But it cannot be denied also that, for some—and for an increasing number as the decades went by—the new kind of transcendent music Beethoven wrote, and the new importance he gave to music in the intellectual and moral cosmos, did constitute a secular substitute for religion: There was a new faith, and Beethoven was its prophet. It was no accident that, about this time, new concert halls were being given temple-type facades, thus exalting the moral and cultural status of the symphony and chamber music.
 
—Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830