Wagnerian alteration of tonal language cost music its objectivity and thematic unity

Evidence

In Beethoven, and certainly in Brahms, the unity of the exploration of motifs and themes was achieved in a kind of balance between subjective dynamics and traditional`tonal’language. A subjective organization forces conventional language to speak once again, without intervening to alter it as language. The alteration of the language has been achieved along Romantic-Wagnerian lines at the cost of objectivity and definitiveness in the music itself. This alteration has dissolved the unity of motif and theme in Lieder, and substituted for it the leitmotiv and programme music. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 326

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pursuing Wagnerian nominalism to its limit makes musical language rationally controllable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 326; Twelve-tone technique is domination of nature within music; Musical taste and harmonic conventions evolve as innovations become tradition
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Pursuing Wagnerian nominalism to its limit makes musical language rationally controllable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 326; Twelve-tone technique is domination of nature within music; Musical taste and harmonic conventions evolve as innovations become tradition