It was the least important of the three who said it, and, had it been the most, I am not suggesting that, like the walls of Jericho, a movement would have tottered at an ejaculation.  Jazz will not die because a few clever people have discovered that they are getting sick of it; Jazz is dying, and the conversation to which I have referred is of importance only as an early recognition of the fact.  For the rest it was unjust, as such conversations will be; the Jazz movement, short and slightly irritating though it was, having served its turn and added its quota to the tradition.  But Jazz is dead—­or dying, at any rate—­and the moment has come for someone who likes to fancy himself wider awake than his fellows to write its obituary notice.  In doing so he may, adventitiously, throw light on something more interesting than the past; he may adumbrate the outline of the coming movement.  For always movements are conditioned partly by their predecessors, against which, in some sort, they must ever be reactions.

The Jazz movement is a ripple on a wave; the wave—­the large movement which began at the end of the nineteenth century in a reaction against realism and scientific paganism—­still goes forward.  The wave is essentially the movement which one tends to associate, not very accurately perhaps, with the name of Cezanne:  it has nothing to do with Jazz; its most characteristic manifestation is modern painting, which, be it noted, Jazz had left almost untouched.  “Picasso?” queries someone.  I shall come to Picasso presently.  The great modern painters—­Derain, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Friesz, Braque, etc.—­were firmly settled on their own lines of development before ever Jazz was heard of:  only the riff-raff has been affected.  Italian Futurism is the nearest approach to a pictorial expression of the Jazz spirit.

The movement bounced into the world somewhere about the year 1911.  It was headed by a Jazz band and a troupe of niggers, dancing.  Appropriately it took its name from music—­the art that is always behind the times.  Gavroche was killed on the barricades, and it was with his name that Jazz should have been associated.  Impudence is its essence—­impudence in quite natural and legitimate revolt against nobility and beauty:  impudence which finds its technical equivalent in syncopation:  impudence which rags.  “The Ragtime movement” would have been the better style, but the word “Jazz” has passed into at least three languages, and now we must make the best of it.

After impudence comes the determination to surprise:  you shall not be gradually moved to the depths, you shall be given such a start as makes you jigger all over.  And from this determination issues the grateful corollary—­thou shalt not be tedious.  The best Jazz artists are never long-winded.  In their admirable and urbane brevity they remind one rather of the French eighteenth century.  But surprise is an essential ingredient.  An accomplished Jazz