Keeping Time with the Spirit

Keeping time with the Spirit is less a regimental march—left, right, left, right! ad infinitum—and more like a subtle dance, a responsive feel for what comes next. Lionel Salter offers a parallel in his description of a conductor’s role in an orchestra. “The conductor has to judge the proper tempo of the work, and indicate it clearly to the orchestra by movements of his baton.” But this is not just a mechanical process. What the music requires of the orchestra changes over the course of a symphony. If tempo were just a mechanical factor of timekeeping, “it would be sufficient to play the…