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This essay is part of an ongoing series on the Art of Rehearsal.
Yesterday, I explored some ideas on running a rehearsal from none other than [George] Bernard Shaw. I shared a few ideas of his that seemed to directly connect with music rehearsals and added a few thoughts of my own and those of other musicians. One that stood out to me was Knowing when to Hold and When to Fold.
Essentially, Shaw’s suggestion had to do with knowing when to accept an error in rehearsal and when to continue to drill it a little while longer in the hopes of improving it. You can read the quotes and my analysis here.
Today, I’d like to talk about a different situation to try to recognize: the appropriate place to stop the music and begin to rehearse. In Shaw’s context, just as in ours, the answer to when to stop in rehearsal had to do with a number of factors, including which rehearsal in the cycle it was. When it comes off-book rehearsals after the read-throughs and blocking, Shaw said this:
you must leave the stage and sit in the auditorium with a big notebook, and from that time forth never interrupt a scene, nor allow anyone else to interrupt it or try back.^1
This, interestingly, marks a stark divide between concert music and the stage, mostly due to the memorization factor which is largely absent in concert music. In short, here’s an example where Shaw’s advice doesn’t really hold per se for musicians (though perhaps to an extent for opera). If these rules for memorized rehearsals don’t apply, how should musicians think about when to stop?
The legendary German-American conductor, teacher, and writer Max Rudolf had this to say:
Max Rudolf, eighth music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
“With the rehearsal under way, it is for the conductor to decide when to interrupt for corrections or discussions. Experience alone teaches him up to what point his gestures and facial expressions will suffice to communicate his intentions to the players, and which details make verbal clarification imperative.”^2
It is for the conductor to decide, but how can a conductor know? For Rudolf in 1961, the answer is “experience alone.” However, Annie Murphy Paul has convincingly demonstrated a variety of evidence-based ways to lend our expertise to others, to draw it out of experts, and to simulate experiences in ways that help later. Experience in conducting at least partly boils down to having a repertoire of strategies available, and observing and recording the moves of other conductors is one way to enact one of Paul’s findings: "copiers get access to the best strategies in others' repertoires."^3
Some of this boils down to expertise, having a plan, and having an easy-to-read clock to help stay on the plan. That said, it’s helpful to have some idea of what the norms look like, perhaps with a heuristic or model or guidepost.
For some help, we turn to conductors Evan Feldman and Ari Contzius. They write:
"Directors with an acute ‘conductor ear’ will always find something that needs attention, but eventually we have to move to the next rehearsal objective. Moreover, remember that learning technical facility is a gradual process. Be sensitive to when the group has reached its limit and revisit the passage another day. Use phrases such as ‘This has made improvement today,’ and ‘Practice this at home and let's revisit it during the next rehearsal.’"^4
This has made improvement today, I love these suggested phrases for situations with young students. What about other contexts?
Last year, I was backstage ready to go on for a concert with an orchestra of seasoned musicians. The concertmaster was also waiting to go on, but he stopped to say what he had appreciated most about me during rehearsals:
“It was great during rehearsals, after working a spot for a minute or two and right before it was time to move on, you would say, ‘that was the best one yet.’ It implied improvement but it also implied that we could go further.”
That really meant a lot to me! Any conductor worth their salt knows to respect and show deference to the concertmaster. But any time a concertmaster appreciates the conductor, it’s a sign that healthy things are happening, and the concert seemed to bear that out.
But it was especially great to be able to bank that phrase as a reliable and fairly universal phrase as a succinct way to help convey:
progress,
lack of final satisfaction,
belief in the orchestra’s ability to eventually get there.
Not only does it imply that the orchestra can go further, but it almost implies that the orchestra will go further. It does a lot of work! I’m glad it was brought to my attention because to be honest, I’m not sure I had put that much thought into it.
When I work with my coaching clients, I talk about knowing when to stop and talk as a matter of goals and priorities, and understanding not whether the orchestra has perfected a spot, but whether you are satisfied with the progress now, relative to the other work you need to get done in the time allotted. These conditional statements already open up a pretty significant decision tree. While conductors are almost certainly not literally working through a decision tree in real time (instead “chunking,” using intuition and recognition, and/or processing tasks in parallel), it is helpful to be reminded of the factors at play to help train our intuition. See diagram, right. Happy rehearsing!
1. Bernard Shaw, The Art of Rehearsal (New York: S. French, 1928). https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b304399
2. Max Rudolf, “Rehearsal Techniques,” in The Conductor’s Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 275–92.
3. Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), 172
4. Feldman, Evan and Ari Contzius. Instrumental Music Education: Teaching with the Musical and the Practical in Harmony, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2021), 227-228.