[zoogeny]

What I'm getting at is that the literate quality of the music as a defining principle (or differentiator) is lessened if the actual practice was improvisation that preceded it being written down. If a composer improvised the music first and wrote it down second, then it is hard to claim that his writing it down was a significant differentiator in it's composition. This is compared to modern music that is improvised, developed than recorded (and often not written down).

The argument against my point would be, but the people learning the music (i.e. studying it) later started with the written music and went from there. And that is a differentiator for their own development as composers. That would be compared to modern musicians studying modern pop music where they start with a recording and go from there.

My point is that the differentiation is in the contemporary study of music and less in the method of composition.