Stravinsky: A leadership symphony

In this essay I explore two leaders: the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and United States of America Senator Joshua Hawley (b. 1979). These two offer an opportunity to re-describe leadership as an acoustic art thereby enriching the field beyond its current ocular orientation. Through this discussion, then, I invite readers into the world of music. The year 2021marked the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death, and in that same year, Hawley came to international fame through the 6 January invasion of the United States Capitol building by people protesting the confirmation of Joe Biden as the 46th President. I offer a polyphonic analysis of Hawley and Stravinsky by operationalizing the music construct of tonal pairing which allows two tonalities to play together. I conclude the essay by noting the ubiquity of Manicheanism, a belief system that affords leaders an ability to characterize opponents as being evil. I mitigate this deleterious system by proposing that symphonic leadership calls for diversity and difference. Leadership as an acoustic art has implications for understanding the current war in Ukraine and China’s role on the international stage, including her relationship with the United States of America.


Acoustic space: Re-describing leadership
Leadership as we have come to know it is a science of the ocular. Chain-of-command protocols and line-management constructs replicate ideas from the ancient European world in which hierarchy was conceived. The ancient Roman word hierarchia with Greek derivations of hieros (íερός sacred) and arch on (ἄρχων ruler) had its origins in temple rituals and the high priest's role. By appropriating these ideas from times past, as high priests of our time, leaders have become the visionaries who with insight can inspire followers. Validated psychometric tests which inform models used by boards of directors and recruiters to find just the right person to guide the enterprise, accompany this ocular orientation.
According to Levin (1993), the ocular has dominated for several millennia, but, he argues, we are on a cusp of cultural change where we may be in the throes of turning from ocular-centricity towards a new paradigm favouring the logos and an accompanying need for hearing. Further, he writes that although our technologies are gaining in such sophistication that we can see far into the universe and observe the microworld in detail, we have become less able to see or hear with acuity. It should come as no surprise, then, that today's leaders may be trapped by sight, "more hard of hearing, less responsive" (Levin, 1993, p. 3) to influences beyond perceptual limitations.
Leadership can become an art of the acoustic by embracing the auditory age promulgated by Levin. Indeed, the world is a cacophony of sound, a mess of waves that intersect and interrupt the pared back world of the ocular. As Krause (1998) explores, our lived experience is alive with colour, movement, and sound. Bird songs, insects, wind, rain, traffic, and machines merge with the soundtracks of our times: music made and played in restaurants and bars, waiting rooms and elevators; in places public and places private.
The music that accompanies our social activities is so ever-present that it seems as vital as the air we breathe and the food we consume. Given its ubiquity, we might expect to find traces of the music arts in leadership narratives, helping describe, explain, and critique practices and processes within the field. Yet such investigations are sparse, perhaps because this analogic turn requires a concomitant change in orientation away from the eyes towards the ears; to incorporate the acoustic into the ocular.
Marshall McLuhan (1962) and colleagues (Carpenter and McLuhan, 1960;Schafer, 1985) claim that the primacy of the ocular resulted from the printing press, but that the onset of the electric age reacquaints humans with the acoustic world more familiar to non-literate communities. This change from ocular linearity to acoustic multiplicity necessitates a change in leadership orientations (Bathurst and Williams, 2013), away from chain-of-command and line protocols towards a polyphonic world where many sometimes-contradictory voices inform decision-making.
Acoustic space brings music into play as a tool because it is pre-linguistic and calls on the primacy of the ears. Sound, the raw materials of music-making, is of a different kind from our more familiar sight sense, says Schafer (1985), in that it breaks down "centre-margin power structures" and, in a nod to McLuhan "'Sound is all centre and no margin" ' (p. 113). Music, therefore, draws on spherical rather than linear sensibilities providing a cue to the project of reconceptualising leadership. How though, does an acoustic orientation inform and critique leadership constructs?

Tonal pairing as an analytic tool
To explore acoustic leadership dimensions, in this essay, I bring together two leaders: composer Igor Stravinsky (1882Stravinsky ( -1971, and the United States of America Senator Joshua Hawley (b. 1979), who has represented the Republican Party as the junior senator from Missouri since 2019. My role is to act as conscience and critic in the conversation, a task to which I respond in my profession (Bridgman, 2007) and that I accept as a critical leadership scholar (Collinson, 2014). I am not, therefore, an objective observer; rather, I seek to explore fissures in the narratives of the two focal characters and to chart possible future leadership directions that embrace an interplay between the ocular and acoustic.
The year 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky's death, and in that same year, Hawley came to international fame through the 6 January invasion of the United States Capitol by people protesting the confirmation of Joe Biden as the 46th President. Therefore, it is a consequence of my interests in leadership, international politics, Christian theology, and music, that I conceived this exchange of ideas.
To facilitate the discussion, I use as a method the music concept of tonal pairing where two tonalities are set beside each other, allowing for their dynamic interplay. In what follows I discuss two men side-by-side, using as principal artifacts, Stravinsky's (1930) Symphony of Psalms which he wrote at age 48, and Hawley's (2019) commencement speech to the students of The King's College in New York, delivered at a similar life stage, as a 39 year-old.
As a music construct, tonal pairing can be heard in the works of Beethoven and Mozart, but it became more common among the early Romantic composers, Robert Schumann in particular. It is an aesthetic that allows for two keys to sit together without one dominating the other, and is "the tendency for two closely related tonics to intertwine throughout a composition" (Smith, 2009, p. 48). This is a significant shift from the traditional and Classical notion that one key is pre-eminent, for, where one key dominates, works may modulate to other keys, they usually return to affirm the triumph of the home key, or 'tonic.' Although a single tonic allows for numerous voices to interpolate into the work, it is the single tonal centre that gains ascendancy (hence being diatonic -'through the tonic'). 1 This makes for clarity of purpose, but its singularity tends towards obscuring other tonalities that may enrich the texture. Tonal pairing, however, avoids the hegemony of a single tonic.
It is the intertwining function of tonal pairing which creates a context for rich harmonic variation, "a decentered harmonic rhetoric" (Smith, 2013, p. 79, emphasis added), that establishes a ground for refreshing and expressing melodies that can become stale within a single tonic. In the context of this paper, then, pairing the stories of two people who are paradoxically alike and unlike, provides for a thicker analysis than traditional leadership writing may afford. This dynamism of tonal pairing also invites my critical involvement as a third voice interjecting into the texture.
As with tonal pairing where each home key implies a raft of secondary chords, pairing Hawley with Stravinsky invokes somewhat-related components that inform the conversation. Stimulants include Hawley's theological foe, , a monk born in Britain who participated in debates in Rome about frameworks of early Christian orthodoxy; and Stravinsky's (1930) Symphony of Psalms, plus his writings about the creative process, and his conversations with biographer Robert Craft. This is no easy task because dissimilar elements can make for a chaotic essay. To avoid this potential for over-freighting the text, I break down the ideas into vignettes; providing waypoints to allow readers time to reflect and make connections between each idea and leadership.
"Let freedom ring" Leaders are called to be emancipators, and as Roberts (2015) notes, this mission applies in all sectors whether they are business, social or political organizations. Freedom, however, is a slippery concept burdened with cultural baggage. For, while Roberts' exhortation seems, at face value, to be an innocent agenda, the question remains: whose freedom is being privileged?
It is prudent here to linger on the question of freedom in the services of my examination of Stravinsky and Hawley. Historically, Moses the emancipator leading liberated Hebrew slaves towards their promised land is a seminal narrative for religions of the Abrahamic traditions. The Book of Exodus reveals, says Shapiro (2001), Moses as a revolutionary figure undertaking political, social and economic reform, by charting a course beyond dominant ideologies. Yet liturgical commemorations of Moses in the name of freedom can obscure more sinister leader behaviours that may result in abuses of power.
The call to freedom is often ambiguous, especially when cloaked in religious language; for postcolonial adventures in emancipation may become mired in corruption and nepotism. For example, Dube (2021) explores the potential for abuse by church leaders and their close associations with political powerholders in his study of contemporary Zimbabwe. Here, he argues, religious leaders use their influence to reinforce the power of political regimes, even when those regimes are demonstrably totalitarian. Kellerman (2012), another strident voice, declares that conventional leaders have been incapable when faced with emancipatory ambitions. She notes, quoting Cleveland (1997) that, "the tidal waves of social change…were not generated by established leaders in government, business, religion, or even higher education" (p. 47, emphasis in the original). This signals, argues Kellerman, the end of leadership as we have known it, and a call for new forms which are, indeed emancipatory.
Further, emancipatory ambitions promised by critical theorists may, say Alvesson and Willmott (1992), suffer from an overreliance on intellectual, essentialist and negative constructs that are precluded by somatic learning. Logics "deeply anchored in the body" (p. 439) are stronger than powers of reason, they argue. It may be, therefore, that a turn to art and aesthetics introduces a "metapolitics of aesthetics…that thrives on ambiguity…[a] certain undecidability" (Rancière, 2002, p. 151) that is a necessary prerequisite for emancipatory projects. Herein may lie the realisation of the revolution foreshadowed in the Exodus narrative.
How, then, would the emancipation flagged by Roberts (2015) be realised in the 21st century? Notwithstanding Kellerman's (2012) announcement of the end of leadership, in this paper I explore how freedom might be discovered as a 'leaderful ' (Raelin, 2003) activity. Religious and biblical narratives will figure in this quest, as will political and artful inquiry, beyond privileging those with the title 'leader.' How might the acoustics of leadership "let freedom ring" (King Jr, 1963/2023 in all its tonal complexities? To this end, I seek out how Stravinsky and Hawley respond to freedom's call. But who are the interlocutors? Igor Stravinsky and his works are familiar to me having studied them as an undergraduate music student. Celebrations of the 100th anniversary in 2013 of the first performance of the Rite of Spring, and 2021 commemorations of his death in 1971 have returned him to the forefront of my awareness as I now seek to understand his compositions in the context of my scholarly interests in how music informs leadership thinking. The radical, conservative, contradictory Stravinsky intrigues me. For example, the riotous reactions to the first performance of the Rite of Spring are etched into narratives of the avant-garde artist who broke with traditions, while his later neo-classical turn appears antithetical to his trail-blazing entry into the pantheon of 20th century artist-activists. Joshua Hawley first came into my consciousness as I read the morning news in January 2021. A photo of a young man dressed in a suit, white shirt and red tie, with his left arm raised in a fist salute (Schwab, 2021), caught my attention. There are just a few clues in the photo to suggest Hawley's intent. In the background is what appears to be a government building with a row of limousines parked outside. Closer to Hawley two masked police officers stand looking out in the same direction as him, one straddling a bicycle, the other standing casually beside. Hawley's raised fist does not call their attention: their focus is elsewhere.
I learned, reading the accompanying article, that the photo had been taken as Hawley was entering the U.S. Capitol on the afternoon of 6 January 2021. In his role as junior United States Senator from Missouri, he had declared that he would exercise his freedom by taking an unusual step and object to formalizing President-elect Joe Biden's elevation to Commander-in-Chief, believing that there was sufficient doubt in the integrity of the November 2020 election to give Congress pause and to examine supposed irregularities in the process that led to Biden's nomination as President.
The photo is remarkable for what transpired. Hawley had been saluting a group of protesters stationed outside the Capitol, as a mark of solidarity with them. Soon after Hawley entered the building those same protesters stormed the Capitol in what, at that time, was labelled by both Republican and Democrat members of the House as an act of treasonous insurrection. Or, as a news outlet situated in Hawley's locale, the Kansas City Star declared in an editorial, the invasion of the Capitol was an attempted coup, and that Hawley, "deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that's been shed" (Kansas City Star Editorial Board, 2021b) on that fateful day.
My curiosity was further aroused when a colleague sent me a link to a New York Times article (Stewart, 2021) (2017)(2018)(2019). Based on this history alone, I wanted to give credence to his views. However, it seemed at first blush that attributing current social conditions in the USA to the early Christian monastic theologian Pelagius was drawing a very long bow.
Hawley got me thinking. I wanted to understand his ideas and assess their influence in the context of a divided country; where the unremarkable election of a new President to office within a nation that seeks to be a "shining light of democracy" (Reagan, 1979) became, instead, the rallying cry for political dissent and violent disruption at the seat of that country's democratic process. Stravinsky's work added to my intrigue because of his ability to coalesce several traditions into his work and compose music within the constraints of tonality. I wanted to compare the two and find freedom's voice.
My role as author here is to bring Stravinsky and Hawley together and to then introduce other voices into the conversation that might stimulate a contrapuntal exchange. Of course, Stravinsky and Hawley never met in the flesh, and I as author only know of them through their texts: music, writings and videos made available through internet services.
Readers might question the validity of bringing people unknown to each other together in a quasifictional conversation. There are precedents for this approach, however. For example, Curley (1986) advocates for scholars drawing on works of philosophers from the past in order to address contemporary problems. Similarly, the theoretical cosmologist and professor of physics and astronomy, Janna Levin, explored two leading 20th century scientists, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, in her 2006 novel.
In a similar vein, Alan Fletcher (2001Fletcher ( , 2010 and SlavojŽižek (2008) both invoke the notion of looking sideways at data to gain insights. Such an examination brings peripheries into the frame and reduces the dominance of a single view. Unlike a scientific method which analyses elements by examining them in detail, perhaps through a microscope, telescope or spectrometer, this method avoids looking at one subject in detail and draws on spherical acoustic data to thicken analyses.
Educationalist Ellen Langer (1997) proposes a similar process in her appropriation of the 'mindful' construct. In her advocacy for sideways learning, she encourages us to embrace multiple perspectives thereby enriching our engagement with the world. She writes, "learning a subject or skill with an openness to novelty and actively noticing differences, contexts, and perspectivessideways learningmakes us receptive to changes in an ongoing situation" (p. 23). This freedom to examine ideas outside of that which is in front of usto be mindfulequates to the acoustic orientation I am discussing. 2 In the same spirit, I bring Stravinsky and Hawley together, along with other influential voices to seek to understand 21st century leadership practice. I am interested in how leaders communicate their intentions, especially the aesthetic drivers that reinforce their rhetoric: their style. I am a musician and use this art form to understand structural elements of leadership. I also maintain a watching brief on developments in the Evangelical Christian movement in the USA, analysing both its associations with the Right on the political spectrum, and its capture by political leaders in broadening their constituencies.
The current political climate in the USA is characterised by conflict between the two major political parties: the Republicans and Democrats. Zoller and Fairhurst's (2007) analyses offer a critical perspective that may inform these embittered divisions, in their claim that exercising leadership is in itself political, because it enables resistance to powerful, hegemonic systems. Dissent finds its home, they say, in "marginalized groups" (p. 1346) and is accompanied with theatrical demonstrations for "show" such as "the peace sign, arms raised, or other expressions of solidarity" (p. 1349). They note, however, that the carvnivalesque of slogans and collective chanting with their overt challenges to 'power' can turn back on themselves and "reinforce existing regimes" (p. 1335).
Here is paradox indeed, in that resistance affirms the status quo.
The call for freedom from both Stravinsky and Hawley has resulted in disparate, yet similar outcomes. As I shall observe in what follows, for Stravinsky, freedom was found by staying within conventional tonalities: diatonicsm. Hawley, by identifying with self-professing marginalised dissidents, however, has contributed to a hardening of positions and an accompanying intransigence. Following Zoller and Fairhurst's (2007) insights, by attempting to break existing arrangements Hawley's dissent, along with raised fist salute egging on the baying mob, may instead affirm existing political arrangments. However, although their responses to freedom's call manifest in different ways, Stravinsky and Hawley come from a similar religious ground.

The religious ground
Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, composed in 1930, is in three movements, with the second being the most substantive. Following the tradition established by Beethoven (Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125) and Berlioz (Roméo et Juliette Op. 17), Symphony of Psalms is a choral symphony, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, music director of Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924-1949, to celebrate that orchestra's 50th anniversary. The first movement is short, creating the diatonic context from which the entire work proceeds. This is remarkable given the rise of alternative harmonic systems in the 20th century as composers sought for other tonalities beyond diatonicism.
Like his peers, in his early career Stravinsky reached for innovative expressive forms, perhaps the most famous being his ballet score for The Rite of Spring (1913). This work draws on pagan Russian rituals signalling the arrival of spring, and in it, Stravinsky experimented with tonal, rhythmic, and metric dissonances.
In the 1920s Stravinsky turned from the kinds of large scale works that cemented his fame, towards forms and tonalities from the past, in what commentators such as Walsh (2002) dub as his 'neo-classical' period. Therefore, Symphony of Psalms is radical in its pared back simplicity and invocation of Mozartian forms, a composer according to Messing's (1991) account, for whom Stravinsky had great affection.
From this perspective of grounding works on established traditions, Stravinsky and Hawley are similar in their religious faith as self-confessing Christians.
Stravinsky identified with the Russian Orthodox tradition. He was raised within that system, more as a matter of nomination rather than overt belief. However, at age 41 he experienced a "profound spiritual crisis" (Copeland, 1982, p. 565). During this time, he resided in Nice, Italy, and became closely associated with Father Nicolas, an Orthodox priest. Copeland reports that Stravinsky experienced the sudden cure of an abscessed finger, a miraculous event that affirmed his recommitment to Russian Orthodoxy. Further, because of his second marriage he became familiar with Roman Catholic liturgies and for many of his sacred works, he drew on Latin texts. 3 Hawley had similar associations with Roman Catholicism with his formative education at Rockhurst High School. At that school he imbibed Roman Catholic orthodoxy through what their website says is, "a comprehensive study of the liberal arts and a strong commitment to the Jesuit mission of service to the church and community." The school also declares: "Here, we strive to develop 'men for others,' men distinguished by their competence, conscience and compassion" (Rockhurst, 2021). Through his liberal arts education Hawley encountered a resource including historical, sociological, philosophical, and creative works.
Hawley's sense of Christian mission is made explicit by Lowry et al. (2021) who sum his religious-political position: Hawley, an evangelical Christian, has long championed the view that political leaders should be guided by their religious faith and that secularism runs counter to the country's founding principles…Hawley's classmates at Yale Law School remember him as politically ambitious and a deeply religious conservative.
It appears that Hawley's conservatism has developed into what Stewart (2021) calls "rage" at what he considers the moral decline of the USA, and its perceived straying from the biblical tenets of the nation's founders.
As with Stravinsky, Hawley returns to past traditions, notably in surfacing early Christian debates between Pelagius and Augustine of Hippo. Augustine's early life as a teenager and young adult was one of unbridled freedom and these experiences of enjoying the delights of engaging in forbidden acts, such as steeling fruit, boasting of his sexual prowess, and, against his mother's advice, living with a woman out of wedlock, informed his later Christian beliefs about human nature. Augustine, now carrying the sobriquet 'Saint,' held that humans are incapable of not sinning, a view rejected by his contemporary Pelagius, whose chaste life did not mirror Augustine's formative years. Both men represent early Christian contestations about human nature in relation to God's offer of freedom and redemption. As the Church came to concretize Augustine's views in its orthodoxy, Pelagian constructs were eschewed. It is the Augustinian theology of humanity on which Hawley draws.
Hawley is persuaded that the current age is Pelagian; an age that "celebrates the individual" but that "leads to hierarchy" (Hawley, 2020b(Hawley, , location 1879; a condition that is elitist and constrains human freedom. Hawley's justification is that Pelagius hung out with "the old senatorial families of Romethe wealthy, the well-educated, the well-connected. The aristocrats. They were his patrons" Hawley (2020bHawley ( , location 1918. His logic is that association with wealthy patrons is ipso facto elite and hierarchic. Here Hawley may have misunderstood Pelagius and his involvement with the Roman nobility. As De Bruyn (1993) notes: "Relations of this kind, whereby the aristocracy took mentors to guide them in theological understanding and spiritual discipline, were not uncommon in the last decades of the 4th century" (p. 11). De Bruyn also cites Jerome and Rufinus of Aquileia, respected early Christian sages, who had similar associations with Roman aristocrats.
If, though, we take Hawley's claim at face value and assume his view has some intellectual integrity, Stravinsky would want to interpolate into Hawley's rhetoric and claim for the creative potential of tonal hierarchy and diatonicism.
The underlying aesthetic of Western harmony rests on a hierarchy of notes where major and minor scales are built on a series of un-equal tones. The first step, the 'tonic,' is the basis for giving a sense of home, while the fifth step, the 'dominant,' establishes a settled interval that prescribes Western diatonicism. The tonic exists because of the dominant, and vice versa. The next most important note is the seventh step, the 'leading note,' called thus because it leads back to the tonic. The leading note is part of the chord built from the dominant, meaning that the dominant to tonic relationship contains a driving force towards resolution. Indeed, when phrases end with a dominant to tonic relationship, which occurs in most cases, this is called a 'perfect cadence' or a 'full close.' Musical phrases, which may have been replete with dissonance and tension, sound finished and complete following a dominant to tonic cadential close. 4 From an organisational perspective, hierarchy brings with it services and disservices. Leadership scholars, Alvesson and Spicer (2012), in their advocacy for critical performativity, note that both extremes of structurelessness and hierarchy are tyrannical. Neither yields emancipation, and as with Zoller and Fairhurst (2007), dissension ends with existing processes being reaffirmed. Alvesson and Spicer note, however, that the notion of a "heroic and masculine image…is usually very seductive to both the leader as well as the led" (p. 374), a position that Hawley (2021b) argues in his claims that the USA is in danger from the political Left's "deconstructing America" agenda. Manhood and the father, he says, are central to family life and fundamental to a nation that, he claims, leads the business world. Hawley's critique of hierarchy puts him in a double bind where on the one hand he rejects it politically but on the other advocates for it socially.
In music, it is this inherent hierarchy that provides the temporal element, making it move from one state to another. Stravinsky understood and used this hierarchy in the first movement of Symphony of Psalms. The work begins with an E minor chord which punctuates an ostinato figure 5 built on an octatonic scale. This oscillation between E minor and the repeated phrase, "though rhythmically active is pinned down by pedal notes and motives and by the rigid E minor punctuating chord" (Walsh, 1993, p. 150). Paradoxically the movement is both static and active with the inherent hierarchy of diatonicism allowing Stravinsky to end the movement on G major, a close relation to E minor. 6 Stravinsky draws on multiple traditions throughout the work and in this movement, he references the 'doctrine of affections' used by Baroque composers (Lumen Learning, 2021), where a key invoked an emotional state. Thus, the movement begins with a sense of hopelessness in the E minor tonality to be transformed into an optimistic G major. This tonal transformation beginning with the supplicant's tears with its final turn to G major, prefigures what is to come. 7 Of this change from E minor to G major, Walsh (1993) writes: In sum, Stravinsky uses the hierarchies inherent in diatonicism to first, create an expressive piece that amplifies human despair yet with accompanying hope. The play between E minor and G major provides this paradoxical raw material where the tonality moves from the minor to its related major key. Second, the shift in tonal centres allows him to establish an harmonic rhythm that moves the narrative towards the next movementa double fugue.
Hawley's hierarchy is more static. By claiming certainty in his historical analysis, he avoids doubt and ambiguity relying on a single tonality to reinforce his claim. Perhaps he might have been better advised to avoid using hierarchy and instead draw on Michels' (1911Michels' ( /1984) notion of oligarchy. Hawley's insistence on social and political hierarchy may have persuaded him to mis-read Pelagius rather than admitting to his ambiguous role in holding a privileged position within the nation's government, while besmirching its elitism.
The aesthetic of Hawley's speeches reveals short, staccato-like phrases spoken in a deep humourless voice. For example, in his commencement speech to The King's College, the only laughter he drew was in reference to his age in relation to his Senate colleagues: I am 39 years old this year, and that is about the time of life when you start looking for things to make you feel young, and now you know why I ran for the United States Senate.
[laughter] Where the average age is dead. [laughter]. You know, when I got sworn into the Senate, they gave me a lapel pin, and I wear it right here, and it doubles as a life alert button. I can just press it. [sustained laughter] (Hawley, 2019, timecode 3:05-3:32) This 'music' does not stray from this thematic declamation underpinned by a sarcasm that positions him as a man apart from his peers. Indeed Kansas City Star Editorial Board (2021a) noted that "Hawley's mind is permanently closed, open only in the service of his ambition," with his phrases organized around full-closes.
Perhaps the Kansas City Star editorial was reacting out of shock at Hawley's involvement with the 6 January insurrectionists. Yet Hawley's ability to make bold declamations begins to illuminate his preferred leadership style, one that Lefebvre and Moore (1995) might assess as relying on a sense of the epic with its "entailed pomposity, [and] elegant declamations" (p. 254). For, without offering substantial evidence, Hawley, with great confidence, asserts that elites within the USA, with their "prestigious degrees" (Hawley, 2020b(Hawley, , location 1948 are Pelagian.
Stravinsky and Hawley's common backgrounds and their location in traditional diatonicism establish the ground for bringing them together. Notwithstanding that both men had and have right wing political affinities, that they had similar associations with orthodox Christianity, and that the two focal works were delivered when they were about the same age, they differ in the realisation of tonality. In the first movement of Symphony of Psalms Stravinsky moves the tonality from one key centre to another. Hawley's commencement speech stays close to a central theme of dysfunction, stated with an assertive boldness.
This attention to tonality anticipates the second movement of Symphony of Psalms, a double fugue. Here the melodic narratives are at times in agreement and at others opposing, and as an abstraction, replicate the acoustic world within which we live.

Towards polyphony
The fugue is a complex piece of music composition that reached its apogee in the works of J. S. Bach (1685-1750). 9 Themes are stated, worked out, complemented, contested, and contradicted, thereby building emotional intensity through the interactions of dissonances and consonances. It is no wonder that it flourished as a baroque art form, with its intersecting, constantly moving, multiple lines.
The double fugue of Symphony of Psalms is at a slower tempo than the first movement, letting the melodic lines penetrate through the texture. Each line anticipates the next, allowing for multiple melodies to enter, be examined, and then exit. In like manner, I bring multiple voices into this text, including Pelagius, St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, verses from the Psalms, Hawley's speeches, and theological and ontological examinations.
The two melodies of the double fugue are different in character. 10 The first fugal melody is in the orchestra with the oboe stating it in the movement's home key of C minor. The melody, in 8th notes (quavers) is angular with a minor 3rd to E, followed by an augmented 5th to B, down a major 6th to D and then returning to the tonic C which begins the motific cycle again; it is a recognisable pattern that underpins the entire fugue. The first 3 notes are then repeated in 16th notes (semi-quavers) and extended to include an A above the B. Figure 1 shows the simple and restrained motif of 4 notes which underpins the entire movement.
The simplicity of this figure reveals Stravinsky's aesthetic preference, namely, that creativity blossoms under tight constraints. In his writings about music Stravinsky et al. (1970) discusses the notion of freedom and the necessity of having strict limitations on the artistic process. He argues that although artists might be directed by a responsiveness to their inner spirit, this in-and-of-itself is not sufficient to bring a work into existence. Indeed, he says that freedom on its own is both frightening and angst-ridden. To "escape the dizziness that seizes me before the virtuality of this infinitude" (Stravinsky et al. 1970, p. 85) is to establish clear boundaries within which he felt free to act. He writes: My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit. (p. 86) The 4-note motif of the second movement of Symphony of Psalms presents an opportunity for creative exploration. As they interplay, they weave a tapestry of colours and harmonies that blend and clash. After 28 measures the chorus enters with the sopranos beginning a new fugal theme, while the first fugal melody carries on now in the cellos and double bases. This second fugal theme reverses the direction with the first melody, having a falling trajectory beginning by descending a 4th (see Figure 2). The tonality moves from E to its relative B minor where now both keys pair. The effect of the two fugal themes intertwining is to build dramatic intensity towards the final statement in unison on the tonic E: et sperabunt in Domino ("and they shall hope in the Lord").
In this movement Stravinsky demonstrates the potency of constraint. He has limited himself to a few notes to form melodies and has not strayed outside diatonic boundaries.
Joshua Hawley also advocates freedom within constraints. He would agree with Stravinsky and add that too much freedom is morally untenable. He spoke in the Commencement speech to The Kings' College that: For decades now our politics and culture have been dominated by a particular philosophy of freedom. It is a philosophy of liberation from family and tradition, of escape from God and community, a philosophy of self-creation and unrestricted, unfettered free choice. (Hawley, 2020b(Hawley, , location 1873 Unfettered free choice, claims Hawley, is the result of a Pelagian influence across the nation. He identifies Pelagius as an opponent of St Augustine claiming that: Pelagius insisted that this free choice was more powerful than any limitation Augustine identified. Augustine said that human nature was a permeant thing, but Pelagius didn't think so. Pelagius said that individuals could use their free choice to adopt their own purposes, to fix their own destiniesto create themselves, if you like. (Hawley, 2020b(Hawley, , location 1902 Here Hawley characterises Pelagius and Augustine as opponents. However, this reading imposes Hawley's epistemology back onto debates carried out in theological communities. Pelagius and Augustine were in frequent correspondence, and although Augustine publicly criticized Pelagius, he did so as a means of establishing his political supremacy: Pelagius was the foil that gave Augustine prominence. The tenor of the Augustinian-Pelagian debate was in defining the causes of our actions: our own or God's will. Lucas (1971) notes that Pelagius settled on human freedom of choice, where Augustine on the divine will. For Pelagius the issue was that if divine will was prominent then humans were mere puppets deprived of choice (Ferguson, 1980), an untenable state if we are to claim the nomenclature human.
A more potent question arises from this debate and that is the nature of sin and responsibility. Augustine could not conceive of a human free from sin. This was contrary to Pelagius, who argued that freedom of choice gave humans the ability to choose a moral and ethical life (Steinberg, 2005), and this is where he separated from Augustine. For Pelagius, if humans are bound to commit sin, then the New Covenant prefigured by the prophet Jeremiah, quoted in the epigraph, 11 becomes void. Sin is not inevitable and certainly a child is not implicated by their parent's misdeeds.
For Hawley freedom implies a liberation from constraints. Pelagius, however, considered that human freedom invites boundaries and limitations. In his letter to Demetrius, he applauds this aristocrat for leading a chaste life. Humans, he wrote, are unlike other animals in that we are not driven by instinct. Rather, we "are able to consider rationally the consequences of different courses of action" (Pelagius, 385/1997). There is nothing to celebrate if we are virtuous by nature, Pelagius said. Rather, we can discern and decide between good and evil. Herein lies the paradox which Hawley seems to avoid: the ability to do evil is a necessary concomitant to freedom. Pelagius wrote: By granting us the wonderful gift of freedom, God gave us the capacity to do evil as well as do good. Indeed we would not be free unless God had given us this ability: there is no freedom for the person who does good by instinct and not by choice. In this sense the capacity to do evil is itself good; evil actions are themselves signs of the goodness of God. (Pelagius, 385/1997) Conceptualizing evil as an outcome of God's goodness requires sophisticated theological reasoning beyond simple attributions of good and bad.
The victors in any battle get to tell their story, while the vanquished are consigned to history's scape heap. Unfortunately for Pelagius, and perhaps us today, Augustine's views won the day. In the heated conflicts which characterised the early Christian church as they sought to establish orthodox creeds, the Augustine party triumphed. Although Pelagius came to be considered as an outsider and alien, he was never tried nor convicted of heresy, yet the debate remains potent because he is used as a metaphor for unbridled human freedom, a freedom critics claim, that leads to dysfunction and the collapse of community.
Hawley's advocacy for moral certainty and social stability, while providing assurances for a public that values masculine heroic figures, as noted above, inhibits diversity. Collinson (2017) argues that "critical leadership study encourages a plurality of perspectives and a multiplicity of approaches and critiques" (p. 274), and it is this perspective that I bring to this essay. Therefore, my role as a critical scholar exploring Stravinsky and Hawley is to analyse their tendencies towards monophony and polyphony: a single ideology tending towards totalitarianism, and plural perspectives leading towards diversity. My task is not to fix them in place as one or the other but identify their movement towards these positions.
Herein lies the central problem of Hawley talking with Stravinsky and perhaps Hawley learning from Stravinsky in a conversation mediated by Pelagius. In his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, translated by De Bruyn (1993), Pelagius writes of chapter 6:14, first stating the text, "For sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under the law. Sin shall not vanquish you: for you are not children, but adults" and then comments, "It is as if teacher [says] to a young man, 'Avoid errors of style; you are no longer learning from a grammarian, but from an orator'" (p. 98). This apparent passing comment reveals an important distinction in ancient Roman society between grammarians and rhetoricians.
From grammar to rhetoric; ocular to acoustic McNelis (2007) clarifies the distinctions between grammar and rhetoric as a function of education. A child aged around 7 or 8 would learn letters qualifying them to study grammar, which would begin by students learning to read aloud accurately, with prose and poetry providing the resources for examining language constructs. Grammarians taught students correct speech by using the works of poets, a curriculum which corresponds to today's liberal arts education.
Rhetoric was a more advanced step in the student's education, focusing on persuasion. It was valued in Roman society and skilled rhetoricians would be found debating on the political stage in the senate, and in the law courts. Dominik and Hall (2007) write that, "training in oratory thus remained vital for the upper-class Roman, and questions of style and technique retained a very practical relevance and urgency" (p. 5), because these rhetorical elements were the raw materials of their careers.
When Pelagius refers to oratory, he intends that his readers have reached a state of maturity that enables them to grow beyond the dogmatism of the grammarian. In his statement he reveals his orientation as a rhetor, and through his discussion of the Apostle Paul's writings, he encourages his readers to go beyond a dogmatic adherence to the law and to live free from its domination. This, though, does not invite a libertarian response, a life where the shackles of moral constraints are thrown off, but, rather, to living in ways that exceed minimal ethical and legal requirements.
The distinction between the grammarian and rhetorician may also account for a major difference between Hawley and Stravinsky and can be recharacterized in the parlance of this paper as the differences between ocular and acoustic orientations. Hawley the ocular grammarian is seeking strict adherence to a religious, social code, where he besmirches Pelagius's advocacy for perfection, as noted in the epigraph. 12 However, Stravinsky, the acoustic rhetorician, uses the music of the Symphony of Palms to invite us into a polyphonic world rich in tonal and rhythmic colour, with its many hues and tones.
What could explain Hawley's grammarian position? While he appears committed to his religious convictions, he has also played a 'populist' hand by characterising his beliefs against his political opponents: the 'Left' (Hawley, 2021b). Sanders (2019) notes that populist movements like the one with which Hawley is associated, rely on "affinities with conspiracy theory" and "an implicit or explicit reference to an 'anti-group', often the political elite, against which the 'people' is positioned" (p. 752, emphasis added). Such populism only works, argues Sanders, in fluid and contested situations with leaders acting as stimulants for mass anger. However, he concludes that "totalitarian leaders cannot survive if the regime stabilises" (p. 758). It is this singular element about music, in particular the stability that diatonicism provides, that contributes to understandings of the tensions between populism and democracy.
If leadership is an acoustic art, then it will be polyphonic. As the term suggests, multiple (poly) sounds (phony) will occur, and these may be heard as interweaving melodies. These melodies are contrapuntal which involves a "combination of two or more melodic lines" (DeVoto, 2003, p. 216). Combining melodies asynchronously necessitates a nuanced sense of the future harmonic implications of a melody as it is sounding at the time. Ahern (2020) notes in his discussion of the analogies between counterpoint and social harmony, in medieval times the melody that sounded first was the leader (dux) and any subsequent melody the companion (comes). However, the leader, dux, cannot act alone and expect all other melodies (comit es) to fall into line: each is dependent on the other to achieve harmony. It is this interdependence that glues together the melodic voices thereby avoiding a chaotic cacophony.
Acoustic leaders will invite multiple voices, a plurality that is respectful of difference within contextual constraints. From a theological perspective, and according to von Balthasar and Harison (1987), this is a symphonic style that rejects "totalitarianism, the inner contradiction of the one-party system and the arrogant claim to infallibility" (p. 13). A pluralistic, polyphonic approach to leading will invite connections with others and will seek to build a community of sound that replicates Stravinsky's polyphonies and sonorities and as noted by Pelagius, will pay attention to style.
A pluralist world is difficult to realize if the leader is trapped in his or her unifying ideology, and this is the nub of a critical perspective of the conversation between Stravinsky and Hawley. Where consonance of belief and practice are the goal, the leader will find it difficult to act contrapuntally. Calls to unify under a single ideological banner are antithetical to an acoustic orientation.
Hawley reveals his discomfort with diversity in a throwaway comment during his commence speech to The King's College graduating students. He did not take his audience into his confidence and assume prior knowledge, and rather than building a conversational rapport with his listeners, he presumes their ignorance, setting that alongside his understanding: Now here is a final test before you leave the halls of learning: who was Pelagius? Does anybody know? Does anybody remember? You know it is not ever monk who has his own heresy. (Hawley, 2020b(Hawley, , location 1879 As a self-styled Christian educational institution, where The King's College students would imbibe doctrinal basics, Hawley might have been more deliberate in prefacing his remarks with a rhetorician's ability to connect instead of alienate, perhaps beginning with the phrase, "I know you have heard of Pelagius…" This subtle language shift could have placed Hawley alongside the students and faculty as a fellow-learner, rather than positioning himself as a better-educated, more erudite individual, with superior insight.
While it is easy for leaders to remain within the dogmatic confines prescribed by the ocular, to develop an artful style, however, it is necessary for them to progress beyond those towards an acoustic orientation. This does not mean that the tools of the grammarian or insights of the ocular are renounced. Rather, they are embodied in the leader attuned to the acoustic. Therefore, a wise rhetorician understands and deploys the grammarian's tools of exegesis and analysis in a polyphonic style that invites dialogue. The acoustic art of leadership opens the possibility for change and transformation that renews the world of organising. This artful form of leading invites renewal through paired tonalities, resisting the temptation to resolve conflicts to a controlling centre.

Renewal
The final movement of Symphony of Psalms draws on text from Psalm 150 which culminates in: Omnis spiritus laudate Dominum! Alleluia. This ending is not triumphant and except for the accompanying strings who play mf (moderately loud), the rest of the orchestra and choir perform p (softly). The psalm's text calls for all instrumentstrumpet, timbrel, choir, strings, organs, and cymbalsto sound in praise of the Lord. This invitation to collaborative joy is encapsulated by Stravinsky in a reflective oscillation around C major and C minor, using rhythms from his early ballet works which made him famous, now in service of a song of praise. As Copeland (1982) affirms, "Stravinsky's spiritual insights emerge again: quiet confidence better expresses genuine praise than loud, emotional frenzy" (p. 578). Thus, Stravinsky understood Psalm 150 as quiet and contemplative rather than declamatory.
Stravinsky's rhetorical skills become evident in this third movement of Symphony of Psalms which on first reading is an ecstatic psalm of unbridled, noisy praise. Yet Stravinsky avoids a literal interpretation of the text which calls for "high sounding cymbals" opting instead for a soft rendering. In discussing Psalm 150 with his biographer Robert Craft, Stravinsky said: Superficially, the texts suggested a variety of speeds, but this variety was without shape. At first, and until I understood that God must not be praised in fast, forte music, no matter how often the text specifies 'loud,' I thought of the final hymn in a too-rapid pulsation. (Stravinsky and Craft, 1968, pp. 44-45) Stravinsky's ability to read through the text as Lanham (2003) discusses, reveals a rhetorical facility that enabled him to create a reflective ambiance in the final movement of Symphony of Psalms which seeks connection with performers and audiences rather than a literal interpretation and rendition of text.
In his conversations with Robert Craft (1968) Stravinsky said that setting Psalm 150 was the first step in composing the Symphony of Psalms. He was asked by his publisher to "write something popular" (p. 44) and Psalm 150 fell into that category. He also wanted to "counter the many composers who had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental 'feelings'" (p. 44). This intention reveals interesting insights into Stravinsky's spirituality and approach to scripture, one which rejects populist calls in favour of a sensitised response to context. Craft, in 1968, described the 84-year-old Stravinsky as an aging composer-conductor reconciled with his life. Craft notes that Stravinsky's ears were attentive to environmental sounds be it a bird song or aircraft flying overhead, he was a voracious reader, and even in his later years he composed 4-5 hours a day. He kept cuttings of important news items and was an active epistoler, responding promptly to correspondents. Along with his love for his garden, these lifestyle insights reveal a man engaged and participating in the world, a man aware of his acoustic surrounds.
Craft (1968) also describes Stravinsky as a religious man aware of his spirituality. Craft asks rhetorically, "have the tempers of the man and his music changed in recent years?" In response to himself, he replies: Stravinsky was and is an essentially happy spirit. The majority of his compositions can be described as divertimenti, whereas the emotion of only a handful could be called tragic. His most profound moods (not the same as his most profound music) generally found in his religious works, and it is there, too, that the chemistry shift is most noticeable: Stravinsky seems to be more exclusively a religious composer now than before. (pp. 17-18) These religious sensitivities are evident in Stravinsky's understandings of the Psalter. He was aware of the variety of moods within the psalms, saying, "The Psalms are poems of exaltation, but also of anger and judgment, and even of curses" (Stravinsky and Craft, 1968, p. 44) and these postures are evident in the narrative arc of Symphony of Psalms. The first movement is a lament, where the estranged supplicant weeps for their loss of connection; the second observes a turn from beseecher to a hope-filled worshipper; while in the third the Psalmist is caught up in the wonder of the Divine.
This sense of change within the worshipper's psyche from estrangement through to renewal is reflected in Walter Brueggemann's (1984) theological analyses, where his commentary organizes the collection into psalms of orientation, disorientation and new orientation. Brueggemann insists that the psalms must be understood within the context of a quest for renewal. But this is no private experience, and as he claims, "the Psalms regularly insist upon equity, power, and freedom enough to live one's life humanely. The Psalms may not be taken out of such a context of community concerns" (pp. 175-176, emphasis added).
It is this call for collective reconciliation and renewal that polyphony responds. Thus, it could be argued that Stravinsky's spirituality, grounded as it was in his lifeworld, is not just an expression of his individuality, he also speaks for us. The Symphony of Psalms is our collective symphony that articulates our desire for renewal. Joshua Hawley's call to renewal follows a different trajectory from Stravinsky's contemplative approach. Hawley's agenda can be seen in the legislation he proposed in July 2021, entitled 'Love America Act' (Hawley, 2021a; "Love America Act," 2021) that if passed, would require schools to teach students his country's founding documents. Sanctions would be applied to dissenting institutions.
The background to this proposed bill is Hawley's perceptions that the world is unsafe and threatening, with enemies from within and without pressing upon the nation. On the inside, "the cosmopolitan elite [committed to] social liberationalism" (Hawley, 2020e, location 159), while on the outside China (Hawley, 2020c) and 'Big Tech' companies (Hawley, 2020d) circle the Republic seeking to undermine its sovereignty (Hawley, 2020a). All these threats are characterized by him as being Pelagian (Hawley, 2019), as discussed above, and Promethean (Hawley, 2020f), though his usage of this ancient myth are as sketchy as his Pelagian claims.
Hawley's speeches reveal his music. They are full of binary contrasts, mostly of the disenfranchised working poor of his region and across the USA, against ruling elites who have tertiary degrees and who have created a nation that perpetuates their self-interests. In his maiden speech as a Senator, Hawley (2020g) argues that it is time for revolutionary overthrow of well-placed, wealthy and powerful individuals who have wrested control of the nation.
To understand his position in more detail, returning to Pelagius might be instructive. Pelagius and Augustine were united in their opposition to Manicheanism (Brown, 1970), a doctrine that divided the original Roman Christian communities. Yet for all his protestations, Hawley appears to be captured by this heresy.
The Manichean belief that good and evil are equal and opposite, and that God is continually doing battle with the devil, is a doctrine that has harassed Christians for centuries and even today underpins some leaders' agendas. Harari (2018) argues that "humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions" (p. 247) noting the irony of Manichean beliefs being held by many Christians. He writes that despite dual beliefs not being found in Old Testament texts, It should not come as a surprise that millions of pious Christians, Muslims and Jews manage to believe at one and the same time in an omnipotent God and an independent Devil. Countless Christians, Muslims and Jews have gone so far as to imagine that the good God even needs our help in its struggle against the Devil, which inspired among other things the call for jihads and crusades. (Harari, 2018, p. 248, p. 248) Hawley confirms his belief in this Manichean binary struggle between good and bad in his 2019 speech to the American Principles Project Gala, saying, For in the words of an old theologian, 'We do not live in isolation, [but in] a world of love and hate, blessing and curse, service and destruction…where nobody, fundamentally speaking, belongs to himself alone.' (Hawley, 2020f, location 1172 However, he does not divulge the identity of the "old theologian," making the quotation unexaminable. Whether the theologian is actual or just a paper tiger is unclear, but what Hawley reveals his black and white thinking fixed on essentialist views of his world. For Hawley, the subjugation of enemies will begin with the "Love America Act" which will insist that students will be able to read and recite from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Pledge of Allegiance. These documents, Hawley believes, represent the truth of an equitable society that can take on its enemies. In the process, damaging doctrines such as critical race theory will be repudiated, with punishment meted out to: educational agencies and schools whose students do not read certain foundational texts of the United States and are not able to recite those texts or that teach that those texts are products of white supremacy or racism. ("Love America Act," p. 1) Perhaps Hawley is an unwitting victim of Manicheism and its accompanying tendency towards violence that has become ingrained in USA society at least since the bombings of the World Trade Centre 11 September 2001. Then President George W. Bush drew on Manichean religious tenets in his speeches (Stam, 2003), and according to Winter (2011) this characterisation has helped the citizenry make sense of, and simplify, the complexities that the terrorist acts brought in their wake.
Theologian Walter Wink (1998) describes what he sees as a contemporary religion that appeals to violence as a means of achieving community recovery, exploring what he terms "the myth of redemptive violence" (p. 42) that underpins USA society. This leads, he says, to a mistrust of and impatience with democratic institutions and judicial processes, accompanied by force to rescue the nation from its enemies.
Establishing an ingroup who are 'good,' and whose agenda is to fight the outgroup, who are deemed 'bad,' plays into the political conditions within the USA in recent times, says Goethals (2018). He argues that this bifurcation relies on "aggregating the out group, and disaggregating the in group" (p. 517), a tactic used to great effect by former President Donald Trump. Aggregation, however, belies the polyphonic environment within which symphonic leadership occurs.
Seen through this lens, the invasion of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 makes sense. These vigilantes, accompanied by Hawley's raised-fist salute, is consonant with Wink's critique. In sum, Hawley's sense of renewal is based on a Grammarian return to the founding documents of the USA with their linear (ocular) typeface, and their appeal to the idea of burgeoning sense of national renewal, achieved through violence if necessary.
Sanders (2019) confirms this perspective by claiming that mass movements "operate a junction of 'real' fear and neurotic angst," and in a prescient claim, "political regression of this type is accompanied by a particular vision of historical mutations (conspiracy theories), which are personified by an 'enemy' who can be blamed for all misfortunes" (p. 761). It is as if Saunders was pre-empting the 6 January 2021 invasion of the Capitol, and Hawley's aggregation of his political enemies as the 'liberal Left.' The mix of religious commitment and political power is a potent force which underpins the use of military might as a means of reinforcing dominance. However, overt displays of strength do not advance the renewal agenda, but, rather, can result in resorting to defensive positions that obviate the possibility of dialogue. For dialogue to occur there must be an accompanying sense of community, an ethos that may not now be accessible to Hawley's constituents.
In sum, Stravinsky and Hawley offer differing visions of renewal. For Stravinsky it is found in songs of worship and the "breathing of wind instruments" (Stravinsky and Craft, 1968, pp. 46, emphasis added), whereas for Hawley it is in the rise, says Mikva (2021), of a 'Christian' nation.

Leading symphonically
My exploration of Igor Stravinsky and Joshua Hawley in conversation is a baroque account that reveals leadership from differing perspectives: Stravinsky in his creative life stimulating the works of artists (Gardner, 1993), and Hawley in his Senatorial duties and ambitions for holding the executive reigns (Caputo and Everett, 2021). Where Stravinsky's leadership has opened the necessity for diversity within a constrained diatonic environment, Hawley advocates for a unified society under a single nominal Christian banner. The two prescriptions, however, are disparate in their theological orientations.
By accepting alternative prescriptions, existing leadership constructs may be revolutionised to encapsulate these differing narratives. Here Pelagius might serve as an appropriate guide in his astute observations on St Paul's Epistle to the Romans explored above, and his distinctions between grammarians and orators could shine a light on our path. My discussion on Pelagius's observation reveals how moving from a grammarian's legalistic lens to an orator's attention to style might help frame symphonic leadership.
Leading symphonically draws on available stylistic sensibilities and an ability to work with ambiguity and difference within a structured environment. This is a polyphonic world that finds a unity of purpose by welcoming diversity, heterogeneity, and heterodoxy, to influence organizing processes. Such leading is paradoxical yet generous in its rhetoric and invites freedom within environmental constraints.
Stravinsky exemplifies this in Symphony of Psalms. By combining breathing instruments of the wood winds and voices, with the sustaining sounds of the lower strings of cellos and double bases, contrasted with the percussive two pianos and harp, Stravinsky has created a unique ensemble. 13 For Stravinsky, the inherent contradictions between the ways that each instrument speaks, and the problems of tuning are cause for creative exploration. The dialectic between unifying diatonicism and the diversity of timbres demonstrate a theological ground which, according to von Balthasar and Harrison (1987), is essentially 'Christian.' Unity and diversity, therefore, are comfortable companions with one informing the other.
The leadership that Stravinsky invites, is to enact multiplicities, to create openings for diverse expressions and to release people to act freely within boundaries. For, as Gardner (1993) notes, Stravinsky was a life-long collaborator. Notwithstanding his sometimes-fractured relationships with his artist companions, he could not have succeeded as an innovator without embracing his associates' differences.
For example, and notwithstanding their similar cultural roots, his relationship with Diaghilev was both fruitful and troubled. Without Diaghilev's daring and entrepreneurial insights, Stravinsky could not have mounted the Parisian ballets that made him famous. Similarly, his later collaboration with the poet W. H. Auden, a man of a different culture, age, and native language, was equally productive. Their 3-year cooperation on the opera The Rake's Progress first performed in 1951 "demonstrated that he was able to execute a major work in the English language and to reach new audiences without compromising his artistic integrity" (Gardner, 1993, p. 223). Herein lies Stravinsky's contribution to leadership. Responding to this call means that contradictory elements are not merely tolerated, they will be nurtured so that new sounds may emerge from within the corpus.
Stravinsky's aesthetic ecumenism cannot be found in Hawley, however, and this is where the two become incompatible conversationalists. Although a self-described Christian name, Hawley's capture by Manicheism has made him a disciple of Bloom's (1992) so-called 'American' religion, a religion claims Bloom, that is Christian in name only. My characterization of Hawley as a grammarian shows him keeping faith with his dogmas, unwilling to embrace elements outside his Manichean belief system.
The suspicions which I voiced at the start of this essay that Hawley's use of Pelagius was drawing too long a bow have become my convictions. Despite his excellent education, his claims do not make sense when held up against the historical evidence.
Herein lies an associated leadership idea, one that might be appropriate for this age dominated by statements on social media platforms and the repeated calls from posters for readers to tick 'like.' From a grammarian position, it is not what these influencers say, but that they say it that matters. Lanham (2007) labels this the 'attention' economy, a condition that requires leaders to capture the momentary attention of followers. Once a follower signals their all but fleeting, cursory engagement, leadership has occurred. This does not demand a rigorous grappling with complexities that polyphonic leadership requires, and instead, sets up a simple binary of this, not that, of good not evil, for its legitimacy.
The faith-position that Hawley promotes must have its enemies to push against, including those who espouse different social and political approaches and views within the nation. This Manichean construct produces both the hyper-individualistic zeitgeist and its associated turn to violence as a means of solving social problems; or, as in the words of Walter Wink (1998), of redeeming society.
During the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in February 2021, Hawley cut a lonely figure sitting in the Senate Gallery with his feet on the seat next to him, reading unmarked briefing papers (Berman, 2021;Villarreal, 2021). This detachment appears in contradiction in critiquing Pelagius as the propagator of individual freedom, an elitist position Hawley declared that needed to be repudiated. Through this solitary act Hawley became a caricature of the thing he critiques, mirroring actions across his country that sacrifice community solidarity on the altar of the individual's experience. Hawley's leadership is to push unity of identity and purpose at the exclusion of diversity, which is appealing to followers because the call is clear and unambiguous.
If opponents are deemed to be evil then they must be resisted, and with violence if necessary. For example former Secretary of State, confessing Christian, Mike Pompeo with evangelical premillennial beliefs (Wong, 2019) declared that the current president, Joe Biden, '"fails to understand' the 'harsh reality' of good versus evil" (Singman, 2021). Similarly, former Vice President Mike Pence called China an "evil empire" and "the greatest threat on the face of the Earth" (Fink, 2021). In both cases turning to violence and war are understandable if the integrity of the State is deemed to be at risk from such malevolent forces.
Seen through this Manichean lens, Hawley's salute to protesters on 6 January is consistent with his ideology. Although at the time of writing the Select Committee investigating the events and its causes is still in progress, it appears as though leaders with political motivations fuelled residual unrest and through their claims, animated the crowd on that day, to take unprecedented action. Leaders and followers were prepared to tear down their nation's democratic infrastructure in a quest to exorcise the perceived evil within it.
But why does this concern me and others who do not belong in the USA? Surely what takes place in that country is solely the concern of its citizens. I would respond by arguing that political machinations matter because although we are disenfranchised, we all are impacted by what happens in the USA.
Notwithstanding the hypocrite of naming another state like China as evil, given that the global commercial system is dependent on Chinese investment, including in the USA, a declared willingness to go to war draws the rest of us into an unwinnable conflict. For those with pre-millennial beliefs that humanity is moving towards an apocalyptic end-of-days, such a prospect is not so troubling. However, basing decisions on idiosyncratic and errant interpretations of passages taken out of context from a bible that is rarely read is an abrogation of leadership.
Furthermore, while stirring the peoples' antipathy towards China achieves popular support, it obscures greater problems facing humanity. The climate emergency that we face cannot be solved by one country alone. We must work in collaboration, across business and national boundaries, including China and the USA.
Pelagius and Augustine would both repudiate Hawley's claims. They would observe with horror the misappropriation of theological ideas and the subsumption of them in the service of political operatives seeking to preserve their power. What Hawley ignores is that the debates between Pelagius and Augustine were carried out in community, among theologians (plural), and not by these two men alone. To characterise our age as Pelagian is to apply our hermeneutic that privileges a single leader, to a different more communitarian social and political situation.
Towards the future I began writing this essay in early 2021 at a time when the USA and China were still fighting a trade war. Threats and counterthreats of military activity in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait loomed over diplomatic exchanges. Now as I finish this revision, it is mid-2022 and the world is suffering the effects of a war raging in Ukraine resulting from invasion of the Russian army beginning 20 February 2022. Although the USA-China issues have faded into the background, an emerging Russia-China supportive relationship is gaining attention. How does my discussion of leadership as an acoustic art address this situation?
One way of approaching this is to explore a piece of music as an analogue. For example, in 1874 Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote a suite of 10 piano pieces based on paintings by Viktor Hartmann titled Pictures at an Exhibition. These were later arranged for orchestra by Maurice Ravel and Henry Wood, among others. The final work in the suite is 'The Great Gate of Kiev.' I recommend readers listen to the final 2 minutes of this work, especially the version by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. This can be accessed through YouTube (Mussorgsky, 2021).
Rendered in music, this is a dramatic and emotionally stirring finale that speaks to this current crisis with its polyrhythms of duplets against triplets and harmonic dissonances. At timecode 0:58 in the recording that I recommend, Mussorgsky confronts us with a dissonant flattened 6th chord, assuring us that it was no accident by repeating it, before returning to the main theme to resolve the dissonance. If you listen carefully at timecode 1:04 you will hear a mistake by a wind player. Perhaps the musician had lost concentration at that point but stopped playing as soon as they realised their error.
This work with its cross rhythms, dissonant tonalities, and wrong note, is an artistic abstraction of the conflict raging in Ukraine today. It also begs the question of ownership: rights and responsibilities of leaders and their constituents played on the global stage. Mussorgsky the composer, Hartmann the painter believed, and now Putin the President believe Ukraine belongs to Russia. 14 Yet 'The Great Gate of Kiev,' with its grand style also contests that position, celebrates the diversity that is Ukraine today. The diversity of Ukraine with its distinctive folk music is renounced by Russian leaderspolitical, military, and religiouswho have a clear sense of their rights based on documented claims and long-held colonial beliefs. From a Russian view, the invasion is designed to return Ukraine to its place as a vassal state.
The invasion of Ukraine is also, as Elie (2022) explains, an autocephalous contestation in which Russian Orthodox leaders, with President Putin's assent, refuse to admit to a separate orthodox community with St Sophia in Kyiv its Cathedral. Under the former Soviet Union, there was one religion practiced in Ukraine: Russian Orthodoxy. After independence and in finding its political and religious freedom, Ukraine became a multi-religious country with leaders of various faiths, working together under the banner of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations to value and protect other's traditions and freedoms of expression. Religious sociologist José Casanova declared that the "sociological miracle" of Ukraine has been the emergence of a "multi-ethnic, multireligious, multi-linguistic, tolerant democratic society" (Patterson and Casanova, 2022), coming on the back of a revival, says Casanova (1998), of a post-Soviet pluralistic society of multiple religious professions of faith.
Post-Soviet Ukraine, then, mirrors the kind of symphonic pluralism which von Balthasar and Harrison (1987) advocates and which he calls 'Christian.' Notwithstanding a leader's right to hold a position based on their ocular sense of history, an acoustic art of leadership would seek to know, understand, and respect alternative perspectives and allow differing tonalities to enrich the culture.
Seen from an ocular perspective a unifying common vision for a nation or organisation is common sense. This is the leadership heritage which we have learned and affirm in our daily political and commercial affairs. However, an acoustic orientation opens a world of multiplicity and sometimes competing sounds. To lead in the acoustic does not require us to renounce the ocular but rather, to realise the limitations of our sight in our embrace of polyphony.
China's declared intention to envelop Taiwan within its unifying culture, Russia's desire to reclaim Ukraine as its own, and Hawley's agenda to bring the USA under a single 'Christian' banner are all ocular. Leaders with these objectives are each colonised by vision and their prescriptions limit and stifle polyphony through their declarations of unfreedom. However, leaders do not need to commit to sight alone, and can bring the complexities of the acoustic into their styles.
But herein lies a problem. The populist politics of the 21st century in which Josh Hawley is engaged comes with its own paradoxes and contradictions. Conspiracy theories, the tendency to blame others for misfortune, and a move towards mob rule is not, says Sanders (2019), guarantee the survival of nominal leaders. Men and women with profile may come and go, while the movement proceeds. It is this challenge to which critical leadership studies responds.
An acoustic orientation would not look for a single source for inspiration and guidance. Multiple sounds call for our attention and we as informed publics are called to discern those we attend to and those we ignore. The critical leadership response to populism, therefore, is to facilitate the journey from the eyes to the ears; to engage in a vibrant and complex world of the senses. To default to titular leaders in the hope that they will turn the tide is to dull our acoustic sensibilities. This acoustic turn is a journey we must take and, as Sanders (2019) argues, necessitates renouncing mass tribalism animated by resentment, and embracing people-led democracies that are fertilised by difference. A symphonic consciousness assists in creating these social and political changes.
My discussion of Stravinsky and Hawley highlights these leadership orientations. Stravinsky invites a contemplative acknowledgement of difference and the need for dialogue. In him, differences are not resolved under a unifying banner, but rather welcomed. Stravinsky, the Russian Orthodox devotee expressed the world as symphonic. Leadership in this way celebrates diversity and contradiction.
Hawley, sitting alone in the Senate Gallery reading type-set (ocular) briefing papers, while his peers were engaged in an impeachment trial below, may choose to un-stop his ears and become more attuned to the world and all its vibrance. This will involve a conversion from being bound by text and renewed into a world of variety and diversity, where text informs style. This journey from eyes to ears is revolutionary and one that Hawley could take.
How, though, would we leadership scholars respond to symphonic invitations? My method of inquiry appropriates the harmonic function of tonal pairing by setting two personalities aside each other to stimulate a polyphonic inquiry. Taking this method further, we too can engage with scholars beyond our disciplinary boundaries. My essay is an attempt at pressing into service multiple voices in the hope of modelling this for future exchanges.
Because of the eclectic nature of our field, we leadership scholars are well-placed to create deliberate accidents which can draw unlikely companions into collaborative inquiry. Our leadership challenge as a community is to speak to society on important and existential issues. My essay is one attempt to engage across boundaries in the hope that together we might reach out to our colleagues in other disciplines in the service of humanity. Figure 3 shows an octave of communities I have drawn into the exchange of ideas in this paper. The nodes notated in the figure have long histories of scholarship, but rarely do they reach beyond their domains. By taking the method of tonal paring that I have proposed, it is salient to explore it as a prompt for dialogue. How might, for example, political scientists talk with musicologists and what insights might they generate that surprise them, and enlarge their separate fields of inquiry? The possibilities are limitless as we seek to pair, and then pair with pairs to create rich symphonic narratives among our scholarly pursuits.
Perhaps, the strangest tonality within the octave of disciplines is 'environmental studies.' I began this paper with the acoustics of our world as we encounter it and later noted that Stravinsky was alert to the sounds of his context. Environmental elements underpin this entire project, and as we seek to understand the unbreakable connections we have with flora and fauna, we may use the resources they offer with more respect, thus ensuring the sustainability of all life on Planet Earth. Music, first and foremost, draws on the physics of sound, and the complex array of tones and overtones that comprise the harmonic series are its raw materials. While music speaks to the emotions in all their ephemerality, it begins with vibrations in space and place to which the body responds.
Stravinsky invites Hawley, and us, to know leadership as a symphonic art where the past and present come together in all its messiness towards a dynamic polyphonic future. Our response to this call is to create our symphonic world anew.

Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

six Harvard lectures
The Unanswered Question which can also be found on YouTube. Bernstein offers an excellent discussion for non-musicians in which he brings together the physics of sound, philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric. 2. McLuhan discussed notions of acoustic space around the time that the bicameral brain became popular, though he did not refer to the split-brain concept. Acoustic space is in concert with a right hemisphere orientation, as is mindfulness described by Langer. 3. For Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky instructs in the epigraph of the score "Le texte de Psaumes, qui est celui de la Vulgate, se chanterea toujours en Latin" ("The words of the Psalms are those of the Vulgata and should be sung in Latin"). 4. A cadence can be understood as a punctuation mark that can pause a sentence (with a comma or an 'interrupted cadence') or finish it (with a full stop or 'perfect cadence'). 5. An ostinato is "a short musical pattern that is repeated persistently throughout a composition" (Sisman, 2003, p. 624). 6. For the non-musician, Stravinsky uses a conventional harmonic approach here. It is unremarkable and conservative. 7. Exaudi orationem meam, Domine, et deprecationem meam; auribus percipe lacrimas meas. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and my supplication: give ear to my tears. Be not silent: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were. 8. For the non-musician, here Stravinsky anticipates what is to come in the next movement. His composing forebears used this technique, and in a philosophical sense here Stravinsky projects into the future while acknowledging an established convention. 9. Readers unfamiliar with fugue could view Stephen Malinowski's (2013) graphic depiction of Bach's 'little' fugue in G minor on YouTube. The colours of each voice help identify the main theme as it weaves through the texture. 10. For non-musicians, this paragraph is complex and can be skipped. I show the characters of the two fugal themes so those with music knowledge can 'hear' the sounds. 11. In those days people will no longer say, 'The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Jeremiah 31:29 [NIV] 12. "Since perfection is possible for man, it is obligatory." 13. Symphony orchestras do not use the piano as a common instrument, perhaps because its equal tempering will cause intonation problems with other instruments. 14. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 2 composed in 1872 used Ukrainian folk songs as raw materials. This symphony became known as the "Little Russian" is based on this sense of ownership of that land.