Conducting II
Curriculum guideline
Lecture/demonstration, group and individual practice in class. Students will conduct their peers in the classroom, receiving immediate feedback on the effectiveness of their gestures. Students will be videotaped in class for their own study. When appropriate, the videos may be viewed during the class to aid instruction. Score reading assignments will be evaluated in separate sessions with the instructor.
- Continued development of clear ictus within more widely ranging characters of beat and pattern.
- Continued development of gestural expressiveness.
- Conducting patterns: 5/4, 7/4, and more complex changing meters.
- Polyrhythms, understanding tempo relationships.
- More advanced visual rhythmic dictations to show character and accuracy of beat.
- Rehearsal issues: error detection (learning to listen as a conductor), and methods of correcting perceived problems in the ensemble. Issues of ensemble dynamics and behaviour.
- Leadership issues: understanding how to motivate performers.
- Passages from the choral repertoire will be assigned as conducting exercises. Instrumental passages may be used in addition, depending upon availability of players.
- Intermediate score reading assignments in all modern clefs: treble, bass, alto and tenor c-clefs.
Upon successful completion of this course, students should possess a competence in intermediate conducting technique. They will understand the differences in instrumental and choral conducting, and be able to conduct metrically and rhythmically complex passages of music. They should also be able to hear basic problems in ensemble/intonation/timbre, and have a basic understanding of how to address them in rehearsal. Students should also be able to read C-clefs in intermediate score reading exercises at the piano.
In class conducting assignments (6-10) (ongoing preparation for and achievement in class activities) 50%
Final exam 40%
Final score reading assignment 10%
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students (same as Conducting I)
Conductor’s baton. Metronome.
R.O. Morris and Howard Ferguson: Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading (Oxford U. Press)
Other assigned or recommended texts may include:
Ray Robinson: Choral Music - A Norton Historical Anthology (Norton)
Elizabeth Green: The Modern Conductor
Hideo Saito: The Saito Conducting Method
Max Rudolph: The Grammar of Conducting (G. Schirmer)
Brenda Smith & Robert Sataloff: Choral Pedagogy, second edition (Plural Publ.)
Harold A. Decker & Julius Herford: Choral Conducting Symposium (Prentice Hall)