Music and leadership: the Choir Conductor’s multimodal communication

The chapter views the choir conductor as the leader of a cooperative group, whose role is not simply to provide technical instruction, but also to motivate singers, provide feedback, express the pleasure of music. It argues that to achieve these goals every choir conductor pursues a specific plan of action in which his/her multimodal behaviour is aimed at fulfilling the goals in that plan. The paper proposes an annotation scheme for analyzing a conductor’s head, eyebrow, eye, mouth, trunk and hand actions in terms of their physical parameters, their literal and indirect meanings, and their goals within the conductor’s plan. The scheme allows to outline the body styles of different conductors, distinguishing them in terms of the goals pursued in their conduction. -