Dec 29, 2023 4 min read

By Nick Jacobs

Because of “Maestro,” the recently released movie about Leonard Bernstein starring and directed by Bradley Cooper, The New Yorker posted an article by Robert Rice from 1958, “The Pervasive Musician – I: Why Leonard Bernstein Loves (and Hates) Music.”

Rice opened by describing Bernstein this way: “The young maestro behind ‘West Side Story’ has turned the American musical into a form of high art-and baffled the classical-music world in the process.”

​Something in the article that not only grabbed me but also explained my passion for conducting music was something Bernstein himself said on the television show, “Omnibus,” in which he described the art of conducting. Bernstein used the first movement of Brahms’ First Symphony as his text, and he dedicated nearly 40 minutes to discussing and demonstrating the fundamentals of conducting, including the appearance of the score, beat time, the instructions given to the orchestra members, and what style and expression mean. And this next part was where things hit home for me.

​As a musician and former conductor of bands and orchestras, I realized two things in the decades after I left teaching. First, conducting a band or orchestra was very similar to leading or directing a hospital or other large organizations. Second, of all the things I’ve done in my life, the thing I have missed most is conducting.

​The following description, once again in Bernstein’s words, tells it all, “After page one of the Brahms, he (the conductor) still has 165 pages more to go -and they are pages of even greater complexity and decision-making. When he has gone through all of these matters of balance, dynamics, tempo, expression, style, concept, and cultural background, then he is ready to conduct a good routine performance of Brahms.” Lenny, as he liked to be called, described all of the things mentioned above and then said, “These were the tangibles of conducting.”

​Here’s where running an organization, conducting an orchestra, or any other type of dynamic leadership comes into play. It’s the intangibles, “the deep magical aspect of conducting…A great conductor is one who is sensitive to the flow of time, who makes one note move to the next in exactly the right way and at the right instant. For music, as we said, exists in the medium of time; it is time itself that must be carved up, molded, and remolded until it becomes, like a statue, an existing shape and form which can be viewed. This is the hardest to do. For a symphony is not like a statue . . . we are trapped in time; each note is gone as soon as it has sounded, and it can never be contemplated or heard again at that particular instant of rightness. It is always too late for a second look.”

​He went on to describe the conductor as a sculptor whose element is time instead of marble . . . and he must have a superior sense of proportion and relationship. These are the intangibles of conducting-the mysteries that no conductor can learn or acquire.”

​It’s not my place to rate my ability to conduct, but the similarities as described above seemed to resonate when comparing running a hospital to conducting. Every aspect of patient care ultimately fell back onto my desk, and, like the orchestra, I couldn’t control every note, every phrase, every treatment, but I could do everything in my power to get the right players in the right place at the right time and provide them with everything I could from a resource and support perspective, and from my instinctual, intangible knowledge that made the music and patient care as beautiful as possible.

​In case any of you ever wondered, emotional intelligence is a very important part of leadership, and Bernstein had it all, IQand EQ.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.