Introduction
This introductory chapter establishes foundations of the book: who formed the priesthood of art (Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Amalie Joachim, Joseph Joachim) and the birth of artistic priesthood from the art-religious spirit of German Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. In particular, this chapter introduces the notion that the artistic priesthood occupied a kind of alternative gendered space—neither fully masculine nor feminine—and that desirable characteristics of an artistic priest (devotion, humility, spiritial leadership) could be gendered in various ways in musical-critical discourse. After midcentury, changes in music aesthetics and gender roles created pressure to understand Romantic notions of musical priesthood as antiquated and outmoded. In short, Brahms offers a case study in the intersection of art-religious values with a gender dichotomy that became increasingly prescriptive over the second half of the nineteenth century.