When Richard Payne Knight argued in his Principles of Taste that aesthetic judgment depends not on innate instinct but on education and cultivated habits of perception, he might well have been describing the difference between two conductors: one seasoned and experienced, the other young and untested.
The seasoned conductor has spent decades studying scores, learning the historical contexts of works, and refining their ear through thousands of rehearsals and performances. Their taste is not simply a matter of personal preference but the fruit of long cultivation. They are able to perceive not only the surface pleasures of a piece but also its structural integrity, its expressive depth, and its cultural significance. When such a conductor chooses repertoire, it is with an eye to balance, proportion, and the long-term artistic nourishment of the ensemble.
The young conductor, by contrast, lacks this cultivated taste. Their repertoire choices may lean heavily on novelty, flash, or personal preference. They may gravitate toward works that excite them immediately without appreciating the subtleties that will sustain both players and audiences over repeated hearings. To the seasoned conductor, these choices appear poor — not because enthusiasm is wrong, but because the judgments that underpin them are underdeveloped.
This contrast seems to confirm Knight’s principle: taste is acquired, not innate. Good judgment in music is not evenly distributed; it is earned.
Whitwell’s Challenge: The Primacy of Emotion
Yet the writings of David Whitwell pose a challenge to this cultivated-taste model. In his many books on the philosophy of wind music, Whitwell has argued consistently that the most important dimension of musical experience is emotion. Music, he insists, is not primarily about form, structure, or even history, but about the communication of human feeling.
Moreover, Whitwell observes that a person’s response to a piece of music depends largely on their own lived experience with the emotion being portrayed. A funeral march is meaningful in proportion to one’s confrontation with grief; a love song resonates most deeply with those who have loved and lost. In this view, taste is not merely the product of education but of life itself. A young listener — or a young conductor — may in fact understand certain emotions more keenly than an experienced one, depending on what they have endured.
Two Models of Judgment
We can now see two competing models of how conductors make repertoire choices:
- The Cultivated Taste Model (Knight, Hume, Kant)
- The Emotional-Experiential Model (Whitwell, Plato’s Catharsis)
Reconciling the Two
The truth, of course, may be that both models capture essential aspects of musicianship.
- A conductor with only cultivated taste but little emotional life risks choosing music that is “worthy” in a technical or historical sense, but fails to connect with the audience or players at an emotional level. Such concerts are often admired but rarely loved.
- A conductor with deep emotional sincerity but little cultivated taste may choose music that speaks directly to them but lacks depth, structural integrity, or staying power. These performances may move in the moment but leave no lasting artistic nourishment.
The ideal conductor, then, combines Knight’s cultivated taste with Whitwell’s emotional depth. They are both scholar and empath, historian and humanist. They choose repertoire that is formally sound, historically significant, and emotionally rich — works that can both withstand study and ignite feeling.
A Practical Illustration
Imagine two conductors considering Gossec’s Marche lugubre for performance.
- The cultivated conductor admires it as a historical milestone: the first French use of the gong, the prototype of the funeral march genre, and a revolutionary work in the literal sense. Their choice to programme it would be justified by education and taste.
- The emotional conductor responds to the crushing harmonies and silences with personal resonance: they recall their own experiences of grief and loss, and believe the audience will share that catharsis. Their choice to programme it would be justified by empathy and honesty.
It is the union of these perspectives that makes the most compelling case. Gossec’s march is both historically important and emotionally overwhelming. To programme it for either reason alone risks imbalance; to programme it for both is to approach the sublime.
Conclusion
Knight was right to remind us that taste is cultivated. A young conductor who dismisses repertoire without deep study risks superficiality. But Whitwell is equally right: without genuine emotional connection, taste becomes sterile.
The conductor’s task is to stand at the intersection of these two truths. They must cultivate their perceptions through education, history, and study — but they must also cultivate their humanity, drawing on the full depth of lived experience. Only then can repertoire choices be both wise and moving, both refined and real.
In this sense, the conductor is not merely a technician or historian but a mediator of the human condition. Taste without emotion is sterile; emotion without taste is naïve. Together, they form the art of conducting.