Carlo Maria Giulini and the Art of the Influencer

 

Beware the tip-toe advance of advice or attempts to influence you. Subtle or clumsy, wise or unwise, helpful or misguided. Perhaps just a matter of selling a product.

I don’t think Carlo Maria Giulini, the famed conductor, would have approved, since he was interested in loftier things. But more about him later on the subject of conviction and convincing.

First comes sex, appearance, and seduction. So-called influencers use their faces and bodies to market products. Many seek your attention, attempting to make you believe you can be as popular as they are.

Several categories of such guidance are available in everyday life. They include responses to the question of what to do, unrequested suggestions, and lists of things not to attempt.

The idea is to capture your decision-making when they begin by saying, “If I were you,” though no one else can be you. Others offer military-style marching orders and finger-pointing insistence to do things their way. To the good, well-intended recommendations find their way to us, too.

Therapists try to sidestep the expectation that advice will come from their lips. If you ask me (though you didn’t, did you?) I’d suggest helping professionals use the Socratic method of questioning to lead the listener to enlightenment. “What does your current behavior cost you?” often pushes the client to reflect.

The lucky fellow then takes ownership and responsibility to follow up on changing himself with greater likelihood than if he were told: “Do this.”

But all that involves time, and the patient is impatient.

Musicians don’t have much time. There is limited opportunity for rehearsal, a racing clock, and time turning into money. The show must go forth on the scheduled day and hour. 

Carlo Maria Giulini, the legendary man of the concert hall and opera house, probably wouldn’t have characterized his contact with orchestra members with any words approximating influencing or advice. He’d have abhorred the influencers of today.

Yet he, like everyone assuming the podium, used his skills to ensure other talented music makers would do things his way.

By the time this conductor moved from the study of a classical composition to performing it, he not only loved the music but was “convinced of every note.” Until he achieved a sense of understanding and mastery, he believed, “It is better to be three years too late than three minutes too soon.”

Before the first rehearsal, the players received the orchestral scores he marked for their instruments. Giulini had worked out every detail, including bowings, based on his early experience as a string player.

Even so, his conviction and certainty about how the music should go didn’t guarantee the players would agree.

In a conversation with the British critic and commentator John Amis, the artist dealt with this potential problem:

AMIS: “You have to be the authority, but you also have to be the man making music with the musicians.”

GIULINI: “This is the point. Forget the word authority.”

AMIS: “But if you don’t have it …”

GIULINI: “You know, I always say, if you do something because you are ordered to do something, you do it in one way. But if you do something because you are convinced this way is right, you do it in another way.

“The fact is that everybody has to be convinced. How you convince, however, I don’t know. What I am speaking about is not (conventional) authority because (that kind of authority) is the authority of a person who commands.

“What I mean is that (with) someone who convinces, the music becomes something you do ‘together.'”

Why couldn’t Giulini describe how this mysterious change of heart happens? It is possible his gift was so natural to him that he lacked the words that might serve as a set of steps for others? Additional comments about the conductor provide some insight.

Giulini wanted to approach the podium in an unselfconscious manner. At some point, he’d seen a film of himself and vowed to avoid anything that would cause a distracting awareness of himself, drawing him away from making music in the moment. 

Thus, he intended to help those on stage unite in a single dedicated focus on a shared musical vision. Little room was left for preoccupation with himself. The conductor was as non-self-reflective and natural as possible.

When all are at their best, several things happen within the body of superb musicians in a symphonic performance under a skillful leader.

A maestro gives the musicians security via his knowledge and competence. Giulini’s thorough preparation was evident. They recognized his ability to avoid train wreck-like dyscontrol of the ensemble. 

This man’s “presence” emanated from his body: eye contact, carriage, gait, facial expression, and movement on the rostrum.

Seldom do genuine artists achieve this by posing, but rather because they are among the gifted few who are “larger than life” and can affect others without saying a word upon entering a room. 

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) named Giulini its first Principal Guest Conductor from 1969 to 1972 after he turned down the offer to become their Music Director. Those men and women knew him well, from his American debut in 1955 to his departure to take over the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1978. 

CSO musicians I spoke with could not describe how he (or Stokowski or Carlos Kleiber) achieved the tonal beauty they became recognized for. Yet it was evident from the first few notes of a performance.

Whether a musician or not, anyone who is persuasive begets unity and a melding of individuals. He knows when to ask colleagues to change what they are doing and when not to. 

Such a one is experienced enough to be aware of what intervention is necessary and what actions will be corrected without comment.

He provides the opportunity for each craftsman who engages in solo work to express his creativity within the overall conception of the group endeavor. By speaking, by the use of silence, and by observing him perform his part in the project, the best possible performance emerges.

For Giulini, music was a thing that “burned inside” until it had to be expressed. The painful intensity and priestly devotion he brought to his art partly resulted from the same religious feeling that evoked dressing room prayer before walking onstage. 

No wonder Claudia Cassidy of the Chicago Tribune described his American debut by saying he displayed “that extra enkindling thing, the Promethean gift of fire.”

Not all those who seek to influence, as many do, offer so much of themselves. As Giulini told me, he never wrote an autobiography because there was nothing more to reveal about himself than what he had expressed in public by the time the last musical tones died away.

Call attempts at persuasion what you will: influencing, convincing, advice, insistence, Socratic dialogue, etc. If you have the presence of someone called “The Steel Angel,” it is likely easier than for the rest of us. In the service of transforming musical notation into art, we can only take notes and be grateful.