Beethoven and Goethe worked in a specific artistic context which is
radically incompatible with industrial production that is
characteristic of modern pop-music and marketing. Hence a facile quip
like "Beethoven would be making techno in Rotterdam" is misleading and does not really engage with the subject
matter. Yet, pointing this out and triggering an interesting debate
gets reprimanded as "curmudgeonly" when the discussion was
specifically about pop-music.
May I ask what is on-topic on HN these days?
(It has some excellent comments but the curmudgeonly 'art these days' thing still counts as a generic tangent so it's a borderline call.)