Classical music was somewhat elitist even at the time, coexisting with popular/folk music traditions. The Romantic period definitely saw music and art break away for traditional forms and conservative mores, but it wasn't a free for all.

The people who enjoy classical music today are largely the same people who enjoyed it at the time. Educated and 'enlightened' upper/middle classes, who sought music celebrating their aspirations. Freedom from political oppression and aristocratic control. A world where people could succeed based on talent, hard work, intelligence, and propriety. Where the middle class would have the power to reshape government and social institutions to advance their interests rather than those of the nobility. A personal experience of the religious rather than state ordained. The music pivots to natural, romantic, mystical themes as these people lost faith that industrialization will deliver for them.

Compare modern popular music which deals with universal themes - love, loss, sex, money, partying. You can enjoy pop music and still feel that these themes are not important to you.

People don't fake enjoying classical music to convince you that they're smart and cultured. They just gravitate to music which represents their idea of smart and cultured. The same is true for a lot of art.

As somebody with classical training and a brother in the industry, it pains me to read this misinformed opinion of yours. Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists, play pop songs, modern and experimental music, and regularly feature works by living composers. In my high school orchestra, circa '98, we played stuff like music from Star Wars and West Side Story -- not just the ancients.

Down the foodchain, it gets even weirder. The favorite gig I played involved interpretive dance featuring waterboarding, gallons of fake blood, a live chicken race, and more.

Where you certainly will find a subset of afficionados of any genre who scoff at anything but their extremely narrow definition of "good music," if you take the time to rub elbows with mature classical musicians you'll find many to most of them quite open minded.

Your experience with young artists, finding them to be idealistic and purist, does not extend to the whole field. I know people who only listen to a single narrow genre or decade of pop music. How are they different?

Edit to add:

> And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and atonal trash that demands humans subdue our own aural feelings of beauty.

Oh, no. No, no no. I've been to a circuit-bent punk show. I recently went to an ambient music festival. I've heard glitch pop. Angine de Poitrine is blowing up because they use a semitonal guitar (though as a bit of a noise snob, I find their use of semitones milquetoast and rather uninspired).

Here you are, narrowly defining music, and excluding what you dislike. But it's not just "classical" living composers doing this.

Outside church settings, classical music of the Baroque, Classical and early Romantic eras was for the elites, and the masses had their own musics. This only changed gradually over the 19th century.

It's also weird to still be hung up on atonality in the contemporary classical world, when the pop-music world has for decades now had acts like Merzbow that are often farther out into noise.

What an incredibly cynical take. I’ve done several chamber music collaborations with a violist who also plays pop music gigs on keyboards.

There are arrogant pricks in classical music. And in software engineering and every other discipline. Personality is orthogonal to field of interest.

Anyway you complain that classical musicians look down on pop music while you yourself do the same about modern composers.