Artists

I was surprised to hear what the composer Harrison Birtwistle's choice of music was on Desert Island Discs a couple of years ago: he did not choose any composers from the past, not even from the past of twenty or so years ago. He chose music from the present, like, of course, his own.
But listening and watching a programme tonight on BBC 4, Andrew Dixon told of Vasari and the artists of The Renaissance who chose to ignore their predecessors and go back for their inspiration to Greek and Roman artists; so this may be what all creative artists tend to do - rubbish those from whom they have learnt most.
The composers of the 20th Century in England like Vaughan Williams went back for inspiration to folk song; the American composers of the 20th Century took their inspiration from Jazz. So did the French composers like Poulenc and Russians like Stravinski - though Jazz seemed to be an inspiration in their case for only a short period of time, about five years.
For an artist to progress, it seems, means he must reject those artists who have come before him; not only reject their influence on him but actually demonstrate their revulsion of them.
I am thinking of the Impressionists, of Picasso, of John Osborne and his Angry Young Men who denounced such playwrights as Terence Rattigan.
The trouble is that in this dismissal of that which was once fashionable the public go along with the trend and they too dismiss it. But eventually that which was dismissed sometimes becomes suddenly acceptable: you get a sort of renaissance of the plays of Rattigan and the works that came before the Impressionists and of the music that came before Schoenberg.
Schoenberg, incidentally, believed that anything that was popular could not be art and anything that was art could not be popular. He will turn in his grave if his music becomes popular but I can't forsee much chance of that happening - so rest in peace Arnold Schoenberg.