Today, there's a certain style that's considered Classical Music and it's like Beethoven and all that. When Beethoven was composing, was he making music for the masses to appreciate or was it meant to be for some discerning elite?

I'm sure the fact that most people were working their bloody arms off during that age means that not that many people had time to listen to people play Beethoven but was the music of these composers seen as incredibly popular across all music listeners or just a few?

As a minor follow-up, were there any composers at all who weren't favoured by wealthy rulers but had appeal among the people? I wonder if we just ended up a few kings decided the canonical idea of sophisticated music for centuries to come when they could have been doing so on a whim.