In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind-not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madГ©casses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.