Monday, October 19, 2026
Conductors who don’t play with the music, don’t respond to it whimsically. Play with flaccidity and it “springs to life.” Good conductors are truly tickling the ear for the first time, gently stoking the embers. Bad ones produce replications or predictable versions. The outcome is based on exact replication, yawn-inducing rigidity which is essentially lifeless and flaccid.
This is how most of us live. Limp, wooden lives.
Leonard Bernstein was a bullish conductor, but bullish about making music live freshly, breathing anew and billowing organically. He was a master of whimsy, although you cannot rehearse whimsy nor “master” it. The score has to be internalized with impeccable technique before you can “make music” (or make love) that lets go and catapults you to the highest vaults of heaven.
Bernstein was relentless about letting the music jive, whilst experiencing every emotion and nuance. Egos of the string players, etc., had to step aside, even though Bernstein’s ego could have sucked the air out of any room! But when the music was “on,” you could hardly tell the difference between it and anything else. It became that. It breathed. And everyone had to become that, even the audience. All, including the conductor, were turned over to the highest order.
His orchestras zinged, emoted, and billowed. What rapture, known only to those who understand precision and whimsy go together! Some are alive and freshly unmade, others are dead and fleshly made.
Don’t take it personally. Let “it” take you to the highest vaults, where there isn’t a single “individual” left to control the universe. Take it personally and it’s rigid and flaccid, and “your best point” looks like a limp, fleshy duck.
But freshly unmade, and it will quickly resurrect the dead, and invisibly “erect” a vault so high, its penetrative effect will make your eyes roll back into your head in absolute ecstasy.