I really enjoy conducting ensembles for a number of reasons.  I appreciate the chance for growth it provides to me as a composer.  I enjoy the opportunity to teach and the ability to work with other musicians toward a common, shared goal – expressing a finely tuned and meaningful musical product.

If you are a composer, you should jump at the chance to conduct your own work. There is a reason Mahler and Bernstein could write so well for the orchestra, they stood in front of one as their full time job.   They were reminded with each rehearsal how the various instruments sound in their registers and what sorts of things they do well, and the things they struggle with.  They encountered fascinating textures that they could employ and elaborate on in their own works. 

By repeatedly conducting an ensemble, a composer can develop a strong inner ear, which will eventually allow them to look at a piece of music and hear it in their head. It also allows the composer to intuitively ferret out awkward writing for instruments… if one continually looks at tuba parts, for example, poorly written tuba passages begin to look to the composer as poorly constructed sentences do to an author.  With this ability, a composer can revise  a part before it ever touches the player’s stand. 

Conducting also lets the composer learn from his or her notational mistakes.  With this new knowledge, they take a second pass at measures the performers struggled with, to see if the notational intent can be clarified.  This will help with more efficient rehearsing the next time, and could even lead to a more refined end product. After enough of these experiences, a composer can conduct through their piece while it’s being written.  They can sing through the parts against their own conducting, looking for areas that can be more clearly stated.  After awhile, things feel right or wrong against the temporal beat you are conducting, and you can try renotating a passage with a different meter or rhythm, to see if it feels more natural or organic with the conducting.

But beyond the musical development aspects, conducting affords an opportunity for the composer to begin to develop friendships with musicians in their community.  It gets them out of the seclusion of the studio and into the limelight with musicians - musicians that can be a source of future collaborations and provide a window into other networks of local and regional musicians. 

I don’t completely agree with the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, instead, I believe in the variant, “It’s what you know and who you know that matters”.  We can write the most magnificent masterpieces in the comfort of our studios, but unless we go out and meet a few musicians, those masterpieces will not see the light of day, and they’ll perish along with us.

Artists need to take risks.  Get out in the community, go to a few concerts, meet some musicians, conduct an ensemble, and let’s just see where it takes you in a year or two.

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