David W. Music

    Conducting church music can be hazardous to your health. At least that was the experience of the seventeenth-century French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. In early 1687 King Louis XIV (the “Sun King”) had just recovered from an operation. In celebration of the king’s recuperation Lully gathered a large group of performers and presented a Te Deum of his own composition in a French church. The composer conducted the performance using a long stick with a sharp point on the end to beat time, probably employing gestures similar to those of a modem drum major.
You can guess the rest. During the performance Lully accidentally hit his toe with the end of the stick. The toe abscessed and developed gangrene, and in less than three months the composer was dead.
Since then, of course, conducting batons have become much smaller, though they can still be dangerous weapons in the hands of an angry or uncoordinated director. Nevertheless, church music directors since Lully’s time have tended to be much more careful with their conducting!     fine