Here's a fascinating critique of the conductor-dominated model of choral performance, especially when the choir sings polyphony. From an article from Sacred Music, the journal of the Church Music Association of America....
No self-respecting string quartet would tolerate having a conductor telling its members what to do, just because the spontaneity of the conversation would be impaired if one person tried to control everything. For various reasons polyphony probably does benefit from having someone holding it together, but it is a close-run thing whether it really needs a conductor or not, and many good performances of very complex pieces have been made without one.
Polyphony of its nature requires the participants to listen to each other, and then to react to what they hear in sympathetic dialogue. In practice this means that one contributor proposes an idea (the “point”), another takes it up in imitation, often modifying it, followed by another until a musical argument has been built up. It stands to reason that the aural balance between the parts should not favor any particular one (in later music it became standard to accent the top and bottom of any given texture) and that the success of a performance of such music may well depend on the audibility of all its detail.
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