Baton (conducting)

A baton is a stick that is used by conductors primarily to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians.

Professional conductors often have personal specifications for a baton based on their own physical demands and the nature of the performance: Sir Henry Wood and Herbert von Karajan are some examples.

[1] Historic examples of their construction include one given to the French composer Louis-Antoine Jullien in the mid 1850s prior to his first visit to the United States: it is described as "a gorgeous baton made of maplewood, richly mounted in gold and set with costly diamonds.

[3] When Gaspare Spontini arrived in Dresden in 1844, Wagner had a baton made from a thick ebony staff with ivory knobs at either end.

[5] Some conductors like Pierre Boulez, Georges Prêtre, Leopold Stokowski, Valery Gergiev, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa and Yuri Temirkanov, however, choose not to hold a baton, preferring to conduct only with their hands.

Said Princess Eleanor von Liechtenstein, "Hayden [sic] gave the tempo with his two hands;" and wrote a Swedish relative of Franz Berwald, "on a higher level stood Haydn himself with his baton.

The Halle Orchestra reported that Daniel Turk used a baton in 1810, with motions so exuberant that he occasionally hit the chandelier above his head and showered himself with glass.