 Hanslick explicitly describes On the Musically Beautiful as a reaction to Wagner and Liszt (see Bonds 2014: 155), and the treatise is at times explicitly polemical (see for instance the end of chapter 2). There is in principle no tension between Hanslick’s claim that instrumental music’s content is limited to its form, and Wagner’s use of music in combination with other art forms. In fact, the creation of hybrid works is an obvious way to address instrumental music’s alleged semantic and expressive paucity. However, Wagner’s protestations against instrumental music and its inadequacy to his own goals were so radical that they threatened the aesthetic legitimacy of absolute music. This is what Hanslick set out to restore.