 While many composers continued to write symphonies during the 1820s and 30s, "there was a growing sense that these works were aesthetically far inferior to Beethoven's...The real question was not so much whether symphonies could still be written, but whether the genre could continue to flourish and grow as it had over the previous half-century in the hands of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.On this count, there were varying degrees of skepticism but virtually no real optimism."