“I wish you would have insisted...”
My wife and I are unashamed fans of Star-anything. Trek or Wars, it makes little difference. Recently, we watched an episode of Star Trek: Picard (our current favorite show) in which a character was able to hear the thoughts of others that was vaguely reminiscent of a gauche but memorable 90’s film with a questionable lead, What Women Want.
I was reminded of this while receiving feedback from the outstanding musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra during a conducting workshop led by Marin Alsop. This took place a few weeks back. The musicians did most of the talking that day and they offered a wealth of valuable information - much of it information that might ordinarily get left unsaid. They revealed information about what musicians really want, information that often gets missed or otherwise garbled by well-meaning conductors like myself.
One of the musicians - a seasoned member of the group with a lifetime of orchestral experience, said the following to a colleague of mine in response to their conducting (although something similar could have been said to myself and most of the participants). The musician said: “I wish you would have insisted on ____.” This musician was saying out loud something I think is kept locked away in the minds of many musicians when there is not a forum for feedback.
“I wish you would have insisted on ____.” It doesn’t really matter what goes in the blank (something about tempo, rhythm, balance, sonority, phrasing, etc.) — it was clear to the musicians that the following sequence had taken place:
conductor wanted one thing,
the players did another, and
the conductor eventually capitulated.
To me, there is a lot to unpack there. It says that orchestra musicians recognize that there are certain outcomes in orchestral performance that no one player would necessarily prefer, but that happen when you bring the orchestra together - you could call it an emergent property or a group dynamic. Or, it says that there is a built-in, healthy tension between the orchestra and the conductor, a tension that the orchestra is expecting. Or a combination of both and possibly other factors.
Regardless, it was a reminder that individual musicians are rooting for and even expecting the conductor to:
have a reasoned, musical point of view,
be able to skillfully execute it, and sometimes,
be able to respectfully bring the musicians along through concise, informed persuasion.
Above all, musicians want to give polished performances that mean something for themselves and for audiences. The age of the imperious maestro is thankfully over. As conductors continue to attempt to address the failings musical autocracy, it is sometimes easy to set out to demonstrate a healthy, collaborative ethos, but sometimes cause counterproductive musical outcomes in the middle of an otherwise laudable pursuit.
Conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in a conducting workshop with Marin Alsop.
I am not experienced enough to speak from personal authority about the world’s 100 best professional orchestras, but I can speak to a variety of experiences many other groups, and I think the advice from this musician is true with student and other types of ensembles as well.
We must make choices wisely and know when performance feedback reflects poor decision making on our part!! But so long as we have an intelligible approach, and the stick technique to enact it, we do musicians a service by sticking to our intentions in order to give those intentions a chance to be heard and tried on for size.
We can either become caught up in trying to reflect the wishes of the musicians back on them (this presumes we can always know what those might be), or unnecessarily and counterproductively capitulating, or worst of all, dithering and splitting the difference. It would be easy for a conductor of modest experience to feel that they should give in to an orchestra that at first seems to resist their apparent collective approach. But we have to remember that every individual in the group is just that - an individual - and they have their own unique views which may or may not match the rest of the group. That is not choosing to be a dictator, that is choosing to respect each individual member of the orchestra, and not just the totality of the… collective… (this is a Trek joke…)
And what those individuals likely want is a chance to give an excellent, authentic, unified performance with a clear sense of intent. And that intention must be adequately conveyed, sometimes even requiring that we insist! But don’t take it from me, take it from