A baton is a stick that is used by conductors

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 primarily to exaggerate and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians. They are generally made of a light wood, fiberglass

Fiberglass

Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

 or carbon fiber

Carbon fiber

Carbon fiber, alternatively graphite fiber, carbon graphite or CF, is a material consisting of fibers about 5–10 μm in diameter and composed mostly of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are bonded together in crystals that are more or less aligned parallel to the long axis of the fiber...

 which is tapered to a grip shaped like a pear, drop, cylinder etc., usually of cork or wood. The grip can be customized based on the conductor's needs. Professional conductors often have them made to their own specifications based on their own physical demands and the nature of the performance: Sir Henry Wood

Henry Wood (conductor)

Sir Henry Joseph Wood, CH was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences...

 and Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...

 are some examples. When Gaspare Spontini

Gaspare Spontini

Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.-Biography:...

 arrived in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 in 1844, Wagner was required to have a baton made - a thick ebony staff with ivory knobs at either end.

Batons normally vary in length from about 10" up to 24", which Sir Henry Wood requested when his baton was being made.

Usage

The baton is usually held in the right hand though some left-handed conductors hold it in the left (young left-handed conductors are sometimes encouraged to learn right-handed). The usual way of holding the baton is between the thumb and the first two fingers with the grip in against the palm of the hand.

(Some conductors like Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

 and Dimitri Mitropoulos, however, choose not to hold a baton, preferring to conduct only with their hands. This method is common with smaller groups and choral conductors.)

Conductors view their gestures as the primary means to communicate musical ideas, whether or not they choose to use batons. Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

 is quoted as saying 'if one [the conductor] uses a baton, the baton itself must be a living thing, charged with a kind of electricity, which makes it an instrument of meaning in its tiniest movement. If the conductor does not use a baton, his hands must do the job with equal clarity. But baton or no baton, his gestures must be first and always meaningful in terms of the music'.

The first batons were in a narrow cone shape and had an engraving of three rings at the bottom of the cone. This indicated where you would put your hand. These batons were made out of wood.

History

Prior to the use of the baton, orchestral ensembles were conducted from the harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

 or the first violin lead. Conductors first began to use violin bows or rolled pieces of paper before the modern baton was introduced.

Pre-16th Century

The first reported use of the conducting baton in a performances dates back to 709 BC, during which the leader "Pherekydes of Patrae, giver of rhythm" had...

"...stationed himself in the centre and had placed himself on a high seat, waving a golden staff, and the players on the flute and cythara were...placed in a circle around him...now when Pherekydes with his golden staff gave the signal, all the art-experiences men began in one and the same time...".

16th–18th Century

On 8 January 1687, Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

 was conducting a Te Deum in honor of Louis XIV's recent recovery from illness. He was beating time by banging a long staff (a precursor to the baton) against the floor, as was the common practice at the time, when he struck his toe, creating an abscess. The wound turned gangrenous, but Lully refused to have his toe amputated and the gangrene spread, resulting in his death on 22 March.

19th Century

The baton began to gain in popularity between 1820 and 1840.

The Hallé Orchestra reported that Daniel Turk used a baton in 1810, with motions so exuberant that he occasionally hit the chandelier above his head and showered himself with glass.

Louis Spohr

Louis Spohr

Louis Spohr was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Born Ludewig Spohr, he is usually known by the French form of his name. Described by Dorothy Mayer as "The Forgotten Master", Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven. As a violinist, his virtuoso playing was admired by Queen Victoria...

 claimed to have introduced the baton to England on April 10, 1820, while conducting his second symphony with the Philharmonic Society in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, though witnesses noted that the conductor "sits there and turns over the leaves of the score but after all, he cannot, without ... his baton, lead on his musical army". It is more likely that he used his baton in rehearsal than in concert. It was 1825 when George Smart

George Thomas Smart

Sir George Thomas Smart was an English musician.Smart was born in London, his father being a music-seller. He was a choir-boy at the Chapel Royal, and was educated in music, becoming an expert violinist, organist, teacher of singing and conductor...

 reported that he sometimes 'beat time in front with a short stick'.

When Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 returned to London in 1832, despite objections from violin leaders, he was encouraged to go on with his baton. Despite the initial disagreement, the baton was in regular use at the Philharmonic a year later and is still used in orchestras throughout the world.

Vasily Safonov is considered the first modern conductor to dispense with the baton entirely.