Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore.
I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Mozart that writing was a big point of emphasis in schools.
Composers were also handwriting masters. Bach also had incredible handwriting, there's a youtube channel about it.
Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore.
I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Mozart that writing was a big point of emphasis in schools.
They spent more time in penmanship class than an individual grad student spent learning LaTeX in the pre-LLM time, for reference/scale.
Beethoven certainly wasn't.
You've named one composer who is. I don't see where the inductive step applies.
The composers who didn't have neat handwriting are forgotten today because nobody could read their (musical) notes...
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I see you've never worked your way through a manuscript by Donizetti.