nine. Love at first listen.

This season, we're falling in love with podcasting all over again. With new segments, correspondence, and a new sound. Listen to Locatora Radio as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there. I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, and I'm a scientist who studies human behavior.

Many of us have experienced a moment in our lives that changes everything, that instantly divides our life into a before and an after. On my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, I talk to people about navigating these moments. Their stories are full of candor and hard-won wisdom, and you'll hear from scientists

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