[Sidenote: _The conductor._]

[Sidenote: _Time-beaters and interpreters._]

[Sidenote: _The conductor a necessity._]

In the full sense of the term the orchestral conductor is a product of
the latter half of the present century. Of course, ever since
concerted music began, there has been a musical leader of some kind.
Mural paintings and carvings fashioned in Egypt long before Apollo
sang his magic song and

"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers,"

show the conductor standing before his band beating time by clapping
his hands; and if we are to credit what we have been told about Hebrew
music, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, when they stood before their
multitudinous choirs in the temple at Jerusalem, promoted synchronism
in the performance by stamping upon the floor with lead-shodden feet.
Before the era which developed what I might call "star" conductors,
these leaders were but captains of tens and captains of hundreds who
accomplished all that was expected of them if they made the performers
keep musical step together. They were time-beaters merely--human
metronomes. The modern conductor is, in a sense not dreamed of a
century ago, a mediator between the composer and the audience. He is a
virtuoso who plays upon men instead of a key-board, upon a hundred
instruments instead of one. Music differs from her sister arts in many
respects, but in none more than in her dependence on the intermediary
who stands between her and the people for whose sake she exists. It is
this intermediary who wakens her into life.