Restraint

I'm reading 'How to build a character' Classic Stanislavski.

The form is that of a diary of his time at acting school in Russia. His acting school is somewhat more hardcore than my current short course at the AC. There is a chapter on the virtue of 'Restraint'. This is a virtue certainly one I need to acquire and in his example he uses the contrast of two conductors of his time.

On my list of things to do before I die (you know the list, sky diving, have kids, go to Paris, etc etc) is to Conduct an orchestra.

I learned violin for close to a decade in my youth. I was terrible. Let's be clear. I almost never practiced and moving around so much meant I never had a consistent tutor or group to play with. By the time I attended Blackwood high I was playing second violin with a group of about 8 accomplished musicians. They were all my age and much better than me (at music anyway). I cringe at what I must have put them through. I was rarely on cue or key. My timing was erratic and I never quite got how to tune by ear. This was purely a case of self discipline - and I didn't have any. I was struggling with scales and Greensleeves while my strings group were effortlessly playing Mozart. I kept trying though. I just hated being alone and music practice is a so very solitary. I did love playing with that group, I despised myself for constantly letting them down. I'll add here I was 14 years old, so I think we can throw in some teenage angst to the experience as well.

Pachabel's Canon (D major) was my Everest. It still is.

Because once. Just *once* I got it. I played with my group. The music flowed between us. From first violin to second, to viola onto cello and double bass and back to first. As a round the complexity of the melody and counterpoint flowed between us all. I will hold in my heart forever that feeling of flow and music.

Another of my favourite pieces is the 1812. You know the one. It has the cannons and fireworks.

Whenever I attend a symphony performance I am transfixed by the conductor. He/She is the focal point for all that music. If you've ever seen a conductor's score you'll have an idea of just how much they're putting together when up there. They dance and paint and bring forth the power of all those individual musicians.
Each instrument making it's own sound, complimenting their group, string and brass and woodwind and percussion and keyboards. Over 100 sounds coming together into one whole piece of music, focused through that individual at the front. Their back is to you the audience, you do not see their face, they do not gauge the audience. The conductor belongs to the orchestra, to the music.

I'll quote here what Stanislavsi says on the topic of restaint. He describes perfectly why I want to conduct an orchestra one day.

... We need only apply the slightest touch or two to make a role come to life, to reach its finished form. Without those slightest of touches it will lack the brilliance of a perfect finish.

"Yet how often we see a role on the stage that is quite lacking in that slightest touch. It may be well worked out and one still misses that all-important element. A talented director may come along and drop just a word, the actor will catch fire and his role will grow with all the colours of his soul's prism.

"This brings to mind the conductor of a military band who was well known mainly because he used to walk along the boulevards every day beating out whole concerts with his arms. Leading his band he used the same tempo. In the beginning when your attention was drawn by the sounds, you would listen, but in five minutes you would only be watching the automatic movements of his baton and seeing the whites pages of his score, as he methodically turned leaf after leaf with his left hand. Now he was not a poor musician. His band was a good one and was well known through out the city. Yet his music was uncompelling because the most important element -- its inner content -- was never revealed and never reached the listeners. All the component parts of each piece of music were precisely and smoothly performed. They followed one another, however, in such indistinguishable form that the listeners could now tell them apart or understand them. Each part lacked the desired touch which would have given a finish to it and to the work as a whole.

"We have many actors on our stages who beat out their parts in this same way, going through whole plays with the same sweep and paying no attention to the necessary 'touch' that provides 'finish'.

"In contrast to my recollection of this baton-waving conductor I remember Arthur Nikisch, small of stature but a great musician who could say far more with sounds than most people can with words.

"With the tiny tip of his baton he drew an ocean of sound from his orchestra with which he painted broad musical pictures

"Nor should we forget how Nikisch, before the performance began, looked all his musicians over with meticulous care, then waited until absolute silence fell in the hall before raising his baton and concentrating on its tip the attention of the entire orchestra and audience. At that instant his baton said Attention! I am about to begin!

"Even in this preparatory moment Nikisch possessed that intangible 'touch' which so beautifully completed his every motion. To Nikisch there was something precious in every whole note, eighth and sixteenth note, every dot, and the mathematically precise counterpoint, the delicious naturals, the dissonances even and the harmony. All this was performed by him with great relish, without fear of dragging. Nikisch never lost track of a single sound, never failed to give it full value. With his baton he extracted everything that could be drawn from the instruments and from the very souls of his musicians. Meantime his left hand was was working with the expressive colouring of a painter's brush, now smoothing and now slowing the music, now rousing and increasing it. What remarkable restraint he possessed, as well as mathematical precision, which did not interfere with but encouraged his inspiration. His tempi were on the same high level. His lento was far from monotonous, boring, long drawn out like the tone of a bagpipe, the way the bandmaster hammered it out like the ticking of a metronome. Nikisch's slow tempo contained within itself the rapid ones. He never hurried the music or held it back. It was only at the end, when all had been said, that Nikisch would hasten or slow the tempo in order either to catch up what had been help up or to return to what an earlier intentionally quick tempo had taken away. For this he had prepared a musical phrase in a new tempo. He seemed to say, 'Never hurry! Express everything that is concealed in the music.' Now we come to the very apex of the phrase! Who could foretell how he would set the crown on the whole work? Would it be new, great slow movement or, on the contrary, would he give it an unexpectedly bold, quick, emphatic ending?

"Of how many conductors can one say that he knew how to penetrate into, guess at and catch all the fine shadings of a piece of music and do to it what Nikisch did with such sensitivity, not only cull them out but also to convey and illume them for the public? Nikisch did it because his work was performed not only with magnificent restraint but also with brilliantly keen finish.

Perhaps in my interest of conducting an orchestra, I touched upon that point of restraint.

Of showmanship and art combined with skill, discipline and precision.