page_title: Baton (conducting)
section_title: 16th–18th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Baton (conducting) / History / 16th–18th centuries
context_page_description: A baton is a stick that is used by conductors primarily to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians.
context_section_description: On 8 January 1687, Jean-Baptiste Lully was conducting a Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV of France's recent recovery from illness. As was the common practice, he was beating time by banging a long staff (a precursor to the baton; the French word bâton actually meaning "staff") against the floor when he struck his toe, creating an abscess. The wound turned gangrenous, but Lully refused to have his toe amputated and the infection spread, resulting in his death on 22 March.
  Different eyewitnesses to the premiere performance of Joseph Haydn's Creation in April of 1798 indicate that Haydn used a baton to conduct with his hands. Said Princess Eleanor von Liechtenstein, "Hayden [sic] gave the tempo with his two hands;" and wrote a Swedish relative of Franz Berwald, "on a higher level stood Haydn himself with his baton."
caption: J. B. Lully by Paul Mignard
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