Essentials in Conducting | Page 5

or interpretation, and a quarrel seems imminent; but the conductor refuses to take the matter too seriously, and, having ample authority for his own viewpoint, proceeds as he has begun, later on talking it over with the performer, and perhaps giving him a reason for his opinion.
Humor is thus seen to have the same effect upon a body of musicians as oil applied to machinery, and musical machinery seems to need more of this kind of lubrication than almost any other variety.
But the conductor must distinguish carefully between sarcastic wit, which laughs at, and humor, which laughs with. In a book bearing the copyright date of 1849, the writer distinguishes between the two, in the following words:[1]
Humor originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, enriching and fertilizing where it falls. Wit laughs at; humor laughs with. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exchanges single foibles into character; humor glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly upon the infirmities it attacks, and represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, scornful ...; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart.
[Footnote 1: Whipple, Literature and Life, p. 91.]
[Sidenote: THE VALUE OF A CHEERFUL ATTITUDE]
The conductor with a sense of humor will ordinarily have the advantage also of being cheerful in his attitude toward the performers, and this is an asset of no mean significance. It is a well-known psychophysical fact that the human body does much better work when the mind is free from care, and that in any profession or vocation, other things being equal, the worker who is cheerful and optimistic will perform his labor much more efficiently at the expense of considerably less mental and bodily energy than he who is ill-humored, worried, fretful, and unable to take a joke. But the foreman who possesses this quality of cheerfulness and humor is doubly fortunate, for he not only secures the beneficial results in his own case, but by his attitude frequently arouses the same desirable state of mind and body in those who are working under him. It is particularly because of this latter fact that the conductor needs to cultivate a cheerful, even a humorous outlook, especially in the rehearsal. As the result of forming this habit, he will be enabled to give directions in such a way that they will be obeyed cheerfully (and consequently more effectively); he will find it possible to rehearse longer with less fatigue both to himself and to his musical forces; and he will be able to digest his food and to sleep soundly after the rehearsal because he is not worrying over trivial annoyances that, after all, should have been dismissed with a laugh as soon as they appeared. There must not of course be so much levity that the effectiveness of the rehearsal will be endangered, but there is not much likelihood that this will happen; whereas there seems to be considerable danger that our rehearsals will become too cold and formal. A writer on the psychology of laughter states that "laughter is man's best friend";[2] and in another place (p. 342) says that the smile always brings to the mind "relaxation from strain."
[Footnote 2: Sully, An Essay on Laughter.]
[Sidenote: THE VALUE OF IMAGINATION IN CONDUCTING]
Creative imagination is an inborn quality--"a gift of the gods"--and if the individual does not possess it, very little can be done for him in the artistic realm. Constructive or creative imagination implies the ability to combine known elements in new ways--to use the mind forwards, as it were. The possession of this trait makes it possible to picture to oneself how things are going to look or sound or feel before any actual sense experience has taken place; to see into people's minds and often find out in advance how they are going to react to a projected situation; to combine chemical elements in new ways and thus create new substances; to plan details of organization in a manufacturing establishment or in an educational institution, and to be able to forecast how these things are going to work out.
It is this quality of creative imagination that enables the inventor to project his mind into the future and see a continent spanned by railways and telephones, and the barrier of an ocean broken down by means of wireless and aeroplane; and in every case the inventor works with old and well-known materials, being merely enabled by the power of his creative faculties (as they are erroneously called) to combine these known materials in new ways.
In the case of the musician, such creative imagination has always been recognized as a sine qua non of original composition, but its necessity has not always been so clearly felt in the case of the performer.