My friend, Aldo Matteucci, sent me this. I would like to know more. Maybe some of you have even seen the book.
Frauchiger, Urs. 1982. Was zum Teufel ist mit der Musik los (Bern: Zyglogge). 69 ff: The first to conduct was Carl Maria von Weber, in 1817, at Dresden, followed by the composers Spohr and then Mendelssohn. At the time, Schumann pointed out the contradiction between the conductor's baton and republican principles -- it was perceived then as a political act.
There were conductors long before the baton was introduced. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven all conducted their own works--often from the keyboard. Jean Baptiste Lully (the favorite composer of the Roi Soleil) used a wooden stave--and died from gangrene after accidentally striking his own foot.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)
