The conventional image of Brahms is that of the great Romantic classicist, the champion of absolute music written in the traditional forms, defying the call from the "progressive" followers of Liszt and Wagner to write programmatic "music of the future." Certainly there is considerable truth in this view. Brahms wrote symphonies, not Lisztian symphonic poems; his many vocal compositions include no operas or Wagnerian music dramas; his mastery of "archaic" contrapuntal techniques was vast and his use of them pervasive. - George P. Work.