Abstract
After providing an introduction to Conduction as a conducting technique, I look at how, in ensemble music workshops devoted to the teaching and learning of Conduction, intersubjectivity and agreement on the fundamental parameters of music making –what is to be played, by whom, when, and how– is established within the ensemble, thereby focusing on the way the conductor provides instructions and corrections by means of verbal, vocal and visible semiotic resources.
The paper aims at shedding light on Conduction as an example of conducted improvised music, while offering a glimpse into the teaching and learning process that can take place prior to public performance, on the one hand; on the other, it explores how and insofar function and scope of codified gestures for ensemble music making, far from being self-evident, need to be made intelligible through the interplay of a variety of modalities (talk, gestures, singing, manipulation of artifacts, space arrangement), each of them bearing specific affordances.