Image of the Conductor

Conductors are performers who utilize and are traditionally limited to movements to facilitate the sounds that audiences perceive as music. Composers, artistic directors, and concert organizers today are growing more attentive to the conductor’s repertoire of “normal” movement, its potential as artistic stimuli, and framing it to enhance the audience’s perception of a piece or program. In his compositions AMID (2004) and Black Box Music (2012), Simon Steen-Andersen deploys the «image of the conductor to play on the audience’s expectations». This case study of AMID attempts, by narrowing the scope to one piece, to define a conductor’s performance practice for such circumstances that can later be applied to works of a similar genre.
This case study began with score analysis and an in-depth interview with the composer. A student-conductor, a professional musician and I then prepared the piece as conductors and rehearsed advanced student-musicians of the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. I observed the other two conductors and we assisted each other through this practical portion of the study in developing a performance practice specific to this piece. In this paper, I will present the final steps in the case study, including a comprehensive description of said study, an analysis of the new performance practice and motivations for instrumentalizing the conductor. Finally, I will suggest methods for applying the described motivations and performance practice towards new and existing works within a similar genre.