From Mozart and Beethoven to Mahler, the composers who have not attempted to conduct an orchestra are rare – at least for the premiers of their own works. After the Second World War, however, composers deserted conductor’s desks. In the last few years, the phenomena has changed again…

The distinction between a musical creator and performer is not found solely in the tradition of written Western music, but is a relatively modern invention: it has only been a few decades that musicians – and even more so conductors – have been systematically trained in composition, at least the basics, or in improvisation. When it comes to composers, it is rare in the history of Western Music that they have not been at the forefront, not only for the premieres of their works – we remember Beethoven insisting on conducting his symphonies despite his deafness – but also, more generally, at the head of orchestras, ensembles, or musical institutions (to cite just a few: Bach, Cantor of Leipzig, or Mahler, conductor of the Vienna Opera, without forgetting Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, and Liszt). Until the beginning of the 19th century, composition was often subordinate to the function (writing for the prince, for the courts, for the services, for students). It is with the arrival of the Romantics, and the progressive emancipation of artists, that the paradigm was slowly upturned.

© Jean Radel

Hence , imperceptibly, a great majority of composers became distanced from the conductor’s desk, and even from performance to the point that personalities such as Heinz Holliger, a virtuoso oboist, exceptional conductor, and wonderful composer, are an exception (when during the Baroque and classical époques they were legion). Today, composers who conduct are rare, or they are happy to lead their own music. The reasons the conductor’s desk has been abandoned are unclear and certainly multiple: we can look for them in the extreme specialization required by instrumental virtuosity, in the theoretical studies leading to composition that have been intensified, in the compartmentalization of different trainings. Another explanation resides (quite simply, we are tempted to add), in the ever more ferocious completion in each domain, making it almost impossible to have a double, or triple, career.  Add the difficulties of an incompressible schedule: how can one conciliate the demands of work and of travel inherent in the career of a conductor or of a performer, and those of writing, that are a part of a very different and far more vast temporality. Remember Mahler, who composed during his vacation? Even today, a musician such as George Benjamin says he has to hide to write, “I passionately love travelling, conducting, and teaching, but I stop nearly everything to write. I become a hermit. The musical work is a testament, a personal reflection that gives itself up, and you have to have time and space to lose oneself entirely.”

Nonetheless, there are plenty of examples, even since the end of the Second World War, of musicians who lead the life of a composer and a real conductor: beyond Holliger already mentioned, we can cite the avant-garde Bruno Maderna or Pierre Boulez. The latter is sometimes more well-known, on an international scale at least, for his baton (that he doesn’t use) than for his oeuvre, and has won 26 Grammy Awards for his recordings. Some will argue that Pierre Boulez writes carefully and thoughtfully, slowly – as can be seen in the relatively small quantity of his productions (on average one opus every year) – and that conducting has, for a long time, represented the more significant part of his double career.  Certainly. But in the wake of Boulez, we find personalities like Peter Eötvös. Eötvös, in accepting the head of the Ensemble intercontemporain in 1979, learned from his elder how to be a whole and indivisible entity – that of the composer/conductor – while producing a considerable catalogue.

Long led by conductors (not composers), the Ensemble intercontemporain went back gone back to it roots in the 2012-13 concert season with the arrival of Matthias Pintscher. For Pintscher, composing and conducting are complementary activities, his sensibility as a composer provides him with an understanding of the score “from the inside”. “My thinking as a conductor is informed by the process of my own writing,’” says Matthias Pintscher, “and vice versa of course.” “My double status of conductor and composer certainly played a part in my nomination. The Ensemble wanted to regain the view of a composer on the institution’s programming. And, while I didn’t have the intention of constantly having my works performed, for me, writing a program represents an act of creation, a different way of composing, expanding the territories of our perception. I also aspire to sharing my fascination for the narrow networks interwoven in the history of music with the public, identifying similarities and oppositions. For example, I would like to program a concert with Hans Werner Henze and Helmut Lechenmann; these two figures fought so bitterly throughout their lives, and who – I affirm this here with the risk of starting a scandal – had so much in common!”

For George Benjamin, it is essential for a composer to maintain contact with musicians, a confrontation with the sonorous reality of writing, and, more generally, with music performed in concert – all the things to which being a conductor provides special access. It is not necessary to be a conductor for this, “there is no rule,” says Benjamin. “Take György Ligeti, doubtless one of the three or four great composers after the war: he did not conduct, and wasn’t even a very talented performer. For certain composers, conducting is also a way to be a part of the musical world: because that is where there is friction, between writing and continuing to be a part of the musical world.”

In the young generation, the question is not always this one, but the necessity for composers to have their music and music by artists in their universe performed; specialized ensembles and institutions do not have the possibility of performing every composer. While they may leave the baton to others, they touch another type of directing: artistic director. We can see new ensembles taking form, using the model of Itinéraire or Court-Circuit in the 1970s and 1980s, centering on a few strong personalities: Cairn and Jérôme Combier, Multilatérale and Yann Robin, Links and the Durupt brothers, as well as others. Others such as Pierre Jodlowski or Bertrand Dubedout who have founded a veritable structure for production and research (éOle in Blagnac, France).

The essential, as George Benjamin sums up so well, is to find a balance. One thing is sure however: the old-fashioned image of the composer alone in solitary abstraction is less and less true – if it even existed in the first place!