Eli5: if we are able to recreate modern music (disco, pop, rap) and songs with classical instruments how come people didn’t make those beats or similar songs back in classical times?

Question

Eli5: if we are able to recreate modern music (disco, pop, rap) and songs with classical instruments how come people didn’t make those beats or similar songs back in classical times?

In: Other

Answer 1

I have no idea if it’s the case, but it’s certainly possible that there were some musicians back then farting around with different beats or whatever and came up with some things that would sound fairly modern to us. But since there wasn’t any recording back then and actually writing music down was a labor intensive practice, it might make sense that very little of those ‘jam sessions’ output was ever put onto paper because maybe there wasn’t a market for it back then.

Much of the stuff that survived from those times was likely preserved because it was popular back then and so it was considered worth the expense to put it on paper and make copies of it. People couldn’t just upload random tracks to soundcloud or whatever in the 1800s. There’s probably a ton of interesting music lost to time.