ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with two main areas. The first is a constellation of issues surrounding the somewhat vexed relationship between 'textbook' good practice and what conductors actually do. The second area relates to how gestures work within the rehearsal process, a theme on which the practitioner literature is largely silent. Another element of technique on which there is near unanimity in the practitioner literature is the redundancy of symmetrical gestures. The shift between musical and didactic gestures is effected intuitively. It reflects the conductor's constant shifting of focus during rehearsal between technique and artistry, between the holistic and the diagnostic. Musicotopographic and depictive gestures start to look less like opposed categories and more like a continuum along which a conductor's attention shunts back and forth between the inner reality of the internalized music and the external reality of the choir's sound. Adrian Lucas uses a pointed finger to draw attention to rhythmic accuracy.
