Is highbrow aesthetic expectations, musician as servant to aristocrats romantic or classic?

For most of history there were two types of stories: comedy (the hero lived) and tragedy (the hero died). Then a new type of story was developed, a happy ending. It was called novella historia, "new story". Because it originated in countries where the language was based on Latin, the style was also called romance", and the physical book was called a novel.

"Classic" simply means things are divided into classes. In the modern use of the term, "old" is considered a class, so old things are called classics even if they don't have any other class distinction.

In some portions of European history some musicians were employed by someone. J. S. Bach was employed to write music for the weekly services in his employer's chapel. W. A. Mozart was employed for a time as director of a chamber orchestra.

So you are confusing literary history with musical history.