This fight divided the aesthetics into two competing groups: On one side are formalists (e.g., Hanslick) , who emphasize that the rewards of music are found in appreciation of musical form or design, while on the other side are the anti-formalists, such as Richard Wagner, who regarded musical form as a means to other artistic ends.  ] 
This fight , according to Carl Dahlhaus, divided aestheticians into two competing groups: On the one side were formalists (e.g., Hanslick) who emphasized that the rewards of music are found in appreciation of musical form or design, while on the other side were anti-formalists, such as Richard Wagner, who regarded musical form as a means to other artistic ends. Recent research, however, has questioned the centrality of that strife: "For a long time, accounts of aesthetic concerns during that century have focused on a conflict between authors who were sympathetic to either form or content in music, favouring either ‘absolute’ or ‘programme music’ respectively. That interpretation of the period, however, is worn out."Andreas Dorschel, The Nineteenth Century. In: Tomás McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Jerrold Levinson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York, NY 2021, pp. 207–224, p. 207 access via Oxford Handbooks Online Instead, Andreas Dorschel places the tension between music's sensual immediacy and its intellectual mediations centre stage for 19th century aesthetics: "Music seems to touch human beings more immediately than any other form of art; yet it is also an elaborately mediated phenomenon steeped in complex thought. The paradox of this ‘immediate medium’, discovered along with the eighteenth-century invention of ‘aesthetics’, features heavily in philosophy’s encounters with music during the nineteenth century. ...] It seems more fruitful now to unfold the paradox of the immediate medium through a web of alternative notions such as sound and matter, sensation and sense, habituation and innovation, imagination and desire, meaning and interpretation, body and gesture."Andreas Dorschel, The Nineteenth Century. In: Tomás McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Jerrold Levinson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York, NY 2021, pp. 207–224, p. 207 access via Oxford Handbooks Online
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Recent research, however, has questioned the centrality of that strife: "For a long time, accounts of aesthetic concerns during that century have focused on a conflict between authors who were sympathetic to either form or content in music, favouring either ‘absolute’ or ‘programme music’ respectively. That interpretation of the period, however, is worn out."Andreas Dorschel, The Nineteenth Century. In: Tomás McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Jerrold Levinson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York, NY 2021, pp. 207–224, p. 207 access via Oxford Handbooks Online Instead, Andreas Dorschel places the tension between music's sensual immediacy and its intellectual mediations centre stage for 19th century aesthetics: "Music seems to touch human beings more immediately than any other form of art; yet it is also an elaborately mediated phenomenon steeped in complex thought. The paradox of this ‘immediate medium’, discovered along with the eighteenth-century invention of ‘aesthetics’, features heavily in philosophy’s encounters with music during the nineteenth century.
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It seems more fruitful now to unfold the paradox of the immediate medium through a web of alternative notions such as sound and matter, sensation and sense, habituation and innovation, imagination and desire, meaning and interpretation, body and gesture."Andreas Dorschel, The Nineteenth Century. In: Tomás McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Jerrold Levinson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York, NY 2021, pp. 207–224, p. 207 access via Oxford Handbooks Online