“What is conducting?” The journey of inquiry to the question almost equals to the training process of a conductor. In order to fulfill the inquiry, with the opportunity of essay writing, I choose Bach’s 2nd Brandenburg Concerto as the object of study. The tradition of a conductor participating the ensemble or orchestral performances, which is familiar nowadays, has not been established during 18th century. Nevertheless, concerning the practical performance of Brandenburg Concerto, the presence of a conductor is often being seen. The unexpected difference that emerges from various concert traditions led to my curiosity, hoping to seek the function and justification of a conductor through the analysis of the music, and thus, examine the corresponding effect on music through both the cases of presence and absence of a conductor.

The first chapter will be narrating the life of Johann Sebastian Bach and his composition features, and drawing the context of the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto. The second chapter will be dividing each movement into paragraphs according to the order at the composer’s will, and analyze the composition and the musical effect it created. Conductor’s hands and conducting movements will be discussed in the third chapter. By establishing connections between the gestures and the music, essentials of conducting will be posted. In the final chapter, three versions of different performances will be presented for describing how different conductors, arrangements of seating, and type of instruments result in different musical effect, and seeking models that are worth-taking.

During the process of writing, the weak notion of the connection between words and actual sound notwithstanding, by discovering limited written indication, I have the inclination of providing an obscure picture of authenticity in terms of the discipline of conducting.