This is a companion site for the monograph The Origins and Evolution of Centered Conducting by Jacques Voois, DMA.

Author’s Introduction

In the fall of 1969, I began a 35-year tenure at West Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCU), then called “West Chester State College.” After auditions, I was hired by the School of Music’s Keyboard Department and later selected as conductor of the school’s symphony orchestra. Years of piano study, performance and teaching had prepared me well for the keyboard duties. However, truth be told, I felt that my baton technique needed polish to assure ongoing success as the conductor of a fine college orchestra. To paraphrase the biblical quote, “the musicianship was in place, but the conducting technique was still a work in progress.” After several performances in a variety of idioms, I realized that if I were to excel with such a diverse performance schedule, I needed to seek out additional professional-level training.

That summer I attended the American Symphony Orchestra League’s (ASOL) conductor training workshop in Virginia led by Richard Lert who was described by Time Magazine as “the last living link to the Romantic era.” (Lert had played in the Vienna Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler.)  During the next season, I reviewed orchestra scores with William Smith, associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, a course of study that proved invaluable. Although these were exceptional developmental experiences, I continued to seek more communicative baton gestures supported by physical discipline.

During this time, I was enrolled in the DMA program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music/Johns Hopkins University. Elliott Galkin, music critic of the Baltimore Sun and author of the landmark History of Orchestral Conducting, was then a professor at Peabody. Knowing my career goals, he recommended that I audition for Leon Barzin, the eminent conducting pedagogue who had recently returned from France via Boston to NYC and the National Orchestral Association (NOA). (Early in his career, Galkin had played in the NOA orchestra under Barzin.) To support my application, Kathleen Wilber, a horn player in the New York City Ballet (NYCB) orchestra, a Barzin-trained musician and my mother-in-law, wrote a letter of introduction and recommendation to Barzin. (Ms. Wilber had been drafted into the NYCB orchestra when George Balanchine, Leon Barzin and Lincoln Kirstein founded the company in 1948.)

I studied with Barzin in NYC for five seasons (1971-1976), learning the principles and fluid gestures of his conducting technique, one greatly influenced by Arturo Toscanini and other international conductors under whom he had played during his years as principal viola of the New York Philharmonic (1925-1929).

Lessons with Barzin were as arduous as they were inspiring. Moreover, during this study I realized that the conducting profession was largely uninformed about the style, labeled by Barzin as “three-dimensional, center point conducting.”

In 1974, I embarked on a project that hopefully would remedy the situation. I began by producing a written summary of Barzin’s principles for use in my conducting classes at WCU.   When I eventually showed the document to Barzin, his reaction was surprising. He insisted that since his technique was three-dimensional, it could not be accurately portrayed or even clearly understood if represented on two-dimensional pages. He withheld personal endorsement of the summary’s publication but was quite amenable to the creation of a style manual accompanied by appropriate video demonstrations. Unfortunately, the demands of my university schedule and frequent on- and off-campus performances prevented the project from coming to fruition.

For decades, the project remained high on my “to do” list. In 2013, when I retired as founding music director of the Chester County (PA) Pops Orchestra, the time seemed right to replace the original 1974 style summary with a monograph and video examples as proposed by Barzin. Given the wealth of information about centered conducting that had emerged during those intervening decades together with the expanded number of renowned conductors using it, the monograph was expanded to include the style’s history, evolutionary trends and an in-depth review of those who used and/or taught it during the century-and-a-half of its existence.

As to the research of print sources, I am indebted to Maestro Max Rudolf for use of his extensive library, to the Presser Library at WCU’s School of Music, to libraries in NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D. C., and to all the music professionals who were so generous with their time and research materials.

For the monograph’s title, the simple umbrella-word “centered” was chosen as the term that could embrace the many variations of the style that had appeared around the world since 1930.

To bring the style to life, I established the website. It provides graphics, examples of Barzin’s conducting theories together with videos and biographies of the many conductors who were known to have used the centered style, or who appear(ed) to use elements of the style, consciously or unconsciously. For biographical information and video examples of conductors under discussion, hyperlinks in the text direct the reader to the website.

A word of caution. This monograph should not be considered a conducting manual or as favoring the podium style of any of the conductors who appear in its pages. The work is not one of persuasion; it does not endeavor to convince readers to adopt elements of any style. Quite simply, it attempts to provide as much germane information about all styles as possible. And given the monograph’s title, its scope should provide the reader with broader understanding of the centered style and the limitless potential it offers for clear, interpretive conducting.

Finally, it is my hope that the entire project will serve as an insightful exposition of a conducting style that has been in existence in one form or another for centuries and, in recent times, is growing in popularity among those involved in the conducting art.