I'm waving my hands! Why don't you understand what I mean? Play, play!

The quest is
to facilitate high school music students with the discovery and familiarization
of the devises (gestures) used by conductors to express their musical ideas to their
ensembles.  A week would be a reasonable time
frame if the school uses an A,B rotation like mine does.  

Standards

Addressing both performance and comprehension of music notation, I seek to challenge the recalcitrance of (professing) self-satisfied high school musicians. MLR A2 Notation and Terminology for high school calls for Students to �apply accumulated knowledge of music notation, symbols, and terminology to perform music with greater complexity and variation including sudden dynamic contrasts.� (MLR) Problematic among high school students is the fear of being found not-to-know something. By the research and presentation development performed in this project, familiarity will have been gained and connected with its real-time application, following the specific direction of the conductor.
Listening and Describing are the headings for MLR A3. Students are to �listen, analyze, and evaluate music using their understanding of pitch, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, form, timbre, texture, harmony, style and compound meter.� Though this study does not address all of these elements, the analysis and evaluation called for are clearly serving, at least, a parallel purpose. They ask students to become literate in these skills.
Analysis and Evaluation are skills employed in Aesthetics and Criticism. The MLR D1 (b) requires �students analyze and evaluate varied interpretations of works of art using evidence from observations and a variety of print and/or non-print sources.� Observation of various conductors performing well-known examples from the common practice era will reveal surprising variation among performances. This truth provides plentiful examples of interpretation by great conductors. The focus is directly to recognize and internalize the devices (gestures) used to accomplish these interpretations. Research carried out in pursuit of these understandings is facilitated by both listening examples (non-print) and very fine treatise on the subject (print).