“intrinsic” achievement, a more objective consensus may be obtained. By comparing the list of the most influential individuals with the previous list, in which the compilation is made on grounds other than influence, we can determine the extent to which the great figures have also been the most influential. We will find that almost every influential figure appears on the first list, but that many on the first list do not appear on the second. In other words, some great figures may be passed by or ignored by their immediate times and recognized subsequently as isolated peaks of eminence, much appreciated but little imitated.
In music, the record of achievement is even more noticeably the record of new forms and their consummate fulfilment, new points of departure and their masterful development, at the hands of a comparative few of all who have made music. Our list of musicians would include Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Moussorgsky, Debussy, Strauss, Schoenberg, Hindemith, and a few others for whom music historians may make out a case. The themes of the music and sometimes its treatment may be accounted for by the tastes of the public or patron whom the musician, like other artists, sought to please. But just as often, the musician chose to please himself. In any event, his virtuosity and originality cannot be explained in terms of pressures and inducements that were common for all musicians of his period.
In literature and music there has been far greater evidence of collective creation—the epic, the chant, the ballad—than in painting, even when we allow for the factories of some of the great masters. And where technical assistance has been rendered, as in some large canvasses and murals, it is completely subordinated to the plan and judgment of the responsible painter. If we compose our list of the most influential figures in modern painting, it will include Giotto, Masaccio, van Eyck, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Poussin, Velasquez, Watteau, David, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso.[1] This is not to say that we can understand the history of painting without taking note of many things outside of painting, ranging
- ↑ I am indebted to Professor Meyer Schapiro for suggesting some of the names on this list. In compiling the list of the most influential musicians I am indebted to conversations with Professor Martin Bernstein and Mr. B. H. Haggin for some of the names mentioned. None of them, of course, is responsible for the position which these lists are used to illustrate.
