Part 3 (1/2)
The best way would be to have several sub-conductors, with several electric metronomes beating before their eyes the princ.i.p.al beats of the bar.
And now,--should the orchestral conductor give the time standing or sitting down?
If, in theatres where they perform scores of immense length, it is very difficult to endure the fatigue of remaining on foot the whole evening, it is none the less true that the orchestral conductor, when seated, loses a portion of his power, and cannot give free course to his animation, if he possess any.
Then, should he conduct reading from a full score, or from a first violin part (leader's copy), as is customary in some theatres? It is evident that he should have before him a full score. Conducting by means of a part containing only the princ.i.p.al instrumental cues, the ba.s.s and the melody, demands a needless effort of memory from a conductor; and moreover, if he happens to tell one of the performers, whose part he cannot examine, that he is wrong, exposes him to the chance of the reply: ”How do you know?”
The disposal and grouping of the players and chorus-singers come also within the province of the orchestral conductor; particularly for concerts. It is impossible to indicate arbitrarily the best method of grouping the performers in a theatre or concert-room; the shape and arrangement of the interior of these places necessarily influence the course to be taken in such a case. Let us add, that it depends, moreover, upon the number of performers requiring to be grouped; and, on some occasions, upon the style of composition adopted by the author whose work is to be performed.
In general, for concerts, the following disposal of the orchestra seems best:--An amphitheatre of eight, or at least, five rows is indispensable.
The semicircular form is the best for the amphitheatre. If it is large enough to contain the whole orchestra, the entire ma.s.s of instrumentalists can be disposed of along these rows; the first violins in front on the right, facing the public; the second violins in front on the left; the violas, in the middle, between the two groups of violins; the flutes, hautboys, clarinets, horns, and ba.s.soons behind the first violins; a double rank of violoncellos and double-ba.s.ses behind the second violins; the trumpets, cornets, trombones, and tubas behind the violas; the rest of the violoncellos and double-ba.s.ses behind the wooden wind instruments; the harps in the foreground, close to the orchestral conductor; the kettle-drums, and other instruments of percussion behind or in the centre of the bra.s.s instruments; the orchestral conductor, turning his back to the public, at the base of the orchestra, and near to the foremost desks of the first and second violins.
There should be a horizontal flooring, or stage, more or less wide, extending in front of the first rows of the amphitheatre. On this flooring the chorus-singers should be placed, in form of a fan turned three-quarters towards the public, so that all shall be able easily to see the motions of the orchestral conductor. The grouping of the chorus-singers, in consonance with their respective order of voice, will differ according as the author has written in three, four, or six parts.
At any rate, the women--sopranos and contraltos--should be in front, seated; the tenors standing behind the contraltos; and the ba.s.ses standing behind the sopranos.
The solo-singers should occupy the centre, and foremost, part of the front stage, and should always place themselves in such a way as to be able, by slightly turning the head, to see the conducting-stick.
For the rest, I repeat, these indications can be but approximate; they may be, for many reasons, modified in various ways.
At the Conservatoire, in Paris, where the amphitheatre is composed of only four or five rows, not circular, and cannot therefore contain the whole orchestra, the violins and violas are on the stage; while the ba.s.ses and wind instruments alone occupy the rows; the chorus is seated on the front of the stage, facing the public, and the women, sopranos and contraltos, turning their backs directly upon the orchestral conductor, are utterly unable to see his motions. The arrangement is very inconvenient for this portion of the chorus.
It is of the greatest consequence that the chorus-singers placed on the front of the stage shall occupy a plane somewhat lower than that of the violins; otherwise they would considerably deaden the sound of these instruments.
For the same reason, if there are no other rows for the choir in front of the orchestra, it is absolutely needful that the women should be seated, and the men remain standing up; in order that the voices of the tenors and ba.s.ses, proceeding from a more elevated point than those of the sopranos and contraltos, may come forth freely, and be neither stifled nor intercepted.
When the presence of the chorus-singers in front of the orchestra is not necessary, the conductor must take care to send them away; since this large number of human bodies injures the sonority of the instruments. A symphony performed by an orchestra thus more or less stifled, loses much of its effect.
There are yet other precautions, relative especially to the orchestra, which the conductor may also take, to avoid certain defects in performance.
The instruments of percussion, placed, as I have indicated, upon one of the last rows of the orchestra, have a tendency to modify the rhythm, and slacken the time. A series of strokes on the drum struck at regular intervals in a quick movement, like the following:--
[Ill.u.s.tration]
will sometimes lead to the complete destruction of a fine rhythmical progression, by checking the onward bound of the rest of the orchestra, and destroying the unity. Almost always, the drum player, through not observing the original time given by the conductor, is somewhat behindhand in striking his first stroke. This r.e.t.a.r.dment, multiplied by the number of strokes which follow the first one, soon produces--as may be imagined--a rhythmical discrepancy of the most fatal effect. The conductor,--all whose efforts to re-establish unanimity are then in vain--has only one thing left to do; which is, to insist that the long drum player shall count beforehand the number of strokes to be given in the pa.s.sage in question, and that, knowing his part, he shall no longer look at his copy, but keep his eyes constantly fixed upon the conducting-stick; by which means he will follow the time without the slightest want of precision.
Another r.e.t.a.r.dment, arising from a different cause, frequently takes place in the trumpet-parts; it is when they contain a quick flow of pa.s.sages such as this:--
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The trumpet-player, instead of taking breath _before_ the first of these three bars, takes breath at their commencement, during the quaver-rest, A; and, not counting for anything the short time it has taken him to breathe, gives its whole value to the quaver-rest, which thus becomes super-added to the value of the first bar. The result of this is the following:--
[Ill.u.s.tration]
an effect all the worse because the final accent, struck at the commencement of the third bar by the rest of the orchestra, comes a third of the time too slow in the trumpets, and destroys unity in the striking of the last chord.