What is the hyperbole in the passage? In a time without film or television or recorded music, live performances provided the only opportunity for people to hear and appreciate music. What we now call "classical music was an art form that was enormously important in lives of the privileged and unfortunate alike, and composers like Beethoven often were seen as little less than gods. Newspapers wrote obsessively about musicians and composers, and huge crowds gathered outside concert halls when a new work was being performed