Handing On the Baton

How can conductors best mentor students in developing their musicianship skills?

This book describes the experience of young musicians rehearsing and performing Bach’s cantata Himmelskönig Wilkommen and explores what they found most helpful from their conductor. It asks why they found five musicianship elements—solfege, inner hearing, musical memory, sight-singing, and intervals—most important. It explores the conductor’s self-mentoring process during preparation for a performance of Fauré’s Requiem. Further, it asks how students learned to self-mentor during a rehearsal and performance of Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man: Mass for Peace.

It advocates the Conductor as Musicianship Mentor (CMM) model, in which a pedagogically sequential, voice-based musicianship program is intentionally aligned with an ensemble performance program, creating a synergy with a unique impact on learning.