Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/55

Rh can only legitimately arouse its appropriate imagery when the essential idea has been supplied beforehand in the form of a title or program, and that even then the effect upon various individuals is, and may well be, quite different, since each one has the music thrown, as it were, upon the screen of his own personal experience.

It will be noted that in this discussion we are constantly using the word expression from the twofold standpoint of composer and performer, each having an indispensable part in it, and neither being able to get along without the other. But in our treatment of conducting, we shall need to come back again and again to the idea of expression from the standpoint of interpretation, and in directing a piece of music we shall now take it for granted that the composer has said something which is worthy of being heard, and that as the intermediary between composer and audience, we are attempting to interpret to the latter what the former has expressed in his composition. It should be noted in this connection that wrong interpretation is possible in music, even as in literature. One may so read a poem that the hearer, without being in any way to blame, will entirely miss the point. So also may one conduct a musical work, whether it be a child's song or a symphonic poem, in such a fashion that neither performers nor audience gain a proper conception of what it means.

In the case of vocal music, the key to the emotional content of the work may almost always be found by carefully studying the words. In preparing to conduct choral singing, master the text, therefore; read it aloud as though declaiming to an audience; and when you come to the performance, see that your vocalists sing the music in such a way that the audience will be able