The Education of a Young Conductor

by ERICH LEINSDORF

FOR many years I have maintained the theory that a lack of opera companies constitutes the most severe handicap for the American conductor. Our education in Europe was facilitated by a network of opera houses, comparable in terms of the United States to the magnificent organization of minor league baseball, without which the sixteen clubs of the major leagues could not possibly obtain the kind of talent that makes this game so stimulating. The minor leagues of the operatic world, the several hundred theaters throughout the provinces, were the training grounds which formed the conductors who later made the history of music significant.

With its handful of opera companies, this country has nothing comparable, idle existing opera companies here, furthermore, have no opportunities for the young apprentice because the high cost of all labor and the resulting shortage of preparation time make it impossible to take on an apprentice conductor.

John N. Burk wrote an article for the November, 1953, Atlantic Monthly which emphasized all these points. It should have been a great pleasure and a considerable satisfaction to me to find my own arguments eloquently stated. But when I read that article, my old thesis sounded not quite satisfactory, and I could not help feeling that even with more opera houses we might have some difficulty with our young conductors. We live in a society which is clearly geared to the pre-eminence of business. The professions take second place; it is an honored second place, but it is second place.

I he professional man who wishes to succeed today must be several other things besides a professional man. He must fill several other roles: he must be an able administrator; he must have facility for speaking in public at luncheons, dinners, clubs, meetings, fund-raising campaigns; and he must be capable in politics and business.

This situation is vexing not only to conductors but to scientists as well. The scientist, however, has loss of a grievance than the musician and the artist. He rides on the crest of the wave; he does not work for money-losing organizations. He works mostly lor industry or for endowed research. Yet the scientist complains that the amount of business and administration that he has to attend to takes him away from Ins essential scientific work.

The political and business requirements are not entirely symptoms of our own times. The artist who has wanted to succeed has always been more or less of a diplomat or politician — call it what you will; and some of our very greatest artists excelled in business. Beethoven, to mention one of the immortals, made very shrewd business arrangements with his publishers about how, where, and when he was to be paid. There were others of equal ability, and therefore it would be unfair and inaccurate to call it a sign of our times that an artist has to be adept in the ways of business and polities.

The other requirements, however — especially those of administration and of organization which face the conductor are new and are very difficult to combine with artistic accomplishment.

The young man who enters a eonductorial career (if that is possible on these terms) will find as his most likely opportunity a community orchestra in one of the several hundred towns which have such organizations. He may find only a town with a willingness and interest to have such a community orchestra, and he himself may have to create the organization which will serve as the field for his own talents.

The amount of non musical work which awaits him in either case is stupendous. If he has to he the founder of a new orchestra, it will not matter too much what kind of musician he is; only his organizational ability will count. But let us assume that he has the chance of taking an already existing organization and becoming its musical head. He will have some six or eight programs during a winter season, and it will be very hard for him to find sufficient days and hours during which to sit down quietly and alone with the scores which he is to prepare. The telephone calls, the correspondence, everything connected with the running of the orchestra, will fall upon him. There will bo hardly any budget for a staff to handle matters of routine; he will be called upon to do all of it.

It will be in certain ways a v aluable experience. If the young man is able and adaptable, he will emerge as a thoroughly professional organizer, and the chances are that he will discharge his musical duties with considerable élan and great success. But this m itself means very little. I lie talent and the original success are down payments on an enormously large debt.

There is a promise and a potential behind each talent, and the obligation of a man is to come as dose to fulfilling his potential as he possibly can. From that course there should be no deviation. The necessity of being a man of business affairs as well as an artist must affect the development of a talent. I have seen young men of unquestionable talent — of so much talent that a great many opportunities were offered to them -who, being success-conscious, career-conscious, practical-minded, and ambitious, look the opportunities and frittered themselves away. I am referring to cases which I have noticed by chance and coincidence, and which have never come to the attention of the broad public — young men who started out with fervor, talent, interest, and ambition not only to succeed but to grow, to learn. It one should talk to them tomorrow, one would hear that they still cherish those ambitions. But the pressures of practical life are taking a great toll. They are accepting too many jobs, and with each job too many extraneous and nonmusical tasks.

A man, to further himself, his career, and his opportunities, will not be content with directing a choir in a given city. He will also take on an amateur orchestra in another city a hundred miles away, He will go once a week to rehearse the amateur orchestra. Even assuming that this orchestra is managed by its own members, the conductor will have to drive 200 miles every seven days, and in the meantime he will have to be at his musical best. The hours of the drive are obv iously not only lost to his musical task; they are tiring. He will arrive after a hundred miles on our United Stales highwavs a tired man; he will return to his home in the early hours of the morning exhausted; ho will start off the next day with these overlong and overtiresome drives in his bones. The tasks and duties which ho has to meet that day will suffer. He will overdo things; and when one overdoes, one’s work suffers in quality; and if the quality suffers, there can be very little in the way of development and growth.

There is also a different kind of burden — an unfair burden placed upon the native conductor by community leaders. If an orchestra engages a man from abroad, the members of various clubs and committees may find him extremely attractive and charming. If their new lion knows no English, it will be very convenient for him because he can refuse all speaking engagements. That means he does not have to waste his time collecting his thoughts, and he does not have to spend many hours preparing something appealing and sensible to say.

The native young man has no such luck; he is expected to appear at as many fundions as he can possibly make. He is expected to sit on many platforms and listen to other people speak. He is expected to eat his luncheon in the company of one hundred or two hundred or three hundred people. His digestion is expected to withstand the impact of those ghastly meals. He is supposed to help in running the organization. And all this from a young man who probably needs more time for his own musical preparation than the fellow who is hired on the basis of already having an established reputation and many years of experience.

So the problem is not alone the missing opera companies. If we had as many opera companies as Europe, our young conductors might be expected to sew the costumes together, make the translations, act as make-up men, and move scenery in their spare time — they would surely be expected to do a lot of things that would take them away from their essential tasks.

Let there be no doubt that the desire for great native artists can be fulfilled only when the talents who live in our midst in great numbers are permitted to develop as artists. That does not mean that they need ivory towers; that does not mean that, they need cotton and sterilized bandages to keep everything down-to-earth and realistic away from their tender little souls. It merely means that the largest part of their working lives should be spent, in freedom from business, in freedom from administration, in freedom from the worries of promotion, advertising, box office, luncheons, dinners, meetings. There is always going to be a certain amount of this connected with these professions, and I do not wish to lay down here any laws or any utopian theories, but the young men who come up today seem to me to be executives with a side endeavor of conducting. That proportion must be reversed if we are to expect talents of any consequence to mature and develop into great masters who will be able to take over the musical reins of this country.