orld was turning to impressionism, futurism, and dadaism, and composers were beginning to explore post-tonality and impressionism in the concert hall. Modern composer Roger Sessions spoke for many of his fellow artists who came to look on the romantic preoccupation with emotional expression as, at best, misguided. He writes, "I am convinced that music does not in any real sense express emotion" (1970, p. 44). Nevertheless, he acknowledges the debt of modern composers to the romantics and the postromantic era:
The present musical situation derives, to a very large extend indeed, from the composers of at least two generations previous to my own: the generation which produced Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, and Richard Strauss . . . It was in the years covered by the active careers of these composers that the final break with the tonal system occurred and that new concepts of meter and rhythm, new concepts also of musical texture and color and, in brief, of all of the structural elements of music began to assert themselves (1970, p. 124).
He notes that it is the nature of a new generation to at least try to break away from earlier compositions and explorations. In Germany, this was especially difficult because of the unquestionable power of Wagner's music. Wagner's immediate musical heirs in his country were Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), and Richard Strauss (1864-1949). None broke away from Wagner sufficiently to claim a solid place outside his shadow. As the century drew to a close, however, other composers (particularly in other countries) did begin to move into positions of importance in their own right, opening up musical territory that signalled the start of a new era:
The New Music's projection of tonal relationships as specific to individual situations, and the increased importance - in many cases independence - afforded rhythm, timbre and register have led to a microscopic attention to detail in ...