Although conductors are commonly thought of as leading musicians and producing interpretations of music, it is notoriously difficult to say precisely how this is done. Among those musicians who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, came to think of themselves as professional conductors the problem of interpretation centered around their control of the tempi and dynamics of musical works. An examination of treatises written by three of the leading conductors of this era, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner and Felix Weingartner, demonstrates the development of a conception of musical interpretation that dominated conducting in European music for nearly a century.
Present practice raises many questions about the degree to which a composer can truly be said to impose an interpretation on an orchestra. At the end of the twentieth century musicians generally believe that "the composer's wishes as notated or verbally expressed are law" and they "will often honour them over almost all considerations of musical aesthetics." In this context interpretation involves a construal of a piece and claims about how it should be played. These ideas are expressed via such factors as "tempos, dynamics, balance, instrumentation, articulation of phrases and motifs, ornamentation, the salience and the interrelation of musical lines, feelings and emotions expressed, and aesthetic and representational qualities conveyed"--but these are all aspects of an interpretation that is based on the musician's or conductor's understanding of the composer's intentions. Though, as Ross and Judkins have shown, players' interpretations constitute a major factor in orchestral performance today, the notion of a conductor's interpretation as "both unilateral and autocratically imposed" was developed by the first professional conductors. The meaning of such interpretation, however, underwent considerable changes during the nineteenth century.
The professio...