ry
movement made before the baton arrives at what might be termed the
"bottom" of the beat is actually more important than the "bottom" of
the beat itself. When the baton is brought down for the first beat of
the measure, the muscles contract until the imaginary point which the
baton is to strike has been reached, relaxing while the hand moves on
to the next point (_i.e._, the second beat) gradually contracting
again as this point is reached, and relaxing immediately afterward as
the hand moves on to the third beat. In the diagrams of baton
movements given on preceding pages, the accumulating force of muscular
contraction is shown by the gradually increasing thickness of the
line, proceeding from the initial part of the stroke to its
culmination; while the light curved line immediately following this
culmination indicates the so-called "back-stroke," the muscular
relaxation. It is easy to see that this muscular contraction is what
gives the beat its definiteness, its "bottom," while the relaxation is
what gives the effect of continuity or flow. It will be noticed that
when the baton is brought down on an accented beat, the beginning of
the back-stroke is felt by the conductor as a sort of "rebound" of the
baton from the bottom of the beat, and this sensation of rebounding
helps greatly in giving "point" to these accented beats.

In order to understand fully the principle that we have just been
discussing, it must be recalled that rhythm is not a succession of
jerks, but is basically a steady flow, a regular succession of similar
impulses, the word _rhythm_ itself coming from a Greek stem meaning
"flow." Like all other good things, this theory of continuous movement
may be carried to excess, and one occasionally sees conducting that
has so much "back-stroke" that there is no definiteness of beat
whatsoever; in other words there is no "bottom" to the beat, and
consequently no precision in the conducting. But on the other hand,
there is to be observed also a great deal of conducting in which the
beats seem to be thought of as imaginary points, the conductor
apparently feeling that it is his business to get from one to another
of these points in as straight a line as possible, and with no
relaxation of muscle whatever. Such conductors often imagine that they
are being very definite and very precise indeed in their directing,
and have sometimes been heard to remark that the singers or players
whom they were leading seemed e