Since the Bavarian composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann died in 1963, his music has probably not received the recognition it deserves as one of the most important continuations of the German symphonic tradition in the 20th century. This is partly due to the fact that, despite studying briefly with Webern in 1942, Hartmann did not adopt the serial method espoused by his younger contemporaries (whom he materially assisted by organizing the famous Musica Viva concert series in Munich), but preferred to draw upon a variety of styles. In the ‘post-Modern’ hindsight of the last decade or so this creative approach has now assumed complete respectability. Hartmann's cause has also been strengthened by the scholarship of Andrew D. McCredie, who has compiled the thematic catalogue of the oeuvre and, in the process, drawn attention to the considerable significance of the composer's early output.

Towards the end of his life Sergei Rachmaninoff was interviewed for The Etude, and in the resulting article (which appeared in December 1941) he was reported as follows: ‘… to say what you have to say, and to say it briefly, lucidly, and without any circumlocution, is still the most difficult problem facing the creative artist’. Many who remain unconvinced by Rachmaninoff's larger-scale compositions recognize the precision of utterance of his songs and piano Preludes; all admirers of his work accept the latter collection as a convincing demonstration of his solution to this problem.