unded upon the
fact that human beings have an innate tendency to copy the actions of
others, often without being conscious that they are doing so. Thus, if
one person yawns or coughs, a second person observing him has an
instinctive tendency to do likewise. One member of a group is radiant
with happiness, and very soon the others catch the infection and are
smiling also; a singer at a public performance strains to get a high
tone, and instinctively our faces pucker up and our throat muscles
become tense, in sympathetic but entirely unconscious imitation. In
very much the same way in conducting, the leader sets the tempo,--and
is imitated by the musicians under him; he feels a certain emotional
thrill in response to the composer's message,--and arouses a similar
thrill in the performers; lifts his shoulders as though taking
breath,--and causes the singers to phrase properly, often without
either the conductor or the singers being aware of how the direction
was conveyed. It is at least partly because we instinctively imitate
the mental state or the emotional attitude of the pianist or the
vocalist that we are capable of being thrilled or calmed by musical
performances, and it is largely for this reason that an audience
always insists upon _seeing_ the artist as well as hearing him. In the
same way the musicians in a chorus or orchestra must see the conductor
and catch from him by instinctive imitation his attitude toward the
music being performed. This point will be more fully discussed in a
later chapter, when we take up interpretation in conducting.

[Sidenote: CONDUCTING A COMBINATION OF SCIENCE AND ART]

In setting out to become a conductor it will be well for the young
musician to recognize at the outset that by far the larger part of the
conductor's work rests upon an art basis, and that only a
comparatively small portion of it is science; hence he must not expect
to find complete information concerning his future work in any
treatise upon the subject. It is one thing to state that there are
three primary colors, or that orange is the result of mixing red and
yellow, but it is a very different matter to give directions for
painting an effective landscape, or a true-to-life portrait. One thing
involves _science_ only, but the other is concerned primarily with
_art_, and it is always dangerous to dogmatize concerning matters
artistic. To carry the illustration one step farther, we may say that
it is comparatively ea