ABSTRACT
If the prophet is the ideologue and zealot par excellence, a contrasting model of religious and artistic vocation can be derived from one of Weber’s other religious types: namely that of the priest. The priest, says Weber (1968: 29), is distinguished by his ‘professional equipment of special knowledge, fixed doctrine, and vocational qualification, which bring him into contrast with sorcerers, prophets and other religious functionaries who exert their influence by virtue of personal gifts (charisma).’ It also involves a certain rationalization of metaphysical views and an acceptance of the norms and professional conduct of the religious institution. There is a suspension of the need to prove oneself through magic, revelation or through personal conduct. The priest also doesn’t feel the need to invest so much in the future and makes their peace with tradition. Overwhelmingly, the calling of the priest is towards ensuring that the sacred activity is continued and can be shared, to some degree of another, with the laity. I would argue that the chief contender for the category of priest in twentieth
century musical culture is Igor Stravinsky. Even if the young Stravinsky, the composer of the so-called Russian period, had the touch of the sorcerer about him, for much of his career the composer settled upon a stable doctrine regarding music and the calling of the composer that approximates to Weber’s typology of the priest. Stravinsky rejected the idea that music was a vehicle for personal expression, was opposed to the prophetic conception of the ‘modern’ as involving staking a claim on the future, and, as I shall argue, possessed a fundamentally pragmatic attitude towards the institutions and reward structures of the musical world. For the most part, there was no misanthropic disdain for musical patrons, commissions and orchestras; nor was there any attempt to cultivate a coterie of disciples or to promote sect-like behavior – as with Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. Stravinsky was also at the forefront of one of the twentieth century’s most priestly, and least prophetic, aesthetic ideologies: ‘Neo-Classicism.’1
