onductor full of goodwill, but incapable, is on the
contrary very common. Without speaking of innumerable mediocrities,
directing artists who frequently are much their superiors, an author for
example, can scarcely be accused of conspiring against his own works.
Yet how many are there who, fancying they are able to conduct,
innocently injure their best scores!

Beethoven, it is said, more than once ruined the performance of his
symphonies; which he would conduct, even at the time when his deafness
had become almost complete. The musicians, in order to keep together,
agreed at length to follow the slight indications of time which the
concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to
Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, that
conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose
movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations,
is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work,
where there are recitatives, airs, and numerous orchestral designs
preceded by pauses of irregular length.

The example of Beethoven, which I have just cited, leads me at once to
say that if the direction of an orchestra appears to be very difficult
for a blind man, it is indisputably impossible for a deaf one, whatever
may have been his technical talent before losing his sense of hearing.

The orchestral conductor should _see_ and _hear_; he should be _active_
and _vigorous_, should know the _composition_ and the _nature_ and
_compass_ of the instruments, should be able to _read_ the score, and
possess--besides the especial talent of which we shall presently
endeavor to explain the constituent qualities--other indefinable gifts,
without which an invisible link cannot establish itself between him and
those he directs; otherwise the faculty of transmitting to them his
feeling is denied him, and power, empire, and guiding influence completely
fail him. He is then no longer a conductor, a director, but a simple
beater of the time,--supposing he knows how to beat it, and divide it,
regularly.

The performers should feel that he feels, comprehends, and is moved;
then his emotion communicates itself to those whom he directs, his
inward fire warms them, his electric glow animates them, his force of
impulse excites them; he throws around him the vital irradiations of
musical art. If he is inert and frozen, on the contrary, he paralyzes
all about him, lik