“The term 'eclectic’ is surounded by the same pejorative connotation as ‘mannerism'. Artists who are said to be mannered stand accused of having concentrated exclusively on one single feature which has been rigidly isolated and developed at the expense of the living totality. The eclectic, on the other hand, is criticized for having internalized every possible fashion, particularly stylistic fashions, and combined them without ever achieving a tone that is peculiarly his own. The two concepts mark the extreme points on a scale which is defined by the idea of balance and compromise. They both have their origins in neo-Classicism. In this conception works of art should neither reduce themselves to the level of the particular, nor should they dissolve into generalities. They should preserve a happy medium. The underlying model here is that of the personality.
According to the common view the personality is never fixated on any one special thing, but expands in a natural, organic fashion into a comprehensive totality. On the other hand, it is also suggested that it is capable of forming such a totality entirely on the basis of its own resources, like a windowless monad. But it never really works out like that. The artist's productivity never forms the perfect fit with his individual subjectivity that is required by the concept of genius. Even his most individual qualities are secretly the products of a collectivity and, by the same token, his idiosyncrasies exhibit the marks of the collective, of the historical context. At all events, neither category befits a state of mind which has ceased to conform to the harmonious norms of neo-Classicism and in which the continuity of the individual personality and the general context is no longer a given. It is not for nothing that the word ‘synthesis' - which is equally opposed to both mannerism and eclecticism - sounds so feeble. The mediation between divergent trends can only be achieved nowadays by working through the extremes, not by any conciliatory compromise. To appeal to synthesis as an antidote to eclecticism is to imagine that the totality now inaccessible from within could yet be achieved, as always, by the man of genius. In short, mannerism and eclecticism are not the indices of individual failures, but stigmata inflicted by history. To continue to use them as pejorative terms simply demonstrates how far aesthetic thought lags behind the concrete specifics of art and how impotently it clings to the traditional ideologies. Webern, one of the most important of composers, was long regarded as a mannerist à la Schoenberg. What with hindsight proved to be the great musical tradition, that is to say, the emancipation of dissonance, and even Debussy's fastidious abstinences, once seemed to be a mannerism raised to the level of exclusivity. What is mannerism and what is style can only be established conclusively after the fact.”
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