Conductors

The University Russian Folk Orchestra gave an online concert yesterday. The conductor, Gorodinsky, is a showman with a comic flair, and at one point he sat down to listen for a while. I remembered the Soviets had experimented with orchestras without conductors for ideological reasons. Lully's death demonstrated how dangerous the profession could be, but I didn't know much about the history of the job.

Obviously in small ensembles one of the musicians can direct--in some African musical performances the drummer gets his cues from the dancer. But when the ensemble gets too big...

There's always handwaving. With finger gestures to tell the notes. Cheironomy sounds like it could do not just tempo and volume control, but also compensate for the lack of sheet music. Wikipedia claims versions go back to Egypt, with church singing using it by the 5'th century.

Conducting with a dedicated conductor isn't all that old, apparently.

How about outside Europe? China had some very large ensembles, but that looks like it was associated with temple worship and the court. (Confucius thought that sort ennobling, and pop music corrupting.) From the description, it sounds like it was standardized enough that maybe a conductor wouldn't be needed for the performances, though maybe for practices one would. Though--maybe Confucius would have found it uncongenial if it didn't have a director. He didn't seem like a man to go a bundle on spontaneous social organization.

Chinese musical notation didn't seem to have paid a great deal of attention to tempo, leaving that to the preferences of the musician. (and followup).

Quick searches don't suggest any remnant of ancient North or South American orchestral customs--all I know of is small ensembles.

India has several traditions: the Hindustani encouraging improvisation, which would seem to favor small ensembles without a conductor. "personalization" is alleged to be one of the more important characteristics of Indian music.

So--mostly for Western music?