Success Quote by Eberhard Weber

There is a sly self-indictment tucked inside Eberhard Weber's joke: the insult lands on conductors, but the real target is the romantic myth that great music demands a great man in charge. Calling himself "not enough of a dictator" flips the usual compliment. Leadership here isn't vision; it's appetite for control. The punchline, that conducting "requires a pretty awful person", is less a moral verdict than a cultural diagnosis of what the job has historically rewarded: domination disguised as interpretation.

Weber is speaking from inside the ecosystem, so the barb carries credibility. In jazz and contemporary music, he's associated with porous ensembles and listening-forward collaboration. Against that backdrop, "dictator" isn't just a metaphor. The conductor literally allocates attention, labor, and credit with a baton. The subtext is labor politics: orchestras are built as hierarchies, and hierarchy produces a certain personality type, then launders it into charisma. Biographies become the alibi, turning private wreckage into evidence of genius, as if failed relationships were a professional credential.

The line about reading conductor biographies is doing extra work. It's a critique of how we consume art through mythology, rewarding the tyrant narrative because it makes the music feel inevitable, authored, singular. Weber refuses that bargain. He implies an alternative ethic: greatness can be cumulative, negotiated, and still serious. The sting is that the orchestra, a symbol of collective beauty, may depend on a system that quietly trains people to be unbearable.