What weaknesses did descriptive Romantic music criticism have?

During the Romantic era, musical criticism was heavily influenced by a literary outlook, with composers like Schumann, Liszt, and Berlioz often describing music as the embodiment of poetic or literary ideas.

The primary weakness of this descriptive approach is twofold:
* If the music is unfamiliar to the reader, the criticism remains meaningless.
* If the music is already known, the criticism becomes redundant, as the music itself communicates its message far more effectively than the descriptive prose.1

This style of criticism, characterized by "purple prose" that attempted to evoke sensory experiences, was eventually challenged by critics like Eduard Hanslick. In his influential work, The Beautiful in Music, Hanslick advocated for the autonomy of music and encouraged a shift toward a more analytical, less descriptive methodology.1