Costa as a Conductor

With few exceptions, all of the major conductors of the nineteenth century demanded a high degree of authority over their forces. As the first major figure who aspired to become a conductor without strong credentials as a composer (like Weber, Spohr, Mendelssohn and Balfe) or an instrumentalist (like Habeneck, Moscheles and Hallé), Costa was obsessively mindful of his authority. It was his most marked personal characteristic. The Times obituary commented that other conductors with similar musical skills could not ‘govern in like manner’ because they lacked his ‘personal ascendancy’. ¹ He was described as ‘perhaps the severest martinet who ever wielded a baton’ (Klein), who ‘ruled everyone with a rod, or rather a baton, of iron’ (Cowen). ² All commentators touched on this theme, taking it positively or negatively according to their perspective. A fierce caricature of him in the magazine Entr’acte carried the caption: ‘He will have his way’ (Figure 5.1). Lesser conductors who lacked his ‘iron rule’, like Julius Benedict, were advised to acquire it. ³