Complicating leadership: choral conducting training through movement theatre practice

Daniel Galbreath,Gavin Thatcher

doi:10.14439/mpr.10.3

Abstract

Conductors are typically presumed to possess the physical, interpretative control in choral performance. Questioning that presumption, this article explores how student conductors might be encouraged to engage physically with the musical sound – and sounding bodies – of a choir. It argues that singers’ vocal performance directly and fruitfully impacts on a conductor’s gestural leadership. Borrowing techniques from established physical/movement-based performance and theatre, it explores how conductors might act as the embodied nexus of the poietic and esthesic dimensions of interpretation (Nattiez, 1990), thus collaboratively constructing a performance. To frame the discussion, a conceptualisation of the overlap between body and voice is set out. This conceptualisation emerged during the development of vocal-physical performance projects (2015-16) and was subsequently developed into a broader philosophical orientation. Focusing on issues of embodiment and empathy, this orientation is enlisted to re-examine choral conducting training practices. The influence of these explorations on Daniel Galbreath’s choral conducting teaching is outlined. Additional action-research with theatre practitioner and teacher Gavin Thatcher is then detailed to demonstrate further developments and disruptions to Galbreath’s practice. As a result, a conducting training practice emerges from these practical enquiries that exploits performers’ mutual, direct physical contact via sound.

Highlights

To conduct is to lead, and a conductor’s gestures are a form of physical leadership
This article seeks to offer answers to this question in the form of practical exercises for students and teachers of choral conducting. We have explored this complication with conducting students at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) and the English Choral Experience Conducting Course (ECE) in classes and workshops (2017-19)
We articulate the inherent relationship between leadership and discipline, drawing on circumscribed ideas espoused by Michel Foucault to consider how the “disciplined” role of the body might be reconsidered while training conductors to reconceptualize how they gesturally lead an ensemble

Summary

INTRODUCTION

To conduct is to lead, and a conductor’s gestures are a form of physical leadership. Yet the conductor is not the sole creative force in ensemble performance. This article seeks to offer answers to this question in the form of practical exercises for students and teachers of choral conducting. We articulate the inherent relationship between leadership and discipline, drawing on circumscribed ideas espoused by Michel Foucault to consider how the “disciplined” role of the body might be reconsidered while training conductors to reconceptualize how they gesturally lead an ensemble. This attitude has informed how Galbreath approached his teaching work at RBC and other workshops; as a starting point for further explorations, we outline several relevant exercises used in the classroom. We discuss how Thatcher’s disruptions and developments of Galbreath’s teaching practice offer additional possibilities whereby student conductors might “feel” the musical dually: both externalising their artistic and technical interpretations, and internalising shared, embodied vocal interpretations via singers’ sounds

Complicating leadership

CONCLUSION