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No one should give in to limitations other than
those which are due to the limits of his talent. No violinist would play,
even occasionally, with the wrong intonation to please lower musical tastes,
no tight-rope walker would take steps in the wrong direction only for pleasure
or for popular appeal, no chess master would make moves everyone could
anticipate just to be agreeable (and thus allow his opponent to win), no
mathematician would invent something new in mathematics just to flatter
the masses who do not possess the specific mathematical way of thinking,
and in the same manner, no artist, no poet, no philosopher and no musician
whose thinking occurs in the highest sphere would degenerate into vulgarity
in order to comply with a slogan such as ‘Art for All’. Because
if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.
Arnold Schoenberg
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