Mainly known for his operas, the composer Franz Schreker (1878–1934) had a rather uncommon path: though his first operas got hailed by critics, he quickly came under fire for various reasons. In addition to the ad personam attacks—he came from a Jewish family—the press responded with semantic networks that supported this anti-Semitism: the leitmotiv of decadence and degeneration. Quite popular in the Germanic press of 1918–1921, these terms did not seem to trigger a response from Schreker, who preferred to publish his aesthetic essays in the Musikblätter des Anbruch, a new Austrian paper that supported him. The composer was far from polemics, wether they be political or aesthetic. Instead, he described his compositional approach in a limited number of articles published in the Musikblätter des Anbruch, and he did not seem to make any reference to the controversial terms: decadence, degeneration, impressionism and expressionism.