ABSTRACT
This chapter presents George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of metaphor to understand how it is that conducting gestures become meaningful. It focuses on two elements of technique – pattern and dynamic shaping – that are archetypically associated with the conventional and the expressive respectively, and explores them in relation both to their presentation in conducting manuals and the ways that they can be observed in practice. The chapter suggests that the formal elements of conducting draw upon the same sorts of metaphorical processes as those that underlie those gestures commonly thought of as more 'subjective'. The first musical applications of Lakoff and Johnson's ideas were concerned with musical meaning, and how it is that abstract sounding structures can be construed in terms of motion, space or colour. Both Sally McLean and Simon Halsey trace melodies in their emergent gestures as paths through space.
