Multiple Intelligence Monday 7: Interpersonal

Interpersonal intelligence is the capacity to sense the feelings of others and respond appropriately.  Of course conductors need this.  We work with people!  We are the leaders of a little community, making music together as a team.  The better we are at sensing people's feelings and responding in healthy and healthful ways, the better job we do.  

Is high interpersonal intelligence required?  Oddly, no.  There are a lot of stories of jerks who flail: mean, selfish, ego-centric conductors who treat musicians poorly. In fact, that's part of the stereotype of a conductor.  I have a theory that sometimes people revere a jerk because they assume that someone who treats others with disdain must actually be better than those other people.  Obviously that's just a theory, based on some early experiences of my own. 

These days, EQ, or emotional intelligence, is growing in importance.  People are realizing that treating people well is good for business, being a thoughtful and insightful leader is profitable.  It also makes better music.  And interpersonal intelligence is half of that.  So, more and more as time goes forward, high interpersonal intelligence is not required but highly desirable.

The other half of emotional intelligence is intrapersonal intelligence, to be tackled next Monday.

For now, I'll just mention the example of Gareth Malone, from The Choir.  I've been writing about that show, and I believe I've already mentioned Gareth's charm and enthusiasm.  He's also nice and pretty sensitive and that carries him a long way.  I mean, he's an okay musician and a pretty bad conductor, but those are musical and kinesthetic skills, which are only part of the picture.  The man's rocking the interpersonal intelligence and working it out.  

Check it: 

Sweet, right?  That kind of charisma can't be dismissed.  That's what makes it work for him.  And, the point of this whole multiple-intelligence series is to show how all these strengths can benefit a conductor, but that no conductor needs all of them as long as he knows what his strengths are and uses them to make it work.

And I'll get to that bit next week.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 6: Musical

Musical-rhythmic

Musical intelligence can refer to rhythmic or pitch-related abilities, but there is no "music" center of the brain the way that language does.  Music is a whole-brain function, which makes musical intelligence complicated.  When you sing, for example, your brain might engage aural, verbal, and social areas. 

The cooperative nature of music-making is a whole other post.

Take this recent study about a very valuable musical skill, sight-reading.  One of the things it suggests is that success on IQ tests is like success at sight-reading--both rely on working memory, your capacity to keep stuff in your brain and use it as long as you need to.  Is working memory intelligence?  No, indeed.  Take my husband (please?), an excellent sight-reader.  He's also great with visual-spatial and mathematical-logical things, and all three of these strengths have been his since he was very young.  He also scores high on IQ tests.  However, as I have mentioned, he can't spell worth a damn.  And just last week ordered a margarita frozen instead of on the rocks, because it didn't quite occur to him which one was the name for the kind he likes.  It's very specific, this intelligence stuff.

Arright, so musical intelligence.  Edwin Gordon was a pioneer in studying and measuring musical aptitude.  One of the controversial assertions he made was that musical aptitude is fixed at age nine.  Importantly, he developed a musical aptitude test, which I took while a master's student.  I was a master's student in conducting at one of the most prestigious schools in the country and I scored right in the middle.  Average.  

It was completely liberating to learn this.  I've always loved music, wanted to be a conductor since I was in the eighth grade, but I've never been special at it.  Oh, I got good grades.  I'm good at school work.  But I've never been the solo singer or the best sight-reader or the fastest analyzer of chords.  As a matter of fact, I'm generally slower than everyone around me--people with really low musical intelligence don't tend to go into music, so my theory is that the average folks like me are actually the weakest in the room full of music students.  But it's okay!  I don't have to be gifted to be good.  I just have to know how to use my strengths and make up for my weaknesses.

And that's how I have become a conductor with average musical intelligence.  Work!  Yes, indeed, practice makes better.  If I were committed and interested, I could exercise and work up to run a ten-minute mile; but, that sounds quite unpleasant to me, so I'm not gonna do that.  However, I really love choral music, so I'll keep my butt in school and practice and work and try to do well.  Thousands of hours over the course of decades gradually leads to expertise, regardless of intelligence.  

I like to think of my mediocrity as a strength.  Having to work hard to learn means that I've learned how to learn, and that gives me a wide knowledge base of how to teach.  You know that old saying, "those who can do, those who can't teach?"  I think the truer version of that is "those who can do can't teach."  Because very smart, gifted people never had to learn how to do that they're good at.  If it comes naturally to them, they can't fathom why other people can't just do it.

I'm really good at diction.  I can pronounce the hell out of anything.  Sung diction, IPA, foreign languages, whatever.  And now I can teach it because I've learned that it's harder for most people.  Other people think singing in English is easier than singing in German.  Most of you probably agree.  I didn't understand that until about six years ago.  So you see, my intelligence was a kind of stupidity.  

And therefore, my mediocre musical intelligence is a strength.  Because my work depends on heavily on preparation, I can take all the time I need to get ready--and my awareness of my mediocrity informs me that I'll have to schedule more time for it than other conductors might.  

Musical intelligence is just one type of intelligence among many required for conductors.  Being able to hear melodies and harmonies, internalize rhythm with ease certainly makes life easier; and, probably the best conductors in the world will always be the ones with the highest musical and interpersonal intelligences.  But the rest of us stand a chance for success because hard-working mediocrity will trump static talent any day of the week.  

Whew.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 5: Bodily-Kinesthetic

Bodily-kinesthetic

This is good timing.  It's just a coincidence, but this week I am at Omega in Rhinebeck, NY, taking a week-long Tai Chi workshop.  Because it's important for conductors to be good at understanding and moving their bodies.

As I have said before, these intelligences do not represent fixed abilities or smartness, but rather strengths particularly relating to learning styles.  I'm sure it's obvious to you why kinesthetic intelligence would be important for a conductor, but I'll go ahead and spell it out.

A conductor's job is to embody the expressive intent of the composer.  Embody, as in put it into their body.  The easier it is to coordinate movement and attend to physical sensation, the easier the job will be.  Conducting is more like dance than anything else--you make gestures that express what the music expresses.  The difference is that conducting is usually leading the music and dance is more commonly following it.

Here I'd like to talk about training and aptitude.  On So You Think You Can Dance, dancers who are really good at one style are asked to do many other styles.  As far as my understanding goes, it is kinesthetic intelligence which will allow them not only to dance well, but to learn new styles quickly and be able to alter the character of their movements as needed.  Training can make a good dancer, and has certainly proven to be an asset on the show, but adaptability takes intelligence.  Trained dancers generally do better on the show, and there is the possibility that training can actually increase intelligence, but over and over, the untrained dancers amaze us with their ability to do new things.  


Speaking of amazing ability, here's Wade Robson when he was eight years old. 

I've never met an eight-year-old with that kind of coordination, balance, subtlety of movement.  It's just extraordinary.  Magical.  And when you're that kind of a dancer as a kid, you can grow up into this kind of choreographer:

I chose this of all the amazing videos of his choreography because he's also performing.  Wade is the dancer with the red gloves, the man in the front as they walk down the stairs.  Can you take your eyes off him?  I have trouble.  He's intense and sooooo specific and committed to every movement.  Seriously, I'm in awe.  Just go to YouTube and search for Wade Robson and start watching videos.  He's dreamy.  Of course, I'm particularly impressed because he's got musicality and creativity and expressivity to match the incredible physical skills.  

I have to talk about me, I suppose, because it's my blog and because this is an important thing to me, though any kinesthetic intelligence I have is trite in comparison to the above.  Still, I guess I can take comfort in the idea that I'm probably a better conductor then Wade Robson would be... though he's a better dancer than I am a conductor--oh, he's so good!


Anyway.  Me.  I have some training.  I took ballet as a kid, which many people can say.  But I did it for ten years, along with a few years of tap and jazz.  When I got to college, I started swing dancing.  I've danced socially, mostly, but I've attended classes and workshops aplenty.  I also have taken regular yoga classes, studied Tai Chi and Alexander Technique, and--oh, yeah--I'm a conductor.  I'm not gifted.  But I like it a lot, and I have some training.

I tell people all the time that if they want to sing, they can.  My sister says that any woman who wants to have an orgasm can.  It may take some practice, but interest and application unfailingly yield results.  I think the same must be true with dance.  I have no gift, but I have always liked it, and so I've invested time to learn.  I think that has built up my ability, and that translates to the physical aspects of conducting.  As a result (or possibly it's the cause?), I learn quicker when I experience things bodily.  If there is movement involved, my brain grabs onto it more quickly.  The act of conducting while I practice actually helps me learn the music more efficiently.

And now, because I'm too lazy to make an actual video montage but I feel compelled to entertain you, a photo collage of me dancing and doing goofy things demonstrating the influence of much dance training in civilian life (with apologies to the siblings who must inevitably be exposed with me):

Variously, pictures of ballet, musical theater, lindy hop, and two demonstrating my inability to stand still and just have my picture taken like a regular person.  I tend to pose.  It's a habit.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 4: Logical-Mathematical

Logical-mathematical

Musical ability and mathematical ability have been linked in studies for decades.  I wish I could say I rock at numbers and logic, but I just don't.  I sort of feel like I let my sex down in this way--it's just too typical for "girls" to be "bad at math," but it's just a fact for me.

An example of deficiency in action: I considered doing a PhD instead of a DMA, which would have required me to take the GRE.  In preparation, I took a practice GRE.  I didn't prepare for it at all, just did it to see where I stood.  I don't remember the exact score on the math portion, but I think we calculated that whatever it was meant I got one question right.  I remember I was in the 1th percentile.  99% of people who took that test on that day did better than I did.  Now, that's measuring me against engineers as well as English majors, so I'm not gonna cry about being in the bottom 1% of graduate students.  But I did honestly try.  I mean, I might have just guessed the answers--chance would probably have been more likely to give me correct answers than my actually trying.  I'm not sure though, because figuring that out would require calculating probability, which baffles me a bit.

I got a friend, a physics teacher, to tutor me.  He taught me how to take the test.  I learned very little math, but I learned test-taking strategies and some short-cuts.  I don't remember any of it anymore, of course, but it did result in my ending up in the forty-fifth percentile when I took the real  GRE.  

Forty-fifth percentile, even among graduate students, is nothing to brag about.  Especially since I worked for months to prepare--and I made huge improvements--but still really just did average.  That shows you how little potential I have.  I joke, "I'm a conductor: I can only count to four!"

I don't know how my conductor friends and colleagues fare on math tests, or how their math skills are.  Since so many studies have linked math and music, I can't help but imagine that it makes musician's lives easier if they're also naturally inclined towards math and logic.  Frankly, my perspective is deeply skewed by my total... I was going to say ignorance, but it goes deeper than ignorance.  Not only do I not know, I'm not even really capable of knowing.  So I don't know what I'm missing.  I know it takes me forever to analyse chords and to figure out rhythms, both of which involve mathy, logicy sorts of skills.  I know for a fact that every other conductor friend is better than I am at these things.  Better, faster, more accurate.  The only thing I can do is practice, take my time, and be aware that I stink so I can make up for this deficiency.  

Luckily, I hope, those skills are the ones that a conductor uses in preparation.  So I can make up for it on my own, before rehearsals even start.  Once I know my score, I can get on  podium and be okay.  Unless there's some other math-music connection that I'm missing.  Which there very well might be.  In that case, I'm still in school so hopefully my teachers will let me know.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 3: Verbal-Linguistic

Verbal-linguistic

There is where I  kick booty.  I remember vocabulary, I can spell, I'm really good at grammar, and I can pronounce the hell out of anything.  I've gotten compliments on my diction in four languages, though I really don't speak any foreign languages beyond "I'd like a beer" (which I can say in seven languages!  It used to be eight, but I can't remember Turkish anymore.  Too foreign.).  It's why I blog: writing comes easily to me and I enjoy it.  


This is important to me as a conductor for two reasons.  First, I have to talk to the ensemble, and the ability to use words to be understood is highly valuable, though not imperative (since obviously gesture is supposed to be doing most of this work).  Mostly it's good for me because, as I'm preparing, I choose words to describe sounds.  Once I have a word to describe a sound, I understand the sound better.  Because words have a lot of meaning to me.  Because I have high verbal intelligence.  It's a self-fulfilling sort of situation.

The other reason verbal intelligence is important is particularly because I'm a choral musician.  Words are important, and I love them!  Certain composers--Bach, Brahms, and Barber are my favorites in this regard--are even better than poets at using the sound of a word to illuminate its meaning.  I appreciate that about them, and I'm good at using it, and I'm even good at teaching that kind of thing to choirs, making them use it.  So, the point is it's important and I'm glad to have that one.


But that brings me to this point: intelligence is not fixed, and even if it were, that would be okay. 


My husband (sorry, dear) can't tell an IPA symbol from a hole in the ground, and cannot spell worth a damn.  Is he then fated never to succeed as a conductor? Of course not.  He can, if he chooses, invest time in preparation of text so that he might bring it out more, use it with greater efficiency.  As long as he knows it's an option, he can use it.  He may have to spend more time than I would in order to accomplish it, but it will eventually happen.


And at the same time, if he just never was interested in the text like I am, that would be okay, too.  He will always hear music differently than I do, because the sounds of the words will have greater significance to me than they ever will to him.  That doesn't mean he's bad at it, it just means his performances will be different from mine.  And that individuality is good.  Specific, personal perspective is exactly what a performance should have (in my opinion).  His choices are the ones I want to hear.  I'd love to argue with him over how the whole piece would be much better if only the choir uses a long aspiration on the final "th" of the word death, and he won't give a rat's patoot, but that's why art is so fabulous!  We don't have to agree!  


And I'll get into that a bit more tomorrow.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 2: Visual-Spatial

Visual-spatial

Visual-spatial skills have been linked to sight-reading ability in orchestra musicians.  Before I read this particular research, I already knew that my husband is an amazing sight-reader and he can pack more in the back of the Forrester than I could ever imagine possible.  And after I read the research, I wondered if my really quite mediocre visual-spatial aptitude and really quite mediocre sight-reading skills are related.


We're thinking of buying an elliptical machine.  Would it fit in the back of the car?  I have no idea!


Clearly, the awareness of the page, and the ability to sort out what's on it, is an important ability for a conductor.  I'm not so good at these as my husband, and my training is primarily choral, so I have a dickens of a time working with instrumental scores.  Visually, the page is so big, there's so much on it, and it's spread out so far, that I just have to spend a lot of time before I'm able to wrap my ears around it.  


And this brings me to the point I will make with all the multiple intelligence posts, and which I will also be making tomorrow: knowing one's weaknesses allows a conductor to compensate for them.  And how do I compensate for my total lack of a knack for seeing the page?  


Preparation.


I spend so much time with my score that I don't really even have to look at it to know what's on it.  I know the music so well that the notes on the page are just reminders of the sound in my head rather than instanty instructions of what the sound should be--which is, I understand, how really good readers see music.  


Preparation.  More on it Thursday.

Multiple Intelligence Monday 1: Introduction

I enjoy structure, so I'm creating a new format for summer: Multiple Intelligence Mondays!  I tried writing a single post about multiple intelligences, and it got crazy long.  So I need to break it up into weekly installments.


For now: an introduction as to why I would bother with such a thing.


Wikipedia can tell you the basics of multiple intelligence theory, in case you don't already know.  It doesn't matter whether there are seven intelligences or a hundred, or if there's really just one, the point is we're all good at certain things, and most of us are lousy at other things.


I, for example, can't add, but I can pronounce the hell out of anything.  It takes me multiple seconds to analyse a triad to figure out its quality--very slow!--but I can pick up a Tai Chi form after just a couple of times through.  Are these the results of what I learned or failed to learn as a child, or was what I learned determined by my capacity to learn, my aptitude?  I have no idea.  It's complicated!  I can't get into it, and I don't think I need to.  The point is that certain skills, certain capacities are important for a conductor.  I'll go through the seven intelligences I originally learned and use that as a starting place to explain.  But why does it matter?


I learned about multiple intelligence theory when I was an undergrad getting a degree in music education.  Knowing about multiple intelligences was supposed to make us better teachers: we could design lessons that address different intelligences, which correspond, so they say, to learning styles--which is really what this is about--the way you learn, the means through which things enter your brain most efficiently.  For a conductor, there is such a wide array of skills and aptitudes that will help that, as I have said before, there are no stupid conductors.  You just have to be pretty good at a lot of things in order to succeed on the podium.  But knowing one's strengths and weaknesses allows each conductor to use what we do best and compensate for what eludes us.


Details to follow.  Every Monday.

convenient controversy

Dr. Jordan called me yesterday, wanting to prevent my overreacting.  

"Have you seen your new Choral Journal?" he asked.

"Uh, not yet..." I admitted.

"Well, don't freak out.  There's a letter to the editor about your article..."

As if I've ever freaked out about anything.  Lately.  Since the last time.

There is a letter to the editors of Choral Journal in the June/July issue (p. 6) regarding my April article "Thoughtful Gestures," and a response from the editors to the letter.  I don't think I would have freaked out about it even without Dr. Jordan's warning, but it does invite clarification.  Luckily, I happen to have this convenient venue for responding to the response and to the response to the response.  So there's no reason to wait for all that pesky publishing of journals.

The letter says my model of conducting "holds the director responsible for the unified emotional expression of the singers--with the director being the leading spark in the circuit...  Unfortunately, this model disempowers the singers."  The writer then goes on to offer an alternative, with some methods of empowering singers to "sing with a unified expression of their own."

That's not what I meant to say.  What I meant to say was this:

All the stuff conductors learn to do isn't just artsy fartsy music baloney; it's a process supported by some very cool science.  

I know the paradigm of conductor-as-monarch exists, both in terms of emotional leadership and musical guidance; so, that makes it my fault for not directly clarifying how my model is different from that.  I took it for granted that conductors all know that the individual members of the ensemble have to be individually empowered to perform the music with their own expressive intent. 

Here is my clarification.  (Well, if you read the whole blog it'll become clear, but for those who don't have time for that, here's a condensed version.)  Ahem:

A conductor is not responsible for the unified emotional expression of the singers.  The singers are and must be responsible for their own emotional expression.  A conductor is responsible for embodying the expressive intent of the composer though gesture (just as the ensemble members are responsible for expressing the composer's intention through singing or playing) and, in fact, the point of my model is that the conductor is responsible for consistent embodiment of the expressive intent of the composer so that he may remind the singers to do so, too.  So that he may influence the sound though living intention, fostering the living intention of the ensemble members.

I do not state explicitly in the article, but I think the article supports the idea that it's counterintuitive for us to ask our singers to have a "compelling purpose for singing" (in the well-chosen words of the letter-writer) unless we display compelling purpose in our gesture.  If we have compelling purpose, it will only benefit the singers, help them to commit more fully to their expression.  

The letter-writer says, "even when the director's affect is deadpan, such a choir will bring down the house."  To which I reply, "oh, but what if the conductor lived the music with them?  Wouldn't that make it easier for them?  Might that not inspire them?"  

Yes.  Yes, it would.  

Because, as I explain so eloquently in the article as well as here and here and here, we are built to communicate.  We are made to feel the feelings of those around us.

If the conductor stands deadpan, which no one is actually advocating, then the singers must first shut the conductor out--make the choice to ignore the feelings that are seeping out of him (because the fact is, we influence them whether we intend to or not; there are feelings seeping out in spontaneous expression of our inner state, even from what may appear to be a "deadpan" expression).  Then they are on their own to express of their own initiative.  

That could work, but the way we actually do it is so much easier!  It eliminates the step of turning off their natural inclination to empathize and instead takes advantage of it.  If the conductor is showing them living humanity, that feeds them and makes it easier for them to do their job.

So you see, there isn't actually any controversy.  We all know conductors must be expressive--the question of "how" is open to interpretation, and I discuss that elsewhere.  The question of "why" is the one I was addressing in the article.

*******

To the conductors who are reading this, I'll just also let you know that I've got a whole other sciencey controversy saying mirror neurons have never been seen in humans and biomotion is where it's at.  I'm still wading through all that--it's much slower, obviously, because it's a foreign language to me, but I'll let you know when (?) I have any kind of insight.

*******

And now, my response to the response to the response.

The Editorial Associate who responds to the letter, David Stocker (hello!), says the letter "errs about the same distance as the original author [me!], only on the other side of the continuum."  

Well, I mean.  I ask you.  Really?!  

Granted, the article is written to conductors about conducting and is, yes, explaining why it's important for a conductor to embody the emotional intent of the composer.  So, no, I don't talk much about the singers' own intentions.  So I can see where he might get the whole "erring the same distance on the other side of the continuum" thing.  But I'm here to tell you that I do, in fact, believe that every singer's intention is every bit as important as the conductor's and that the conductor's expressive displays are only useful insomuch as they inspire and influence the initiative of the performers' intention.

(Look, the limit for articles at Choral Journal was eighteen pages and I wrote twenty after substantial editing and making the font smaller.  I can't write about everything all at once!  That's why I have a blog now.  I can write about everything in little snippets.  James Jordan keeps writing books.  I'm a generation younger, so I have a blog.  We, Dr. Jordan's students, sometimes tease him about the library of books he keeps writing, but I can relate to the impulse that drives him to it.)

Anyway, Dr. Stocker then goes on, "The issue here is 'What is an ensemble?'"  

That is a fascinating issue, though it was not the issue I was writing about (because I can't write about everything all at once): again, I was just trying to demonstrate that all the stuff conductors learn to do isn't just artsy fartsy music baloney; it's a process supported by some very cool science.  It works not just because of cultural conventions constructed around it, but because it comes from the deepest nature of our humanity.  

But since he asked...

What is an ensemble? 

That's going to have to wait for another post, I'm afraid.  This one is already too long.

click

There is a culture of devotion to ensemble music-making.  Band geeks, choir kids, community choir singers who devote hours to fundraising.  I write about it in the "Thoughtful Gestures" article, how entrainment unites ensembles into passionate, powerful bodies.  But there's an added dimension to that, and that is devotion not just to the ensemble, but to the conductor.

I don't think this is true with professional ensembles.  Professionals do not necessarily connect with their fellows over the experience of music-making because they do it a lot, and the level they have to reach in order for that to occur increases with their experience.  I'm talking about amateur ensembles and school groups.  

When I was in the seventh grade, my junior high school choir director left and we had a new one for eighth grade.  In the tenth grade, the high school choir director (who had been teaching for so long, he had been my mother's high school choir director!) retired and we got a new one for eleventh grade.  Right before I started college at the University of Delaware, the choral director left and I was at UD while they searched for his replacement.  I taught at two schools, and at both I replaced a choral director who was beloved.  My first year at Westminster Choir College was the year after Joe Flummerfelt retired, so I was there while they searched for his replacement.  At the University of Connecticut, I am currently assistant to two interim conductors, waiting for them to search for and hire a permanent Director of Choral Activities.  (If you  know anyone who's looking for that kind of position, pass the word along that they'll have they best doctoral assistant ever!)

The point of that history is that I've seen transitions at every level from many perspectives.  I've seen kids nearly worship a choir director, love him, weep over his leaving.  Singers, especially adolescents, can easily feel bonded to a conductor--more easily than with a math teacher, I would venture to guess.  And today I'm asking, "why?"

I subscribe to Whole Living Body + Soul magazine, though I object to the duality suggested by the name.  I think Self gets it right with the title, but actually tends to be about bodies, not whole selves.  There is an article in this month's issue about the book Click: the Magic of Instant Connections, which I think makes a step towards explaining why singers, especially amateurs, feel connected to their conductors.

According to the book, reported by the article, the "recipe for clicking contains five ingredients: proximity, vulnerability, resonance, similarity, and a safe place."

All this happens in an ensemble.

Proximity, because, yes, we rehearse together.  Duh.

Vulnerability--this is where I think the gap lies for professionals, because they are well trained and therefore feel less vulnerable as they perform.  Most amateurs, especially singers, are relying on the conductor to help them learn both what to perform and how to perform, and that reliance can make them feel vulnerable.  A conductor's job is to make them comfortable and confident enough to perform, which means the conductor steps into their vulnerability, embraces it, and then provides them support and strength.  It's a powerful act that creates a bond between conductor and singer as well as among the ensemble.

Resonance is described in the article as "tuning in to others' emotions."  I'd have to read the book to get a clearer picture (or maybe Emily will pipe in with some details) but if it has anything to do with sharing a common emotional experience, then singing in an ensemble will provide it.

Similarity is kind of a given: everyone there loves to sing.  Or play, if it's a band, but my inclination and the majority of my experience is with singing.  Additional similarity beyond that is gravy.

A safe place.  This is so important to conducting.  Creating a safe place to be expressive and emotional, and to sing (which scares the willies out of a lot of people!) is a huge part of my job.  The love and support and guidance and encouragement I give isn't just me being nice, it's making the choir sing better.  They feel better so they sing better, and that serves the composer and the performers and the audience.  The article described a safe place as anywhere "that separates you... from the rest of the world."  Choir is exactly that.  When high school kids come to choir, their other world is left out in the other parts of the building.  I've seen so many instances where students behave entirely differently in choir than they do in any other class--usually much better for me than for other teachers.  

No wonder people feel connected to their conductors.  No wonder it's emotional and challenging to lose a conductor, and difficult to replace one.

The the heading of the last paragraph in the article is DARE TO DISCLOSE.  It continues, "when you chance a little intimacy, perhaps by sharing something that you're currently struggling with or a personal anecdote, you make yourself vulnerable and give the other person something to respond to."  I have a whole set of other reasons for conductors telling true stories about their own lives, which I write about in the "Thoughtful Gestures" article, and I'll have to talk about later here, but this is a another one, related to the social, communal responsibilities of a conductor.  Good conductors are comfortable with themselves, with their flaws, and are content to be themselves, in all their imperfection, in front of the ensemble. 

One of the reasons I say that conductors have to live a life that is conducive to their profession--that you can't be a composer and then expect to get up and conduct as well as an actual conductor--is that you can't get up in front of an ensemble and lead them anywhere for anything unless you feel pretty good about yourself.  If you feel self-conscious or insecure, you won't be very effective.  Self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-love are fundamental necessities for conductors.  They're important for everyone as human beings, but a conductor can't do his job without them.

I think this might add to the mystique of conductors.  As singers are considered "divas" for taking care of themselves the way they need to in order to maintain the health of their whole selves that is required for them to sing as well as they can [must write post on opera singers!], a conductor could be an interesting creature off the podium.  There are no stupid conductors.  I've never met a shy conductor.  Most conductors are highly verbal and are easy in conversation.  The quality of their listening varies--not surprising since in our work we're nearly always the one talking/leading/in charge.  

The magazine article says the ability to "click," to provide all the social ingredients for connection, is a set of skills to which some people ("high self-monitors," which is yet another thing I'll have to go into separately at another time) have greater natural inclination than others, but that can also be taught.  

I wonder if clickers tend to become conductors, or if the process of learning to be a conductor happens to teach those skills.  Probably a combination of the two, don't you think?

emotional contagion

A conductor relies on emotional contagion.


Since the discovery of and research on mirror neurons, we've come to believe that they are partially responsible for emotional contagion.


Wait, I feel like I've written this before.  I have.  So I'll just paste an excerpt from my article, "Thoughtful Gestures," found in your April 2010 Choral Journal:

Contagion is a notion derived from medicine. Most people have experienced the sensation finding someone’s energy contagious, or read headlines around Inauguration Day about “catching Obama fever.”  Emotional contagion is “a multiply determined family of psychophysiological, behavioral, and social phenomena," meaning it, rather like a cold, can be caught from a wide variety of sources and manifest with many possible symptoms.  This relates to the mirror neuron system because “the basic emotional contagion system is thought to support our ability to empathize emotionally (‘I feel how you feel’) and has been linked to the human MNS,” meaning it is inherent in each of us. 

Entrainment is one symptom of contagion.  Research for this article came up with no studies linking entrainment and the mirror neuron system, but has already been applied to musical rehearsals: James Jordan discusses Robert Shaw’s use of entrainment with a pendulum.  Synchrony is another symptom of the contagion, as is mimicry.  This is the process through which Fuelberth’s singers would develop vocal tension in response to tension in their conductor’s hand [referring to s study which examined the perception of vocal tension in relationship to tension in a conductor's left hand].  People naturally tend to imitate others, and the performance of an expressive act can trigger the emotion associated with that act.  That is why “evolutionary theorists have argued that sad, frightened, and angry faces may trigger powerful emotional reactions, and that it may be difficult to extinguish such innate reactions.” This is, after all, what communication is for: the ability to give warning and to take heed without having to think about it probably lengthened the lives of our ancestors.  The range of individuals’ susceptibility to emotional contagion and their ability to infect others is wide, but can be increased with training

So, a conductor depends on emotional contagion.  When I wrote about Leonard Bernstein, I emphasized his ability to get performers to take on the responsibility of being artists, of engaging with the music in the moment they make it.  You can ask them to do it, if they're great musicians like the members of the NY Phil, and then trust that they will  But one of the jobs of a conductor is to live the emotional intention of the music in order to influence the performers, and that's where emotional contagion comes in.  

As empathy starts to take place, the conductor, then the performers, then the audience start to connect with the feeling in the air.  Sounds fruity, but it actually happens.  Well, it can happen.  Especially if:

• You allow it.  It's a choice--you won't necessarily get carried away by a dramatic moment.  But if you would like to, you can allow yourself to be affected.  You already know this, you've already made this choice sometime in your life.  You can develop your skill at it, and increase your empathy.  (More on this when I talk in greater detail about neuroplasticity.)
• There are multiple means of communication.  In a movie you get sound and light and story.  In a live theater performance, you also get the actual feelings of the actual people on stage--pheromones might be involved, so that even our sense of smell is helping us to empathize.  In a musical performance, it's more difficult.   Classical music takes some training to get into.  I mean, it's wonderful and anyone can love it, but the more you know about it, the easier it is to listen to.  The better you understand it, the quicker you can perceive the expressive intent of the composer.  You also, in a live performance, get the benefit of the emotions of individual performers if they are, as they should be, really living that expression and not just reproducing notes on a page.

Emotional contagion.  More science that shows why art is art.

with my freeze ray

I need to be an evil scientist in my next life.  There must be a way for me to harness my useless excitement over other people's research.  Honestly, this kind of stuff thrills and tickles me: Biomotion Lab.  They study motion and what it communicates.  And my question is, "when will they start to study conductors?"  Because all we do is move and count on our ensembles to perceive stuff.  And it's sooooo interesting what they might be getting from our movement that we don't even intend.


I keep giggling and clapping like a pre-schooler watching Teletubbies.  Isn't it COOL?!


Check out the fun Biomotion toys--er, demos.  My favorite is the BMLrating, where you can choose any attribute you want to measure (I chose "engagement"), then watch hundreds of examples and rank them (I ranked them from "disinterested" to "interested.").  The computer then puts together the information and gives you a result where you can slide a scale to increase or decrease the attribute.  So it showed me a person walking, then I slid the bar over the scale to "interested" and the walker got faster, leaned more forward (and a bunch of other smaller, subtler changes that are hard to describe).  I slid the bar over to "disinterested" and the walker slowed and seemed to shift his weight back.  Awesome!


My ability to recognize sex was 62%, slightly below the world average of 65%.


I need a moment to giggle and clap some more.


The website says they're goals are to study

detection of animate agents

conspecific recognition

gender recognition

individual recognition

recognition of an agent's actions

recognition of emotions, personality traits and intentionality

face recognition

My interest is particularly in that penultimate one, of course.  Recognition of emotions, personality traits, and intentionality--WOW!  This is just walking, of course, but it's got to have ramifications into more elaborate gesture, too.  Doesn't it?  Also, is there correlation between weight and mood or sex and energy level?  Does a feminine motion look more relaxed?  I don't know!  But I'm glad someone is trying to measure this stuff.


Science and art!!!  We will stop... The world.

familiarity, neuroplasticity, and receiving ability

Conducting doesn't work unless the conductor accurately expresses what she intends to express.  And even that depends on the musicians in the ensemble interpreting the expression accurately and translating it into musical expression.  I've already described how mirror neurons facilitate empathy, which is how you feel what other people feel.  That means that we are built to communicate in this way.  Our brains are, as they say, hard wired to empathize.

That is the reception of unintentional "spontaneous" signals--a system of signals that all humans share biologically.  We all have blood and muscles that change when we feel different things, and we all have brains that can perceive those changes in others.  Dr. Buck, my guide through the nation of Communications Science, has explained it in thorough detail, but stuff conductors want to know is this:

Receiving ability has somewhat to do with emotional intelligence--that is, some people are naturally better than others at deciphering the signals of others.  But it can be improved through the education of attention, which brings me back to mirror neurons, empathy, and neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is one of my favorite words.  It sounds like our brains are crawling around inside our skulls, changing all the time.  Which they are.  Slowly.


Like intelligence of any kind, our awareness of emotion levels varies according to our aptitude and according to our training or, in this case, “education of attention."   Practice of Eastern philosophies like meditation, for example, is credited with enhancing an individual’s ability to sense our own internal states, including emotions.  My point today is that education of attention is also applied to the ability to receive communication from others. Receiving ability is linked to mirror neurons. That they fire when we observe something we have experienced, suggests that  our brains can also infer intention from observed action based on our own experience performing those actions with intention.

Familiarity, a result of the education of attention, enhances our ability to understand what we see.  Daniel Glaser’s research has demonstrated that familiarity—particularly expertise—increases the strength with which our brains react to observed behavior. Ballet dancers’brains reacted strongly to watching ballet. Caporeira practioners’ brains reacted equally strongly to watching Caporeira, a form of martial arts from Brazil. Each group reacted moderately to watching the other’s activity, but members of neither group reacted with weakness to either, as did control the brains of control subjects who were experts in neither discipline. This suggests that familiarity increases our capacity to connect to what we observe.

Based on this tendency towards stronger neural response to more familiar stimuli, it is no surprise that a study (which I'll discuss in detail later) found that conductors were better interpreters of conducting gesture. Not only do they cognitively know what to do, they are also biologically prepared to respond strongly.

What does this mean for conductors?  It means we need our ensemble members to be experts at recognizing expressive displays, at reading our displays in particular.  How do we educate their attention and develop their empathic capacity?  That's another post.

mirror neurons and empathy

A conductor embodies the expressive intent of the composer and displays signals to that effect.

Singers in the choir must be able to see and interpret them, and here's how that works:

The brain is made of specialized cells called neurons.  Cells communicate with electrical and chemical signals that can be measured, which is how we have learned that certain parts of the brain work on certain tasks.  Within groups of brain cells that work on certain tasks, some of those cells not only fire when you work on that task, they also fire when you observe someone else working on it.  They are called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons were discovered by a group of scientists in Italy lead by a guy named Vittorio Gallese.  They were observing the neurons that fired on a monkey when it picked up food--let's say peanuts.  One day, a researcher walked in the room and picked up a peanut.  The monkey saw it, and some of its peanut-picking-up neurons fired again, even though he wasn't actually doing it himself.

And this, my friends, is the neurological mechanism of empathy.  When you empathize, you feel what the other person feels.  "I feel your pain," you might say.  And, in fact, the study of mirror neurons shows us that we really do feel other people's pain.  And pleasure.  And everything.  Let's examine a few more examples of this.

It's 1:15 in the afternoon in a 10th grade geometry class.  The teacher is doing sample problems on the board.  The room is about 80 degrees.  Kids are zoning out, staring like zombies.  Inside the brain of one kid--let's call him Greg--the brain discovers that he has been breathing shallowly for a few minutes and the oxygen level is too low.  Time for a nice deep breath.  A certain group of neurons fires and Greg yawns.  The kid next to Greg, Alex, observes Greg's yawn, and some of Alex's yawning neurons fire.  These are his yawning mirror neurons.  Yawning is a hair-trigger reflex.  Upward movement of the soft palate and downward movement of the back of the tongue are enough to set it off.  So those few mirror neurons firing in Alex's brain are enough to make him actually yawn.  Then Hannah, sitting next to Alex, yawns... and so on and etc.

Scientists calls it "social yawning."  The more you like a person, the more connected you are to them, the more likely it is that their yawning will make you yawn.  Did you yawn when you read the description?  Congratulations!  You're a highly empathic person!  If you didn't yawn, don't worry, empathy can be increased, but that's another post...

Another example:
If you're watching America's Funniest Home Videos, you're likely to see a male person come to harm by landing heavily on something between his legs.  You cringe (highly empathic folks may even cringe reading my extremely dry, generic description of the event).  You think "that's gotta hurt."  My husband uses the phrase "that hurts just to look at."  And he's right.  Our brains understand what the guy in the video is experiencing because we have experienced it, too (to whatever degree), and so some of those neurons fire when we observe it.  And in firing, they cause us to experience just a tiny bit of it.

Did a movie ever make you cry?  They spend two hours teaching you about a character, letting you get to know her, making you care what happens to her.  So at the end of The Color Purple, when Whoopie Goldberg runs across the lawn to hug her children, we feel for her.  Literally.

Empathic communication is effortless, involuntary, and instantaneous.  There is no processing of thought--your brain cells fire because you observe something.  That's it.  What action results will vary, but the experience of empathy is inevitable.

So, conducting.

Say you're sitting in the choir, waiting to start singing.  The conductor is standing in front, hands raised.  She takes a deep breath, her hands drop a bit, and you observe these things.  You have experienced breathing that way, so your breathing mirror neurons fire and you experience her breath with her.  You also know cognitively that you're supposed to breathe, too, so you do.

Let's look deeper.  The song is "To be sung on the water" by Barber.  Before you start singing, you see the conductor's face is relaxed, eyes soft and wide, just a hint of a smile.  You know her, you can interpret her expression: there's some love, a little awe.  You've got mirror neurons for that, too.  So you let her influence you, and you feel a little warmth, your energy grows a little more intense.  When you breathe, it's with a hushed reverence, imagining the object of your affection, remembering a night that your life changed.

Will that make you sing differently?

You bet yer bippy.

Art and science, science and art.  They will answer each other's questions.

sending emotion

A conductor's job on the podium is communication.  Never mind, for now, what we communicate.  Let's just talk about communication.

Ross Buck, social psychologist and professor of communications at the University of Connecticut, wrote a book titled The Communication of Emotion (1984).  I think that would be a great title for a conducting textbook.  There's some stuff in it that I think every conductor should know and which I think non-conductors would be surprised to know is part of conducting.

Here we go:

The definition of communication by Dr. Buck is "when the actions of one influence the behavior of another."  Communication, therefore, has two steps: sending and receiving.  Today I'll talk about sending

There are two kinds of sending in communication: spontaneous and symbolic.  I'll have to talk about emotion before I talk about the difference between the two.

Dr. Buck divides emotion into three kinds, conveniently labeled Emotion I, Emotion II, and Emotion III.

• Emotion I is basically your immune system, autonomic system, and endocrine system.  Heart rate and blood pressure, pupil dilation--stuff doctors measure to see how you're feeling.  
• Emotion II is where the spontaneous communication happens.  Emotion II is your involuntary expressive response to feeling: facial expressions, shifting weight, hand gestures, etc.  The key word is involuntary. 
• Emotion III is your subject experience of feeling.  This is where ideas like happy and sad come in, as well as sleepy and hungry.  

So, in the communication of emotion, spontaneous communication is involuntary biological expressions of feeling.  Spontaneous communication, Dr. Bucks says, is "an external manifestation of the referent in the same way dark clouds are a sign of rain," that is, displays which reflect an internal state because they are a result of the internal state.  Gasping, flinching, and cringing are expressions that a lot of people recognize as spontaneous.  Crying, the production of tears, is spontaneous, too.  Crying on demand, as an actor might have to, is hard because you actually have to feel something strong enough that your tears ducts will produce tears.

Symbolic communication is everything else.  Whatever we chose to say and do, and whatever way in which we choose to say and do it is "symbolic."

The most important thing about these two types of communication is that they happen constantly in "two simultaneous streams."  It's likely that at some moments in your life, you will express only spontaneously  without any symbolic communication; but, you will never, never be without the spontaneous displays.  Dr. Buck evocatively calls it "leakage:" unintended displays of signals that unerringly reflect our internal state (because they are a result of that internal state) despite what we want people to think our internal state is.

I've already mentioned acting, and this is about the time when people start thinking about lying.  They call it "dissimulation" in the books.  There are t.v. shows and articles about how to tell if a person is lying, and most of them have to do with observing spontaneous cues, and observing things that we usually ignore, like sweating and pupil dilation.  Indicators of stress.

There is also the case of manipulating our own spontaneous cues.  A method actor actually feels what she is acting--her body responds chemically and physiologically as though the feeling were being inspired by a real situation.  Tears, blood pressure, heart rate, trembling... stuff that doesn't happen to us unless we're genuinely under the influence of an extreme emotional state.  They put themselves in the state, and their bodies respond accordingly, showing it to the audience.  We believe it because we have suspended our disbelief a bit, and it's easy because it is real.  The woman on the screen is crying: tears are coming down her flushed, swollen face and we recognize that these are indicators of a very particular state.  Dr. Buck calls it pseudo-spontaneous behavior because we're choosing to create spontaneous cues.

We all use pseudo-spontaneous communication sometimes.  If you're hung over at work, and have to meet with your boss, you can fake alertness and competence briefly.  (Interestingly, your boss may not notice anything's wrong because he only meets with you twice a month, but your office mate who sees you all day every day will say "dude, you look like hell." That has to do with receiving and rapport and has very interesting implications for conductors--but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Hopefully you can see how this relates to conducting.  Conductors, like actors, communicate feelings and ideas.  But they're human beings.  The two simultaneous streams are always there, and not even a conductor can escape leakage of spontaneous signals that very well may undermine or contradict the expressive message he's intending to send.  Also, we deal with musicians we rehearse for hours and hours in preparation for a performance.  They know us pretty well and are therefore good at interpreting our signals, both intended and unintended.

Emotions, music, and science.  Cool, right?

i'm no scientist

The thesis of my article in this month's Choral Journal burned a hole in my brain for three years before I started writing.


In summer of 2006, I was at the gym, on the elliptical machine, reading O Magazine.  There was a story about mirror neurons, which I had never heard of before.  I read the article and thought, "I am sure that that is how conducting works."


Jump to fall 2008: I'm in my first semester of doctoral coursework at UConn, and I discover that there is a professor in the communications department, Ross Buck, who writes and talks about empathy and mirror neurons.  I read his stuff, I click through his Powerpoint presentation and think, "this man has already said everything I want to say, he just hasn't used the word conductor yet!"  So I contacted him, spoke with students in his department.  And I started reading.


I'm no scientist.  When I talk about multiple intelligences, I'll be more specific about this, but I felt like a stereotypical flaky musician when I was reading the journal articles about brain studies and social science experiments.  I figured the audience I would be writing for (of course I knew I had to write it up) would be an audience full of people just like me, so I just needed to learn that science language and write a translation into conductorese.  I read a lot, and I checked in with science types to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding as I went along, and I came up with the thesis of "Thoughtful Gesture" (in this month's Choral Journal--go get your copy!  Read!  Or just get it online, but the magazine's so shiny and nice...).


May of 2009, I started writing.


I'm no scientist, but I try to be careful.  The vocabulary of communications science has become a second language for me.  I'm not fluent, but I can get by.  If any native speakers happen to swing by here, I welcome clarification and insight.  


This article demonstrates connections between emotions, music, and science in exactly the way I think we ought to be looking at these things.  They are inseparable, just as body is inseparable from mind.  The way we work, who we are, these are the things that art and science must work together to tell us. 


When I presented the paper to Dr. Buck and some members of the Emotion Interest Group on campus, they brought up even more ramifications of this work, and I hope to ponder many of them here, more than I could in the article.