Diary of a Bad Year - pg. 135

Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar, Sibelius composed within the bounds of symphonic form a music of heroic rebirth and/or transfiguration. Wagner and Strauss did much the same in forms of their own invention. Theirs is music that relies on parallels between harmonic and motival transmutation on the one hand and spiritual transfiguration on the other. Typically, the progression is through murky struggle transfiguration on the other. Typically, the progression is through murky struggle toward clarification - hence the note of triumph on which so much of the symphonic music of the period ends.