This is one of book I should have read earlier. I found this book my wish list on my kindle. I personally admire myself not having thrown away this from my wish list. I decided to buy this book because I was interested in “listening” in general these days. I was thinking I wasn’t listening to the other people’s thinking and talking. The book is consist of two part, one is interview of a conductor and the other is the author adapt what he learned to his business. Unfortunately, the business part is redundant and less information.
I was interested listening because I believe the person who listens always is smarter than who speaks. If he has, let’s say, knowledge = 1, if he talks all the time to people, his knowledge would be still 1. But, if he listens, then he would get more than 1 + alpha. Even he did not learn anything from listening, but we can still keep 1 with deeper understanding. I know listening is better than speaking. But, the problem is “am (was) I listening to people talking, really?” Listening is always chance to learn more but I was feeling I needed to listen to their talk more.
As a musician, I am not a good listener. I actually am dumb. That’s why I am not good at music. But, I would like to listen to music better. I believe having good ears is most critical part of talent to be a good musician. So I really wanted to know this.
A great conductor leads orchestra by listening. He does not order to play. How that works? By the way, orchestra consists of best musicians. They can play perfect without the conductor. So, the question is why they need conductor. You can find out from this book yourself. But what I found on this book are three things mainly.
One is the great performance happens when both musician’s and conductor’s motivation spring at same level. The conductor’s job is to create the environment where that happens. The second one is some musicians are busy, others are not. Yet all of this is coordinated with pinpoint precision. That is not easy to achieve. The musicians have to expand their awareness in both time and space. The third one is the role of conductor is to lead each musicians to play what they have never played. So he needs to understand composition very well. And then, they are challenging and motivating musicians to the music has never been played before by listening.
The scene I particularly like is the way he teaches conducting. The conductor let student conduct orchestra and then he does after. When he finishes the same passage and turned to student and says to him,
Conductor “So what was the difference? Could you hear it?”
Student “I heard it for sure but I can’t say how you did it”
Conductors “Well, let’s try to understand this.”
The conductor is very thoughtful. He is a great thinker. He really tries to explain how he is thinking about the music he achieves. The conductor study music very well. He knows of course the music very well, but so do musicians. That’s 21th century music.
It’s time to find ticket to listen orchestra. I can listen to music better and more enjoyable now.