It took about 50 years to complete, but now that Gustav Meier’s magnum opus on the art of conducting has been published by Oxford University Press, the book has become the source of much excitement within the music world.
The Michigan-based maestro, who is now celebrating his 38th season as conductor and creative head of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, is considered among the world’s most renowned teachers of conducting, having mentored many of the hottest conductors on the scene today (including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Marin Alsop, the first woman ever appointed to lead a major American orchestra).
“The Score, the Orchestra, and the Conductor” — which was published this past summer — was begun, says the affable Meier, in the early 1960s when he was a young professor of conducting at Yale University’s School of Music. He has worked on the book sporadically through the decades, while leading conducting programs at such distinguished institutions as the University of Michigan and the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Mass.
The 512-page book features 200 line illustrations and 600 music examples ($35 soft-cover; a $99 hardback edition is primarily used as a textbook); the publisher says it anticipates that the book will become one of the leading teaching tools for conducting students around the world. Various aspects of the conductor’s role, including preparing scores, rehearsal techniques, effective cuing systems and other performance challenges, are addressed.
Meier now heads the graduate conducting program at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. In the months since the book made its debut, Meier has been the subject of numerous articles and interviews (including several in the Connecticut Post). The latest is a four-part one-hour interview on banddirector.com, a Web site that is devoted to the interests of professional band directors in public school systems and on college campuses.
Video-taped in his Ann Arbor home, the interview features Meier discussing the conductor’s craft with a passion and graciousness that has become his trademark.
Among the many topics discussed is the meaning of “real podium success.”
When on the podium, “don’t worry about anything else except passing on your musicianship and your dedication to the music, and your sincere and honest feelings about why you have become a conductor,” Meier says in the interview.
To access the interview, visit:
http://www.banddirector.com/article/rl-past-features/interview-with-gustav-meier
For copies of his book, visit Oxford University Press at www.oup.com.
PHYLLIS A.S. BOROS
