Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/160

148 Of these four, the last two are by no means the least important; and sometimes it is better to choose the person who has less skill in reading or technique but who has sufficient innate musical feeling to enable him not only to follow a soloist's voice or a conductor's beat intelligently, but even to anticipate the dynamic and tempo changes made by singer or conductor.

The minds of conductor and accompanist must work as one. In stopping his chorus for a correction, it should be possible for the conductor to assume that the accompanist has followed him so carefully and is in such close musical rapport with him that, before the conductor speaks, the accompanist has already found the badly executed passage, and the instant the conductor cites page and score, is ready to play the phrase or interval that was wrongly rendered. The same sort of thing ought of course to take place whenever there is a change of tempo, and it is to be noted that in all these cases the accompanist must make a musical response to the conductor's interpretation, and not merely an obedient one.

Having chosen the best available person to do the accompanying, the next thing in order will be to treat the accompanist in such a way that he will always do his best and be a real help in causing the chorus to produce effective results. Next to the conductor, the accompanist is undoubtedly the most important factor in producing fine choral singing; hence our reference to the accompanist as the conductor's coworker. The first thing to note in connection with getting the best possible help from the accompanist is that he shall always be treated in a pleasant, courteous way, and the conductor must learn at the very outset not to expect impossible things from him; not to blame him for things that may go wrong when some one else is really responsible; and in general, to do his utmost to bring about and to maintain friendly,