Did you know that Jean-Baptiste Lully, the first documented conductor, was the first musician to use a baton. It was a heavy, six-foot-long staff that he pounded on the ground in time to the music. Lully is also credited with the invention in the 1650s of the French overture, a form used extensively in the Baroque and Classical eras, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Händel.
Lully died in a very unusual way: one day, at a concert to celebrate the king’s return to health, he accidentally stuck the staff into his foot. Refusing treatment for the injury, he contracted gangrene and died two months later.
Patrick Susskind wrote in “der Kontrabass” that the conductor of orchestra is a nineteenth century invention. Is he wrong?