Which features of Anton Webern's style initially puzzled listeners accustomed to late Romantic music?

Listeners accustomed to the opulence of the late Romantic era were initially disconcerted by several novel features in Anton Webern's style. These characteristics, which departed significantly from the traditions of composers like Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, and Gustav Mahler, included:

• Extreme conciseness of form: Webern favored brevity over the expansive structures common in Romantic music.
• Ascetic sparseness of texture: His works often featured a lean, economical sound rather than the dense, opulent textures of his predecessors.
• Melodic and harmonic fragmentation: He frequently broke musical lines into smaller, disjointed segments.
• Wide intervallic leaps: His melodies often utilized large, unconventional jumps between notes.
• Unusual use of dissonance and timbres: He employed dissonant sounds and unique instrumental colorings that challenged contemporary ears.

These stylistic choices reflected Webern's pursuit of a new aesthetic, characterized by an aphoristic and pointillistic approach that prioritized structural clarity and intense, compressed expression.1