Essentials in Conducting. Karl Wilson Gehrkens

one's work; and if with these three there is mingled the ability to think clearly and definitely, we have a combination that is bound to produce distinctive results, no matter what the field of activity may be. Let us repeat that the encouraging thing about the whole matter is the fact that most of the things involved in leadership can be acquired, at least to a certain degree, if persistent efforts are made for a long enough time.

      Before going on with the topic to be treated in the next chapter, let us summarize the materials out of which our conductor is to be fashioned. They are:

       1. Innate musical ability.

       2. A long period of broad and intelligent music study.

       3. An attractive and engaging personality.

       4. A sense of humor.

       5. A creative imagination.

       6. Conscious leadership and organizing ability.

      Some of these qualities are admittedly almost diametrically opposed to one another, and it is probably because so few individuals combine such apparently opposite traits that such a small number of musicians succeed as conductors, and so few organizers and business men succeed as musicians. But in spite of this difficulty, we must insist again that any really tangible and permanent success in conducting involves a combination of these attributes, and that the conductor of the future, even more than of the past, must possess not only those qualities of the artist needed by the solo performer, but must in addition be a good business manager, an organizer, a tactician, a diplomat, a task-master—in plain English, a good boss. It is primarily because of the lack of these last-mentioned qualities that most musicians fail as conductors. A writer in the Canadian Journal of Music, signing himself Varasdin, sums it up well in the following words: