Fancy being another Bernard Haitink? Now you can.
There are few things more enjoyable to play than air guitar, that most subtle of instruments which confers upon its humble practitioners a talent quite extraordinary in its versatility and power. It allows you to play along with Page and Hendrix, then switch to Slash or Paul Simon at a moment's notice, and without the need for any serious training or musical gift. All this, then, but still it pales in comparison with the much grander, more dignified art of the air baton.
For while the air guitar allows its players to usurp the sonic thrones of a hundred guitar giants, and to feel the imagined loving gaze of a thousand mesmerised fans, air conducting bestows upon its holder a feeling altogether more honourable. The air conductor is not simply the music's strutting showpiece, but its true hidden authority, its controlling hand and guiding force. Simply by wielding that slenderest slither of immaculately balanced air, he becomes nothing less than the music itself.
But the mute maestro's solipsistic pleasure could soon be multiplied, thanks to a device designed at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. According to an article in the New Scientist, the device allows the would-be conductor to take control of a virtual orchestra - a 3D rendition of the real-life Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra - and direct the speed at which it performs by means of movement-sensitive device, worn like a watch on the conducting arm.
At present control is restricted to temporal dimension, but the device's creators, Dominick Schmidt and Bernd Bruegge, envisage a future in which elements such as the direction and intensity of the conductor's gaze will also be measured, allowing users to control the tone and balance of their orchestra.
It's an ingenious idea, to be sure. Its principal motivation is not, of course, one of intensifying the air conductor's pleasure. Rather it is intended as a learning and teaching aid for student conductors in conservatoires and music academies all over the world. In this capacity, I have no doubt the gadget will prove invaluable, as air conducting is an important part of a maestro's training (unlike the guitar equivalent, I suspect).
But what I'd really like to see, though, in classical music's increasingly dumbed-down, democratic future, would be air-conductor competitions to rival the air guitar world championships. Then, finally, the world at large would begin to respect and understand the maestro's mysterious art of passionate stick waving for what it really is.
