It always feels strange once the orchestra stops playing annd its the composer that bows for the applause.
In addition to all the good answers previously given, a conductor interprets what the composer has written. And different conductors may create very different interpretations of the same piece. They can set the basic tempo faster or slower, they can get the orchestra to really lean in to a particular musical phrase or de-emphasise it, they can bring out the horns at one point or hush them a bit and let us focus on the oboe or piccolo… A good conductor has studied and notated the entire score for some time before they and the orchestra even begin to rehearse.
So, part of that bow at the end can be to say, “what do you think of this interpretation compared to all the other times you’ve heard this famous symphony?” Then they usually turn around and wave the orchestra members to stand, which means, “and didn’t these guys do a great job executing it!?”
Keeps the beat and tells you to ramp up, ramp down (volume ) and when to stop or start. He points the stick at your instrument group, makes eye contact, to let you know.
I was only in band (we had band not orchestra) in 5-8th grade.
But I’ll tell you, it’s very intuitive. I never was like “what’s he mean?”.
It’s just like very obvious what the conductor* is indicating to you.
They wear VR contacts and are tapping little people on the “screen” to make the noises.
Orchestra conductor weighing in here. This is the correct answer.
The secret is in the practice before the concert. Over many weeks, months the conducter truly “sets the tone”, listening to each individual instrument, their interplay, the tempo, the balance. The conductor knows the weaknesses and strengths of the orchestra, and during the concert uses the stick to create accents, to control the speed, to make sure any hurdle is removed. It doesn’t have to be a stick, some use just their hands.
If you want to ruin a concert’s day, change the thermostat a few clicks lol.
Keeping the music out of their eyes
They’re kind of a live mixing engineer, it’s really hard to coordinate a piece between more than about 6 others without a conductor to give feedback, cues, and tend to the overall sound (tone, dynamics, rhythm).
Yeah when you’re playing an instrument in a symphony you have a very, very narrow ability to hear and understand everything that’s going on. Your own instrument is (usually) in your face, you might be in a section with a bunch of the same or similar instruments that is drowning stuff out, everyone is facing away from you and the acoustic echo is weird, etc.
Conductor stands right in the middle of it all and can actually hear everything. A conductor can guide entire sections, or even easily pick out a specific player and get them to be louder, quieter, slow down, etc.
Each player in the symphony is paying attention to that person and they all take cues from them. It’s pretty wild.
Players are playing instruments. Conductor is playing the players.
What composers are doing when they wave around that tiny stick is probably the same thing the rest of us are doing when we wave our tiny sticks around.
But for what conductors are doing, see the other answers here.
Drying it off.
Setting the tempo and keeping the instruments all synchronised
Essentially, musicians in an orchestra play the instruments, while the conductor plays the musicians. In both contexts they guide the instrument to make a specific note at a specific time, intensity and timbre, for a specific duration.
As for how the musicians interpret the movements, not sure. Perhaps it’s unique to every orchestra and relies on the familiarity between musician and conductor.
As someone who used to be in a (casual) orchestra, I can tell you that the musicians can interpret the conductor because they’ve rehearsed it extensively beforehand. The conductor is really just there is remind the musicians to do the things that they’ve practiced beforehand.
As for the baton’s movements, that’s meant to indicate the speed that the music is played at. Nobody can keep perfect rhythm, and in a large orchestra, the echoes and travel speed of sound becomes especially disorienting. It will start to sound like you are playing off-time from the rest of the orchestra. In those cases, everyone has to ignore the sound of their music and only use the conductor to figure out where in the song they are, and they just have to trust that it’ll sound correct to the audience
I just recently attended to the Opera “The magic flute/Die Zauberflöte” so reading the replies here gave me a lot of answeres to questions I was to lazy to ask for myself.
Anyway, have soneone else here seen that play?
Funny thing is you can actually conduct pretty well with just your hand.
Also a good conductor is usually an astoundingly good player of multiple instruments themselves.
It’s kind of like how football (soccer) team managers are retired players that can still play better than the entire stadium wearing loafers and a suit.
This is rage bait
