Answer:
During the last decades of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century there were some important changes in the social role of music. The causes of these changes are varied, but to a large extent they are related to the new role of the bourgeoisie, a prosperous and wealthy social class that had no aristocratic origin and demanded a more influential position in the political and economic life of the time. The bourgeoisie began to imitate some of the practices of kings and aristocrats, such as, for example, acting as patron commissioning the composition of musical works, attending opera houses and concert halls to listen to the most famous musicians and composers, or organising meetings in the halls of their palaces, where musical interpretation was a common ingredient. Deep down, the new habits of the bourgeoisie did not always respond to their artistic tastes, but were cultural practices associated with good etiquette and social distinction.
In these years, musical interpretation began to take place in new spaces: the concert hall. The private hall of the aristocracy continued to be a place where, during much of the nineteenth century, music continued to be played. But now, more and more, the public concert was implanted as an institution that, by paying an entrance fee, allowed a wider segment of the population access to the hall and listening to live music. It was then that many buildings that were specifically destined for this purpose began to be built, at the same time as opera houses, which had until then been used exclusively for the performance of vocal musicals, became more flexible spaces for the performance of instrumental music.
Beethoven was probably the first independent composer to compose for the public and not for royal commissions. Beethoven's generation was the first in which the fortepiano was already the instrument of reference, unlike what had happened with Haydn and Mozart (in fact, the early key works of the latter could be interpreted both as the harpsichord and the fortepiano). The monumental collection of 32 piano sonatas composed by Beethoven, along with many other pieces for this instrument, exemplifies well the progressive increase in fortepiano resources during the first decades of the nineteenth century.
