" However, the ready-made formula about the bourgeoisie rising as a result of an inner necessity of social development in the second half of the eighteenth century, defeating a feudal nobility undermined by economic change in the French Revolution, tends to be applied in such a routine, mechanical way today that one loses sight of the complex course of actual events. The observable problems of human beings are categorized by class concepts debased to clichés, such as "nobility" and "bourgeoisie", "feudalism" and "capitalism". Categories like these block access to a better understanding of the development of music and art in general. Such understanding is only possible if the discussion is not restricted either to economic processes or to developments in music, and if an attempt is made at the same time to illuminate the changing fate of the people who produce music and other works of art within the developing structure of society. "
― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius