The Conductor’s parodies. A multimodal strategy for error management in music rehearsals

A parody is a distorted imitation of a trait or behavior, aimed at highlighting its flaws and possibly making fun of them, generally with a satirical aim, but sometimes with pedagogical ends. The paper presents a study of the parodies performed by choir and orchestra conductors viewed as a peculiar strategy for error management during rehearsals. To investigate how parodies are exploited to correct the singers’ or players errors, rehearsals of orchestra and choir conductors were collected and the types of errors they stigmatize, as well as their parodies of them, were analysed by means of an annotation scheme that describes their parodies and classifies the pointed errors in terms of the musical parameters with respect to which they are errors. The paper points out that the use of parody as an error management device is widespread across conductors, but especially when the relationship between conductor and musicians is characterized by an informal and friendly climate.