We've Been Going About This All Wrong

We need to be classifying composers by their implicit views of their audiences: why are they listening, what preconceptions do they bring, what knowledge, how much attention are they expected to pay and of what kind? The answers to these questions leave traces in the music: times very subtle, times as heavy as a sledgehammer.

It does not matter whether these target audiences are large or small, real or imaginary, singular or plural; plural, for example, so much the better, as that is one of the foremost reasons why we admire Mozart. (And for who, or whos, was Chaikovsky writing?) But we will get additional context from listening both as ourselves and (as far as possible) as members of the target audience.