Before the Baton - by Peter Holman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s?

This book investigates the ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth century, the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social and musical history based on new research into surviving performing material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas, oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern practice, he mostly preferred to play rather than beat time.

Review Quotes

[A] fascinating and carefully argued book. Peter Holman distils a great breadth of reading, reflection and practical experience into a convincing description of how large-scale musical performances were directed before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. This book has a great deal of interest to organists -- and for organists who also enjoy opera.--David Knight "BIOS Journal"

This beautifully produced volume is a remarkable achievement - clearly the outcome of exhaustive, wide-ranging research. a stimulating and thought provoking read.-- "BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY"