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Soloway, Abigail 2018 Thesis

Title: From Biber to Barber and Beyond: The Evolution of Orchestral from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Centuries Advisor: Marjorie Hirsch Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Ronald Feldman Released: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No

From Biber to Barber and Beyond: The Evolution of Orchestral Conducting from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Centuries

by

Abigail J. Soloway

Marjorie Hirsch and Ronald Feldman, Advisors

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Major

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

15 April 2018 !1

Acknowledgments

I would first like to thank my thesis advisors for their unwavering support. Professor

Hirsch rose above and beyond the call of duty time and time again, reading countless drafts of this paper in its nascent stages and helping me to weave a coherent thread through centuries of musical history. For these and many other reasons besides, I am incredibly grateful for her patient encouragement. Professor Feldman mentored me through four years of conducting at

Williams, and I am honored to be able to share the stage with him as a conductor on my final performance with the Berkshire Symphony as an encapsulation of all that I have learned.

Though I had two official thesis advisors, I gained many additional mentors along the way. I am grateful to Erin Nafziger, co-director of the Williams Workshop; Matthew Gold, director of the I/O New ; and Muneko Otani and Joana Genova, my teachers, for the roles that they all played in my musical and personal development.

Finally, I would like to thank the many volunteer who dedicated their time and talent to make the dream of completing a performance thesis in conducting a reality, as well as my friends and family for their moral support and enthusiastic attendance at the many that this thesis entailed. !2

Introduction

Compared to other musical disciplines, the field of orchestral conducting is relatively new. Though the origins of conducting are rooted in medieval times, the modern construct of a single leader standing, with a baton in hand, in front of a group of musicians, did not take shape until the nineteenth century. Orchestral conducting has undergone considerable and nearly constant change over the last several centuries. During the era, dynamics, markings, and consistent score notation had not yet been standardized. In addition, the use of a designated conductor was not yet commonplace; rather, the or concertmaster would provide direction from where they sat. During the Romantic era, the model of the -conductor began to emerge as orchestral music came to be performed in the hall, rather than solely in the church and court. Today, the field of conducting continues to burgeon as modern conductors reckon with conducting in the technology.

As an orchestral conductor, I undertook the challenge of conducting great works from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries in order to experience firsthand the progression of orchestral repertoire and the role of the conductor. As such, I set out to conduct a concert of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works (, No.3 in , BWV 1048; Johann Sebastian Bach, Concerto for 2 in D minor, BWV 1043; and Heinrich Biber, Battalia) with the newly formed Chamber of Williams, intending to use historical practice to inform modern performance. To provide a representative sample of the eighteenth century, I conducted the Williams Opera Workshop in presenting works from The

Marriage of Figaro and by . The works I conducted from the nineteenth century were more diverse, drawing from The Tales of Hoffman by Jacques !3

Offenbach and The Pirates of Penzance by Arthur Sullivan and William Gilbert. From the twentieth century, I selected Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, also performed with the

Chamber Orchestra of Williams. The Adagio for Strings contains similarities to the Romantic repertoire of the century before but with an updated harmonic vocabulary. Finally, I conducted the twenty-first century work There Once Was by Angélica Negrón, which is a setting of a series of poems by Edward Lear for SATB , accordion, and live electronics, with an ensemble formed expressly for the performance.

Though no work can be fully representative of the century during which it was composed, the aforementioned selections provided an intentional sample of works from the

Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary periods, affording me with the opportunity to grow as a conductor through a broad array of experiences. In conducting seventeenth century works, I strove to inform modern performance with historically accurate information, a challenging endeavor due to the lack of clearly expressed intent from the . The conducting of Classical works involved fewer interpretative enigmas, though I still relied on inference and research in large part. In the Romantic and Contemporary periods, composers were more in the habit of providing performers and conductors with specific performance markings, allowing the conductor greater insight into the desire of the composers. Conducting Baroque and

Contemporary works provides different sets of challenges: when conducting , the conductor must also play the role of musicologist in order to best understand the context in which the composer was writing. In Contemporary music, the role of the conductor is less interpretive, for the desires of the composers have been expressed within recent memory. The use of technology now allows for a conductor to instantaneously read interviews and hear recordings !4 put forth by the composer, eliminating any questions of intent or interpretation. Thus, in the progression through the centuries, the role of the conductor has shifted from an interpretive role guided largely by the conductor’s own preferences to more of an empirical study in which the conductor strives primarily to help the orchestra navigate interpretive choices that have been expressed by the composer. Traveling through history by means of orchestral, operatic, and choral repertoire, I undertook the role of historically informed conductor in order to gain a deeper understanding of the ever-changing dynamic between the composer and the conductor.

A Brief History of Conducting

As this project was intended to trace the stylistic evolution of conducting throughout several centuries of European and American history, I first embarked on a musicological study of the field of conducting in order to understand the context behind the earliest works I was conducting. Perhaps the first early modern conductor was Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687).

Lully worked in the court of the French king Louis XIV beginning in 1652 and was a prolific composer as well as performer. In addition to being a pioneer of Baroque opera, Lully indirectly influenced the field of early orchestral conducting. In order to unite dancers and orchestra in his compositions, Lully struck the ground rhythmically with a large staff, as was the practice at the time. On January 8, 1687, however, Lully was conducting a composition he had written in order to celebrate Louis XIV’s recent recovery from illness, and reportedly struck his own toe with the staff he held. He later died due to complications of the wound, which became gangrenous.1

1 "Jean Baptiste Lully." New World Encyclopedia, 21 Aug 2014, Accessed 9 Mar 2018, www.newworldencyclopedia.org. !5

Though the tale may be apocryphal, scholars postulate that this incident instigated a period of experimentation during which early conductors explored other means of rhythmic direction.2

In the time of Bach, when orchestral music was gaining prominence, ensembles would not have been led by a designated conductor, but rather either the harpsichordist or the concertmaster. Unlike in modern performance practice, the would often be located at the direct center of the ensemble with the orchestra gathered around it, which would have been a visible position to the other players and thus a natural location from which to lead. In Bach works such as the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, the harpsichord plays a central role, and thus the harpsichordist would have been the leader of the ensemble. In other works in which the continuo section plays a less central role, the job of conductor and leader would have fallen to the concertmaster of the orchestra. Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach wrote of his father’s practice of conducting from the keyboard:

The keyboard, entrusted by our fathers with full command, is in the best position to assist not only with the other instruments, but with the entire ensemble in maintaining a uniform pace….The tone of the keyboard, correctly placed, stands in the center of the ensemble and can be clearly heard by all….Finally, it is easy (and often necessary) to make minor changes of tempo by this means because exact perception will not be hindered by the keyboard’s excessive noise, and in addition those performers located in front of or beside the keyboard will find the simultaneous motion of both hands an inescapable, visual portrayal of the beat.3

Thus, the practice of the keyboardist leading the orchestra served both an auditory and a visual function: those around the keyboardist could see his hands, and those who stood farther from the harpsichord could rely on the rhythmic continuo part to maintain tempo.

2 Grove Music Online, “Jean-Baptiste Lully,” (Grove Dictionaries, 2001), Accessed 4 December 2017, http:// www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

3 Elliot Galkin, A History of Orchestral Conducting in Theory and Practice (Pendragon Press, 1988), 443-444. !6

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the role of conductor-performer shifted to that of composer-conductor. Guillame-Alexis (1756-1840) was one of the first composers to champion the use of the baton during his tenure with the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

Other prominent composer-conductors who shaped the field of conducting in its nascent stages were Louis Spohr, Carl Maria Von Weber, and . Louis Spohr (1784-1859) held the position of Kapellmeister in Göthe, , beginning in 1805. His conducting was notable in that he used a large sheaf of paper, the precursor to the modern baton. A spectator noted:

Herr Spohr’s leading with a roll of paper, without the least noise, and without the slightest contortion of countenance, might be called a graceful Leading if that word were sufficient to express the precious influence impressed by his movements upon the whole mass, strange both to him and to itself. To this happy talent in Herr Spohr I ascribe in great part the excellence and precision—the imposing power, as well as the soft blending of this numerous Orchestra with the voices of the Singers in the execution of The Creation.4

The addition of a designated conductor to the orchestra allowed for new levels of precision in execution.

The shift of role from composer to composer-conductor came naturally as the role in society of the shifted. During much of the Baroque period, a composer was seen as more servant or household worker in a court rather than an artistic genius, but as this began to change and composers were held in higher esteem, the composer became the conductor in order to shape the music to his whim and will. Some of the earlier treatises to standardize conducting and clearly define the role of the conductor were written by Wagner and Berlioz.5 In addition to

4Adam Carse, The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz, (Broude Brothers, 1949), 341.

5 Galkin, A History of Orchestral Conducting, 297. !7 standardizing notation systems (bar numbers, rehearsal letters, and clearer tempo markings),

Wagner underscored the importance of the conductor in dictating tempo changes, facilitating dynamic clarity, and clearly delineating solos.While the Wagner treatise on conducting, published in 1879, is the first work of its kind to clearly lay out the expressive, rhythmic, and technical jobs of the modern conductor, Berlioz’s ground-breaking Treatise on Instrumentation

(1844) contains a lengthy philosophical section on the role of the conductor that laid the framework for many of the more nuanced analyses laid out by Wagner. Berlioz begins his discussion of conducting with an impassioned rant about the many inadequacies of a bad conductor, and, in turn, the potential for a bad conductor to ruin a performance. The following, however, is Berlioz’s ideal of an exemplary conductor:

The conductor must be able both to see and to hear; he must be agile and energetic; he must know the construction, principles, and range of the instruments; he must be able to read a score and must have, besides the special talent whose ingredients we shall attempt to describe, other almost indefinable gifts without which an invisible bond cannot be struck between him and those whom he directs; without them, the ability to convey his feelings to them is missing, and consequently the power, control and direction, will slip from him completely. He is not then a leader and director, but simply, a time-beater— assuming that he can beat time and divide the bar into regular units.6

The modern field of conducting has undergone less radical change in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than it did in the several centuries preceding. The role of the conductor changes when the composer’s wishes can be elucidated easily, through interviews, recordings, and specific score markings. According to contemporary conductor Elizabeth Green, modern conducting relies on “clarity of intent, not just clarity of beat.”7 While understanding with

6 Hugh MacDonald, Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise: A Translation and Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 337.

7 Elizabeth Green et al. The modern conductor: a college text on conducting based on the technical principles of Nicolai Malko as set forth in his The conductor and his baton (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004), ix. !8 certainty the intent of seventeenth-century composers is difficult and controversial, working with living composers and conducting new music allows for collaboration between the composer and the conductor, unlocking the potential for a trinity of sorts between the performer, the composer, and the conductor.

Bridging the Divide between Baroque and Modern:

Performance Practice in Biber and Bach

The primary challenge in conducting a program consisting of Baroque works lies in the interpretation: neither Biber nor Bach include consistent, systematic notation systems for articulation, dynamics, or expression. The role of the modern conductor in conducting a Baroque chamber orchestra is thus multifaceted. The conductor must not only serve the customary purpose of uniting the musicians and communicating expressive nuances, but also must make a vast number of artistic decisions, intended to project the desires of the composer within a modern framework.

Heinrich Biber wrote Battalia in 1673 while he was working under Max Gandolf von

Kuenberg, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and a lover of unconventional music. The music of Biber differs from that of his contemporaries in a multitude of ways: Biber utilizes extended techniques in many of his compositions that did not became commonplace for centuries. Battalia is both technically and philosophically novel. Likely intended to accompany a theatrical performance or pantomime, the piece examines war from many angles and evokes many different moods. !9

Technically speaking, Biber used the piece as a laboratory in which to explore tempo changes, dynamics, unconventional extended techniques, radical dissonance, and unique orchestration.

The first movement, Presto I, begins with a lively, march-like theme, first performed in forte, and then echoed in . It evokes an army setting out with optimism. Though to the modern listener these dynamics are not surprising, for an audience in the mid-seventeenth century, the abrupt dynamic contrasts would have been shocking. Systematic notation of dynamics by the composer did not become commonplace until at least the mid-eighteenth century.8 Many of the oddities contained within the piece begin in the first Presto: in one passage, a note in the original manuscript instructs the player to attack the string with the wood rather than the hair of the bow. The result is sharp and percussive, and the same notes are repeated several times, first col legno and then in the ordinary style. The sharp col legno attacks stand in contrast to the cheery feel of the movement in general—a reminder that the army has been assembled for war, not performance. In my rehearsal process, the conducting challenges in this movement largely pertained to unifying articulation and dynamics. The notated dynamics are only forte and piano, without accompanying crescendi or decrescendi. Though the natural tendency would be to produce swells and contouring in relation to the musical line, as with most

Baroque music, in the case of Battalia, I chose to remain completely faithful to the notation rather than modern convention. The first Presto is comprised largely of rapid eighth notes, and in the Baroque style, this would indicate that the notes should be performed in a detached brush stroke. Considerable rehearsal time was spent unifying this brush stroke both within and across the sections.

8 Robert Donington, A Performer’s Guide to Baroque Music, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 290. !10

The second movement, “Die liederliche geselschafft von allerley Humor” (“The dissolute company of all types of humor”) takes the listener from the realm of the unusual to the completely macabre. This movement employs several key areas and several time signatures simultaneously. The use of polytonality and polyrhythms within this movement is largely unprecedented in the music of Biber’s time, and did not recur with any regularity until centuries later. According to a note in Latin on the manuscript of the score, presumed to be written in the composer’s hand, the contrasting yet simultaneous in this movement are meant to evoke the drinking coming from different army establishments at the end of the night.

Each of the individual lines is a consonant and fairly typical folk , but in combination, they create a cacophonous barrage of sound. The challenges in this movement were related to the balancing of the warring voices and the attempt to elevate various snippets of in order to highlight each of the instruments equally. In the rehearsal process, I isolated each section and then helped the different sections to understand their role in the dense musical texture. This was particularly important in sections where duplets and triplets were occurring simultaneously, as the players would not expect such complicated rhythms in music from Biber’s time.

The third movement, Presto II, is similar to the first in many ways: it also features rapid eighth note figures, echoing dynamics, and percussive string changes. A note in the author’s hand indicates that the string changes should be attacked in order to evoke the sound of the cannon.

The fourth movement, Der Mars—Mars is the Roman god of war—highlights the bassist and concertmaster. The concertmaster plays a cadenza-like melody while the bassist provides rhythmic . This movement is surprising in that the composer notates that the bassist should weave parchment between the strings and the fingerboard, creating an effect !11 somewhat like a snare . This movement required considerable rehearsal and experimentation in order to create the intended sound for the bass. The rehearsals were centered around practicality—it took some time to properly arrange the paper between the strings of the bass, and the location of the paper was crucial. If the paper was too close to the bridge, it would mute the sound, but when placed too close to the scroll, the paper would not rattle in the correct manner. With the practicality aside, the rehearsals centered around allowing the violinist complete freedom in the cadenza melody while also maintaining a solid rhythmic undercurrent.

The fifth movement, Presto III, is in simple triple time—the first movement not in duple meter. I chose to conduct the movement in a rapid one pattern to prevent the orchestra from slowing down. The movement contains several repeats. The only practical conducting challenge lay in restarting while maintaining synchrony, given the rapidity of the movement.

As the name would suggest, the sixth movement, , is more melancholic and songlike than the previous movements. Neither trivializing war nor evocative of war’s violence, this movement features a simple melody in the first violin section with provided by the second violin section and rhythmic accompaniment in the continuo. The rehearsal priorities for this movement included balancing the sections so that the first violins were appropriately showcased, maintaining rhythmic integrity despite the orchestra’s tendency to slow down, and experimenting with ornamentation in the lyrical theme. As is the practice in Baroque music, the orchestra approached trill figures from above the note.

The final movement is broken into two brief sections—Die Schlacht (“The Battle”) and

Lamento der verwundten Musquetirer (“ for the Wounded Musketeer”). The first half of this movement is loud, percussive, and evocative of battle sounds. The piece does not end on this !12 suspenseful note, but rather, with a slow lament, mourning the evils of war. In rehearsal, the main challenges for these two sections were maintaining rhythmic integrity in each individual movement and transitioning between the two. Additionally, the final lament presented some interpretive questions in terms of articulation in the strings, culminating in the decision to play the movement at a slow tempo with a detached—but not attacked—melodic line in the upper strings. Battalia as a whole consists of eight extremely disparate movements, which presents a conducting challenge in and of itself. Much of the rehearsal process centered around transitions, both in tempo and in expressive style.

The Bach Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, a standard of the literature, is laid out in the conventional for Baroque : three movements in a fast-slow-fast-model. The concerto has no official publication date, though it is postulated that

Bach wrote it between 1717 and 1723 while working in Cöthen as the Kapellmeister for Prince

Leopold of Anhalt. Though Bach originally scored the work for two violins and orchestra, he also wrote an alternative version of the concerto for two and strings. The first movement, Vivace, opens fugally, with the theme introduced first by the second violin soloist and section, and then by the first violin soloist and section. The orchestra joins the soloist in four main accompanimental styles over the course of the piece. The orchestral sections sometimes play exactly what the soloists are playing, and in these passages, synchrony of articulation is imperative. In other sections, the accompanimental figure is composed of held (whole) notes. In between these two extremes of accompanimental figures are a detaché eighth note figure, and a sixteenth-eighth note figure. The primary challenge in conducting and rehearsing this movement was separating and balancing the soloist parts with the differing accompanimental figures. !13

Unlike in the Battalia, the Concerto for Two Violins has no notated dynamics, and as such, I devoted considerable time to creating dynamic contouring within the melodic sections and ensuring that the orchestra was not overly dynamic during the accompanimental sections. In rehearsal with the orchestra, I discussed the appropriate and idiomatic contouring of the melodic figures, and continued to address issues of balance and articulation throughout the rehearsal process. The orchestra plays a much less significant role in the melancholic second movement, marked Largo ma non tanto. The orchestra’s role in this movement is entirely accompanimental rather than melodic, so the main challenge lay in ensuring that the orchestra’s dynamic levels did not overpower that of the soloists. I decided to eliminate two of the cellists for this movement and to instruct the harpsichordist to use the upper manual in order to reduce the overall level of sound. The Allegro final movement provided many of the same challenges as the first movement

—unifying articulation, balancing dynamics, establishing and maintaining tempo, and creating dynamic intrigue through contouring.

The challenges of conducting a Baroque program in a way that was informed by historical practice, but not executed entirely in this style, lay in maintaining consistency of style, articulation, and dynamics. By devoting extensive rehearsal time to the unification of these elements, however, I led the orchestra to the production of an authentic Baroque sound.

Enthusiastic Elephants and Fizzgigious Fish:

Inviting Whimsy into Angélica Negrón’s There Once Was !14

Angélica Negrón’s There Once Was (2011), scored for SATB choir, accordion, and electronics, was performed at I/O Fest, a festival of new and avant-garde music. There Once Was, though undeniably new and different, resists classification on several fronts. It is more choral than instrumental, though it contains elements of both; it is more melodic than rhythmic, though it contains entire sections of percussive sounds made on hard consonants; and the music is emotionally evocative though the libretto largely comprises nonsensical words and phrases.

There Once Was exemplifies Elizabeth Green’s idea of the modern conductor employing both clarity of intent and of beat in order to elevate the wishes of the composer.9 The piece is performed along with an electronic track with delay sounds, obfuscating the rhythmic core, and as such, the composer suggests that that conductor utilize a click track, which was a new experience for me. As a chamber musician, I struggled against the rigidity of the click track and my own inability to allow the singers to use rubato along with the melodic line. Though the conductor is in a position of power, there is a certain powerlessness that is experienced once the conductor is at the mercy of a robotic drone that marches inexorably forward. It was similarly difficult for the choir to realize how little flexibility I had: when the singers strayed from the core of the beat, I could remain insistently with the metronome in my ear, but it was the responsibility of the singers to follow the beat that the metronome set forth.

In stark contract with the rhythmic rigidity is the whimsy of the text, which presents vivid imagery of personified members of the animal kingdom. With yodeling effects, repeated glisandi, percussive sounds, dramatic dynamics, and electronic interludes, There Once Was is like no work I have previously heard. However, the work was commissioned by the New York-

9 Green, The Modern Conductor, ix. !15 based ensemble Choral Chameleon, and recordings of the work at its premiere are accessible online. The onomatopoeic effects in There Once Was are a modern equivalent to those in Biber’s

Battalia. However, contemporaneity allows the composer to release online exactly the intended effects, which makes all the difference. While Battalia entailed an extensive process of trial and error for both conductor and musicians, the ensemble of There Once Was was able to experience clarity of beat and of intent, in the truest sense of both words.

Combining the Classical with the Romantic:

Mozart, Offenbach, and Gilbert & Sullivan with the Williams Opera Workshop

Eclectic by tradition and convenience, the Williams Opera Workshop presents numbers from the opera repertoire in semi-staged form accompanied by a small orchestra. The selections for the 2018 opera included scenes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute and The

Marriage of Figaro, Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of

Penzance. Though theatricality and a tendency towards the ridiculous unite these four , the plot lines and music styes of the four selections included in the Opera Workshop differ dramatically for the singers, musicians, audience, and conductor.

The selection from The Magic Flute, “Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden” (“Bright dawn, is heralding the Morning”), is a in which three young spirits, sung in this production by three female sopranos, beg the distraught Pamina not to stab herself, as her life lies in the balance. This scene is classically Mozartian—the spirits and Pamina enter and exit the stage, oblivious of each other’s presence, and only as Pamina stands ready to fall upon her blade !16 do the spirits enter to catch her in the act. The scene is both dramatic and emotionally moving: equally powerful are Pamina’s intolerable distress, the soothing and dulcet tones of the spirits who entreat her not to end her life, and the orchestra, which drives the action forward.

The process of rehearsing for the opera performance was multifaceted. First, it included just singers and piano, then just orchestra, then singers with orchestra, and then finally the staging rehearsals with the orchestra, the rehearsal pianist, and the singers onstage. Each stage of preparation required different skills from the conductor. Conducting the Opera Workshop over the last four years, I have gathered the tools with which to effectively communicate with singers, though working with instrumentalists remains my forté. Since my first foray into opera conducting, I have been incredibly drawn to this medium, as, for the conductor, opera conducting is the epitome of multitasking. Especially within the context of a staged performance, the conductor must to some extent follow the singers (who are physically moving targets), unify the orchestra and the singers, be able to simultaneously watch the score, the orchestra, and the singers, and be prepared to act instantaneously and flexibly should a singer take an unexpected cadenza. The Mozart scene in question contains several cadential sections, , and tempo changes, all of which require a series of exchanges between singers and conductor, and then conductor and orchestra. The initial challenges in working with just the singers were largely related to rhythmic integrity and consistency of intonation. Without the foundation of the orchestra, the singers had the pervasive tendency to drift flat and slow down, two problems that would prove unpleasant in conjunction with the addition of the orchestra.

Thus, when the orchestra was added, I at first maintained a rigid tempo, allowing the singers to see that when they slowed down excessively, in would be difficult for the orchestra to !17 accompany them faithfully. The final challenge lay in combining all the aforementioned elements with the staging. Purely orchestral conductors rarely have the problem of the musicians moving out of range or playing with their back to the conductor. With the Opera Workshop, some creativity was necessary in order to stage the production in a way that both served the and allowed me to have consistent sight lines with the singers so that the orchestra and the singers had the best chance of remaining together. When rehearsing with just the orchestra, the challenges were largely related to unifying the classical articulation style—defaulting to eighth notes played spiccato in the strings, observing the rather exaggerated dynamics, and maintaining the flexibility to follow the singers if something went awry.

The Pirates of Penzance, written by the legendary duo Arthur Sullivan and William

Gilbert, is a mainstay of the musical theater repertoire. The Williams Opera Workshop presented three consecutive numbers from the first act of the opera: "Stop, ladies, pray!”, "Oh! Is there not one maiden breast?”, and "Poor wand'ring one.” In these three numbers, the four sisters Edith,

Kate, Isabel, and Mabel, prepare to picnic on a secluded beach, when they are interrupted by a larger-than-life pirate, the vile Frederic. Frederic unsuccessfully tries to woo Edith, Kate, and

Isabel in turn, but is soundly rejected by each. His luck turns when he meets Mabel, a vapid and frivolous girl who instantly falls in love with the enchanting pirate. These numbers are macabre in their over-exaggeration. For the entirety of “Stop, ladies, pray!” the stage notes indicate the three sisters must be wearing one shoe each and hopping about the stage while the pirate staggers and roundly abuses their looks. In conducting these numbers, it was essential to allow each singer complete freedom of expression to fully convey the ridiculousness of the situation.

Several of the singers have ad libitum marked in their parts, making it impossible to simply beat !18 and maintain a tempo: rather, the performance of this opera requires a constant balancing act between singers, conductor, and musicians (in this instance, a much reduced ensemble in order to accommodate the light sopranos ). The Pirates of Penzance proved much more difficult to conduct than the Magic Flute selection—though both works allow the singers relative freedoms, the uniquely nineteenth-century elements of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera required much more flexibility and immediate responsiveness from the conductor.

Conclusion: Blending Elements in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings

Barber’s Adagio for Strings was a fitting capstone to the year of conducting projects: I returned to Chamber Orchestra of Williams and the small format. While the piece is deeply romantic and evocative of works written in the nineteenth century, the harmonic language firmly situates the piece in the twentieth century.

Adagio for Strings, a setting of the second movement of Barber’s Op. 11 , was completed in 1936, and was later set to the Agnus Dei section of the Catholic Mass. The reusing and recycling of the theme in liturgical contexts returns the piece to its Baroque roots, as does the simplicity of the setting for small string orchestra. The piece begins with only the first violins playing pianissimo, and the whole piece projects a narrative arc of intensity, as the piece both begins and ends in somber, restrained, and muted tones. The mid-section of the piece, however, releases the strings from their muted timbre in favor of the exquisite tones of harmonic and emotional climax. The mid-section is as passionate as the beginning and end are restrained.

Technically speaking, the conducting challenges in Barber’s Adagio for Strings are few.

Emotionally and artistically, however, the piece requires unbridled expression, minute nuances of !19 expression, and a sense of roundedness in the music. As with Baroque music, the conductor has the freedom to bring out the movement within a melodic line, but with an exquisite expressiveness more characteristic of the Romantic era. This piece served as a capstone and encapsulation of all I learned during the process of conducting music of five centuries. Having experienced both practically and intellectually the demands on the conductor in the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries, I found that conducting the Adagio for Strings allowed me to utilize the set of skills I had gathered working with the limited information provided by Baroque composers, the unrestrained emotionality of the Romantic era, and the deeper intellectual understanding provided by conducting the music of modern composers. My work conducting choir and opera informed the lyrical and song-like qualities of the melodic lines; my work shaping Baroque lines informed my artistic choices in terms of tempo, dynamics, and expression; and my understanding of all the conducting practices that came before the twenty-first century allowed me to feel a sort of conductor’s nirvana: I felt deeply connected to the music and to all the conductors who had come before me.

Though I savored this sense of interconnectedness, I was also aware of my privilege within the conducting field. In studying five centuries of conductors, I found close to zero references to female conductors. Both historically and currently, conducting is a deeply male- dominated field, as evidenced by the fact that the first female conductor of a major United States orchestra, Marin Alsop, was not appointed until 2007. Though female representation in the history of conducting has been paltry, the recent upswing in female music directors both nationally and internationally has left me hopeful that the next five centuries will embody a different, and more equitable, trend. I feel honored to be a member of the growing number of !20 female conductors to take the stage, paving the way for future generations of empowered women. !21

Appendix: Performance Dates and Programs

Chamber Orchestra of Williams, Abigail Soloway, conductor, November 11, 2017

Heinrich Biber, Battalia

Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048

Arvo Pärt, Collage über B-A-C-H

Johann Sebastian Bach, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043

I/O Fest: The Form of Space, Abigail Soloway, conductor, January 14, 2018

Angélica Negrón, There Once Was

Williams Opera Workshop, Abigail Soloway, conductor, January 23, 2018

W. A. Mozart, “Bright Dawn is Heralding the Morning” from The Magic Flute

W. A. Mozart, “Sull’aria… che soave zeffiretto” from Le Nozze di Figaro

Jacques Offenbach,“Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” from Les Contes d’Hoffman

Arthur Sullivan, “Stop, ladies, Pray!... Poor Wandering One” from The Pirates of

Penzance

Chamber Orchestra of Williams, Abigail Soloway, conductor, February 24, 2018

Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings

Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, Abigail Soloway, conductor, April 20, 2018*

Georges Bizet, “Danse Boheme” from Carmen

*Due to the timing of this concert, it was not discussed in this thesis, though it served as a capstone for the performance aspect of the thesis project. !22

Bibliography

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Carse, Adam. The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz. Cambridge: Broude Brothers, 1949.

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