Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/40

28 The most fundamental principle of time beating, and the one concerning which the young conductor is apt to be most ignorant, is the following: The baton must not usually come to a standstill at the points marking the beats, neither must it move in a straight line from one point to another, except in the case of the down beat; for it is the free and varying movement of the baton between any two beats that gives the singers or players their cue as to where the second of the two is to come. We may go further and say that the preliminary movement made before the baton arrives at what might be termed the "bottom" of the beat is actually more important than the "bottom" of the beat itself. When the baton is brought down for the first beat of the measure, the muscles contract until the imaginary point which the baton is to strike has been reached, relaxing while the hand moves on to the next point (i.e., the second beat) gradually contracting again as this point is reached, and relaxing immediately afterward as the hand moves on to the third beat. In the diagrams of baton movements given on preceding pages, the accumulating force of muscular contraction is shown by the gradually increasing thickness of the line, proceeding from the initial part of the stroke to its culmination; while the light curved line immediately following this culmination indicates the so-called "backstroke," the muscular relaxation. It is easy to see that this muscular contraction is what gives the beat its definiteness, its "bottom," while the relaxation is what gives the effect of continuity or flow. It will be noticed that when the baton is brought down on an accented beat, the beginning of the back-stroke is felt by the conductor as a sort of "rebound" of the baton from the bottom of the beat, and this sensation of rebounding helps greatly in giving "point" to these accented beats.

In order to understand fully the principle that we have just been discussing, it must be recalled that rhythm is