The musical world that evolved in London and then Paris at the turn of the eighteenth century acquired public musical institutions and social practices that became prototypical of those in national capitals in the modern era. Capitals drew a concentration of rich and influential people never found in cities before, depriving courts of their former central roles in politics and culture. People within the cosmopolitan elite of the capitals knew one another less than had courtesans but far more extensively than was the case among the elite that developed by the end of the nineteenth century, due to fundamental demographic and political change. These people called themselves the beau mondeor simply the World.