The leader of the orchestra, and what a concertmaster does
The leader
WHAT THIS IS
The leader of the orchestra, and what a concertmaster does
THE POST
Principal first violin; concertmaster in America
IN THIS PROGRAMME
SOURCES
Public record only. The biographical facts are sourced; see About.
The leader of an orchestra is the principal first violin, the player who sits nearest the audience at the front desk on the conductor's left. The leader tunes the orchestra, decides and marks the bowings for the entire string section, plays the violin solos written into the orchestral repertoire, walks on last before the conductor and shakes the conductor's hand at the end. In America the same post is called the concertmaster, and in Germany the Konzertmeister. The job is identical; only the word changes.
Leader is the senior playing appointment in an orchestra, and it is a different kind of authority from the conductor's. A conductor is engaged, often for a single set of concerts. The leader is a member of the orchestra and stays when the conductors change.
What the leader does before a note of music is played
Before a note is played the leader walks onto a platform where everyone else is already seated, receives the applause that acknowledges the orchestra as a whole, and turns to ask the principal oboe for an A. The oboe sounds it, the woodwind tune, then the brass, then the strings, and the leader listens across the platform and calls for a second A if a section has not settled. The oboe is used because a double reed gives the most stable and most penetrating reference pitch in the building. The pitch itself is agreed in advance, and most professional orchestras tune to an A somewhere at or a little above 440 hertz.
Only then does the conductor come on. The handshake that follows is not ceremony for its own sake: it is the orchestra, in the person of its senior player, formally receiving the person who is about to direct it.
Bowings, and what the leader decides that the conductor does not
The most consequential part of the job happens days before the concert and is invisible to the audience. Every note a string player plays is taken either with the bow moving down or with the bow moving up, and the two sound different: a down bow is naturally stronger at the start, an up bow naturally lighter. Fifty string players making that choice independently would produce fifty different articulations of the same phrase, so somebody has to decide for all of them.
That somebody is the leader. Working from the score, the leader marks the first violin part with the bowing for every phrase, and the principals of the other string sections copy or adapt it so that the whole body of strings moves together. The marked parts go to the orchestra's librarian and are copied into the desks before the first rehearsal. The visual result, an entire section moving as one, is a by-product of a decision taken alone at a desk with a pencil.
A conductor may certainly ask for a different effect, and a good one will. What the conductor does not do is write the bowings. The distinction is worth stating plainly: the conductor decides what the phrase should sound like, and the leader decides the physical means by which fifty players produce it.
The solos, and the rest of the duties
The leader plays the orchestral violin solos, and some of them are substantial pieces of music in their own right. The Lark Ascending, written by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1914 and revised in 1920, is a concerto in all but name and is normally taken by a guest soloist, but the extended solos in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and in Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben belong to the leader by right and are played from the leader's chair without a rehearsal of their own.
| Duty | When it happens | Who else is involved |
|---|---|---|
| Mark the bowings for the first violin part | Days before the first rehearsal | The librarian, who copies them into every desk |
| Agree the bowings across the string sections | Before or at the first rehearsal | Principal second violin, viola, cello and bass |
| Tune the orchestra | Immediately before each rehearsal and concert | Principal oboe, who gives the A |
| Play the violin solos | In performance | Nobody; the leader plays alone |
| Speak for the strings in rehearsal | Whenever a query arises | The conductor |
| Cue and steady the section | Continuously in performance | The whole string body, who watch the leader's bow |
| Walk on last and shake hands | At the start and end of every concert | The conductor and the audience |
| Direct the ensemble when there is no conductor | In chamber orchestra repertoire | The whole orchestra |
When the leader and the conductor disagree
Disagreement in rehearsal is handled by convention, and the convention is efficient because rehearsal time is scarce. A professional orchestra prepares a standard programme in about three or four rehearsals of three hours, and an argument costs money.
The pattern runs like this. The conductor stops and asks for something. If a string player thinks the request is impossible as bowed, that player does not speak; the leader does, usually in one sentence, and usually proposing an alternative rather than objecting. The conductor either accepts the alternative or insists, and if the conductor insists, the orchestra plays it that way. The final say belongs to the conductor. What the leader controls is the terms on which the request reaches the section, and a leader who translates well can save a rehearsal that a leader who translates badly will lose.
The other half of the role runs in the opposite direction. The leader is the orchestra's representative to the management as well as to the conductor, is consulted on appointments and on the standard of playing, and in many orchestras sits on the audition panel that hires the players sitting behind.
Leaders, co-leaders and guest leaders
Large orchestras rarely have only one leader. The BBC Symphony Orchestra in London and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff, like most full-time professional orchestras, share the post between a leader and one or more co-leaders or guest leaders, because the schedule of concerts, broadcasts and recording sessions is heavier than one player can reasonably carry. Beneath them sits the associate leader or sub-principal, who takes the chair when the leader is absent and plays the divided upper line when the first violins split.
The title has survived the collapse of almost every other piece of orchestral hierarchy, and it survives for a practical reason. An orchestra can play without a conductor, and chamber orchestras do it every week, directed from the first desk. It cannot play without somebody deciding which way the bows go.
Also in this programme
- The orchestraHow a symphony orchestra is put together
- Orchestral instrumentsThe instruments of the orchestra, family by family
- What is a symphony?What a symphony is, and how it is built
- Welsh National OperaA company, an orchestra and a chorus