Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Prophet

In his typology of the religious prophet, Max Weber (1968: 267) refers to the prophet as a religious figure for whom the ‘conflict between empirical reality and his conception of the world as a meaningful totality … produces the strongest tensions in man’s inner life, as well as his external relationship to the world.’ As an active tool of a divine mission, the prophet’s sense of personal vocation led to a permanent state of tension with the world. In Ancient Judaism, Weber (1952: 314) adds that the Old Testament prophets were figures who ‘could never arrive at permanent inner peace with God’ or the world. At best, the prophet could ‘only discharge his internal pressure’ and the ‘euphoric turn of his emotional state had to be projected by him into the future as a promise’ (Weber, 1952: 314). In short, the prophet lived in a constant state of restlessness and their persona was marked by an irresolvable tension between their sacred duty or mission and the world as it stood. In this chapter, I propose that the composer Arnold Schoenberg fits

Weber’s typology of the religious prophet exceedingly well. Not only did Schoenberg compose an opera based on the theme of prophecy, Moses and Aaron; he also conceived of his personal fate and sense of duty in a manner akin to that of Weber’s Old Testament prophets. The parallel between Schoenberg and Weber’s prophetic type suggests a series of interesting characteristics to do with the modern artistic persona and the culture of Modernism more broadly. This parallel raises topics such as the fate of artistic charisma in modernity, as well as why the Modernist artist was so driven to challenge public tastes. And, as Harvey Goldman (1988) has suggested in his interesting comparison of Weber’s sociology with the novels of Thomas Mann, the sociologist’s analysis of the factors motivating ‘calling’ in areas such as science and politics directly parallels the concerns of Modernists with ‘artistic personality.’ Similarly, the ‘crisis’ in the sense of artistic vocation can be conceptualized in Weberian terms as an ongoing dynamic between charisma and routinization, innovation and bureaucracy (see Berman, 1986-7). But why the comparison between Modernism and religious prophecy and

Weber’s typology in particular? Whimster (1987: 288) tells us that although

Weber’s sociology of religion and his study of modern personality types are two separate projects there is clearly ‘a reciprocal influence between Weber’s understanding of modernity and some of the psychic needs and forces that underlie the religious studies.’ In this and many other respects, the study of religious ethics was driven as much as anything else by Weber’s persistent interest in ‘the existential problems of living and conducting one’s own life in the modern world’ (Whimster, 1987: 288). Thus, the capacity of the individual self to function as a ‘personality’ no matter whether studied in relation to the ancient religions of Israel or India or the early modern culture of Puritanism was an investigation into what makes life meaningful in various contexts. Hence, Weber’s link to the ‘culture of Modernism’ may be seen to lie in his ‘sense of the difficulties of constructing and sustaining an adequate style of life and conduct in modernity’ (Whimster, 1987: 288). Whimster (1987: 288) posits that this interest in the existential problems of modernity places Weber in a cultural position akin to the ‘modern artistic currents and movements’ of the period: ‘Weber can arguably be said to be in touch with … the symbolism of George; French Modernism in the guise of Baudelaire and the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists; Expressionism as a mode of life.’ As for many of his contemporaries, so for Weber modern ‘art is the result of the inward collapse of a conventional artistic life-world’ (Whimster, 1987: 288). In ‘Science as Vocation,’ Goethe is lauded as the last of the artistic geniuses whose personality resembles the ascetic and ethical construction of the past great masters. After this point, charisma and the return of mythic origins – for Weber exemplified by the composer Richard Wagner and the poet Stefan George – constantly threaten to turn Modernism into Weber’s fake ‘salvation strategy’ from the world of practical rationalism. Modernism is a culture that may lead to heightened experience but it does so under the guise of the ‘charisma of illumination’ and the ‘triumph of the cosmic over the acosmic’ (Whimster, 1987: 289). Weber shared Simmel’s (1968) sense that modern artistic culture was founded on pathos and a profound sense of tragedy, stemming from being unable to balance the demands of subjectivity with those of objectivity. Another reason for relating the culture of aesthetic Modernism with that

of Weber’s sociology of religious types is that religion explicitly became a model for modern artists to work through problems in aesthetics and sense of selfhood. The disenchantment of the world was never complete in the case of aesthetic Modernism; or at least, the modern artist – as per Weber’s (1948b: 147) citing of Tolstoy – strove to overcome the ‘imprint of meaninglessness,’ of not being able to be ‘satiated with life.’ The condition facing the modern artist is closer to that of Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil and Baudelaire in Fleurs du Mal: ‘It is a [modern] common-sense knowledge that something can be true although it is neither beautiful nor holy, nor good. Yet these are the most elementary cases of the struggle of the gods of the various orders’ (Weber, 1948b: 148).