In the early nineteenth century, the house concert was the most common form of musical performance in Vienna. Professionals featured alongside aristocratic music lovers and ambitious bourgeois amateur musicians, and composers presented their works. While Beethoven's admirers were largely counted among the Austrian and Bohemian nobility, Schubert's circle tended to consist of literati, artists, and state officials who saw the salon as a protected space where both aesthetic and political debates could be held.