Dave Lampson writes:

>..., I think it's quite easy to see that it is a synthesis of Wagnerian/
>Lisztian and Brahmsian approaches to composition - a collaboration of
>harmonic daring and absolute music, if you will.  It was this reliance on,
>and affinity with, structural formality - as learned from Brahms - that
>allowed Schoenberg to define a new compositional paradigm.

All of which is consistent with my intuition that Brahms' "contribution"
was his distillation and refinement of everything he inherited.  One can
be influential without breaking radically new ground.

len.