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convey (tempo, dynamics and character) (Garofalo and Battisti 2005:50).

Although diagrams are provided for release gestures, a diagram would have been
helpful and appropriate for the introduction of preparatory gestures as well.
This textbook offers excellent kinaesthetic instruction for conductors at all levels,
but is particularly non-threatening for beginner conductors. Moreover, there is a
chapter on the non-verbal elements of conducting, which is an area that most
books avoid, seemingly unable to put this area into words, but is a most
important aspect of expressive conducting that I will develop further in Chapter
Six.

Although published nine years earlier than the Garofalo and Battisti textbook,
another instrumental conducting textbook with an excellent kinaesthetic
approach is Anthony Maiello’s Conducting – A Hands-On Approach (1996)(1st
edition), used by seven university conducting teachers and two experienced
Melbourne secondary school conductors from the surveys.
Maiello’s textbook has a great deal to offer from a kinaesthetic standpoint,
certainly in the early stages of the book, effectively linking movement to
conducting communication in the introduction:
The study of acting, dance and mime will broaden the horizons of sensitivity in any
human being as they are all linked together in communicating a message. These three art
forms should be considered essential for any conductor wishing to develop and improve
technique. Conducting technique requires graceful movements of the body as used in
dance, combined facial and physical gestures as used in acting, and physical
presentations ‘without speaking’ as used in mime (Maiello 1996a:7).

Unlike books on conducting by Hunsberger and Ernst, Phillips, and Labuta,

Maiello does not begin with teaching the beat patterns, emphasising instead the
ability to communicate in silence through gesture. Maiello places great
importance on the vertical and horizontal planes, and discusses an
extended/forward intensity plane, much along the lines of Laban21. Although
Maiello uses concepts similar to Laban, there is no indication that Laban was an
inspiration, unlike the textbooks by Jordan and Garofalo and Battisti, which
specifically refer to Laban. Instead it appears that Maiello’s exercises were
independently developed, examples of which are Maiello’s opening spatially
oriented exercises, designed to create an awareness of space, time and flow
(again, Laban concepts), although Maiello emphasises the importance of ‘travel,’

21
As already stated, Laban refers to the extended/forward intensity plane as the sagittal plane.