Music after the Great War by Carl Van Vechten

When the great war was declared, Leo Stein, in Florence at the time, asserted that the day of the cubists, the futurists, and their ilk was at an end. "After the war," he said, "there will be no more of this nonsense. Matisse may survive, and Picasso in his ‘early manner,' but Renoir and Cézanne are the last of the great painters, and it is on their work that the new art, whatever it may be, will be founded. " Leo Stein belongs to a family which, in a sense, has stood sponsor for the new painters, but his remarks can scarcely be called disinterested, as his Villa di Doccia in Florence contains no paintings at present but those of Renoir and Cézanne. There are mostly Renoirs.

Of course a general remark like this in regard to painting is based on an idea that there is no connection -- at least no legitimate connection -- between the painting of Marcel Duchamp, Gleizes, Derain, Picabia, and the later work of Picasso, and the painters (completely legitimatized by now) who came before them. Without arguing this misconception, it may be stated that a similar misconception exists in relation to "modern" music. There are those who feel that the steady line of progression from Bach, through Beethoven and Brahms, has broken off somewhere. The exact point of departure is not agreed upon. Some say that music as an art ended with Richard Wagner's death. There are only a few, however, who do not include Brahms and Tschaikowsky in the list of those graced with the crown of genius. There are many who are generous enough to believe that Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy have carried on the divine torch. But there are only a few discerning enough to perceive that Strawinsky and Schoenberg have gone only a step further than the so-called impressionists in music.