From the point of view of today, European classical music (I prefer to call it orchestral) is spread all over the continent with famous historical composers spanning from Portugal to Finland, but consider for a moment how many of the most prominent of Europe's 18th and 19th Century classical giants were German; Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Bach, Mahler, the Strauss', Handel, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, just to name a few. Whilst you might argue that far more composers have hailed from the rest of Europe since then, they're scattered across the whole continent - for instance in Elgar (Britain), Grieg (Norway), Sibelius (Finland), Chopin (Poland), Dvorak (Bohemia), Debussy (France) and Tchaikovsky & co (Russia). What I'm interested in are what the cultural/social reasons were for orchestral music having such a marked beginning within the states of the Holy Roman Empire in particular, and later Germany itself. Was it a purely geographic development, gradually spreading up from the Renaissance in Italy? Was there a religious incentive to developing orchestral music within Germany during and after the Reformation? Were dynasties like the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Wettins using their wealth to patronize music for political reasons? What do you chaps reckon? I'm really keen to try and figure this out.