The Reasons for the Change

In short, this is the problem: why, at a certain point in history, the music of the dead began to count more than that of the living?

We do not have a definitive response, however, always according to Sandow, at the beginning of the 19th century the idea that saw a golden period of absolute perfection in the classical era was formed
Thus also the idea of classical music began to emerge; the idea that the music of some composers of the past had a transcendent value, that it was not mere entertainment and therefore that it should be listened to with great attention and that it should be performed exactly as it had been written.
And of course, the composers of the 19th century also began to aspire to write this genre of music. A music that expressed superior feelings, not a simple fun. A music that made them immortal too. And for romanticism, so full of nostalgia, of great ideals and push towards the absolute, such a conception was perfect.

The romantic feeling of reverence for the lost past is well represented by this anecdote told by Berlioz and reported by Peter Gay in his book The Naked Heart.
Berlioz says that Listz, during a concert, had played the moonlight of Beethoven by ruining it with a quantity of trilli, tremoli and embellishments that tear out applause to the public.
Later, however, without the audience and in the presence of friends, he had made all the lights off, playing the adagio from the Sonata in the dark and here Berlioz says:

After a moment of pause, he played the noble elegia that had previously so hard disfigured in his sublime simplicity; But this time not a note, not an accent were different from how the composer had thought of them. What we were listening to was the fusion of Beethoven's spirit with the great virtuoso. We all trembled in silence and after the extinct of the last agreement, nobody dared to speak, we were in tears.

Here there is also the first clue of splitting: fun for the public, the depth of feeling for a small cenacle of seers.

Another anecdote.
Jan Swafford, in his biography of Brahms, says that in October 1895, Brahms went to Zurich to direct his Triumphied to the inauguration of the new Tonhalle. Entering the room, he looked at the portraits of the great composers on the ceiling and saw Bach, Mozart, Beethoven … and himself.
Sandow points out that this was a completely new experience. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven could never have found themselves in such a situation. And it also recalls that, already in 1840, the teacher of Brahms, Marxsen, stated that the musical forms created by those composers (plus Haydn) were “ eternally incorruptible ”.

Something had changed. Forever.

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