Now we can view the two syntaxes in light of the characteristics they possess: Brahms uses tonality as a strong gravitational force, whereas he calls on voice-leading transformations to neutralize those tonal tendencies. Contrary to intuition, this culture of the syntaxes is not by nature. Indeed, tonality can serve as a means for the most outlandish of modulations (à la Reger’s Modulation), while even bizarre Riemannian transformations can serve to prop up a gravitational tonality rather than deactivate it