On Sat Feb 11, at SaturdayFeb 11 8:03 AM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > On Sat, February 11, 2012 7:55 am, Aaron Sherber wrote: >> On 2/11/2012 6:30 AM, Raymond Horton wrote: >>> But if the conductor is conducting a player in several held notes while >>> every one else has one fermata, then he.she has to stop and talk first, and >>> there is still a potential for a mistake - not easy. >> >> I would conduct the player gently with my left hand while the stick >> remains stationary, dead center. In my experience, this sort of thing >> does not cause confusion. > > Unfortunately, I just had this experience with my opera. I thought one fermata > was just fine in the other parts because they would be watching the stick. > Wrong. I learned that everybody wants the exactly the same thing, even > breaking a whole rest into smaller values, each with fermatas. I don't know if > this is a consequence of the greater specificity of contemporary music > creating a new expectation, but the practice of giving fermatas only the the > largest note value in a part doesn't work anymore. > > Dennis
I don't understand why a single moving part needs to be conducted so specifically. Why doesn't the player just play it (obeying whatever instructions are on it) while the conductor holds a fermata? Or, if there is some sort of action to be matched, or the single part is a section of violins, or the conductor (or composer) wants to be a control freak (and who among them doesn't?) a single ordinary fermata on the other parts with a cue from the moving instrument would give a lot of info. In the conductor-less chamber music I write, cues are our conductor in those passages. Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale