John Howell wrote:
The first printed polyphonic music shows up in the early 16th century, 1501 in Venice, to be exact. This was music printed from movable type, which means that each piece of type had a single note shape or a single rest shape on it. So beaming was physically impossible and it never occurred to them. All notes, including 8th notes and smaller, were separate, and this was for both vocal and instrumental music. Slurs were also impossible, so there was literally no way to specify how many notes were to be sung on a single syllable. They tried to indicate it by placement of the text under the notes, but the printers were not musicians and you really can't trust them for that kind of detail.
I don't want to seem like I'm criticising an informative and (very!) thorough reply, but there's a couple of points on 15th/16th century notation that I'd like to clarify:
While semiminims (ie quavers, 8th notes) are recognisable to us today, their original context means that the flags are more than adequate to highlight them - only with subsequent centurys of migration to shorter note values did flags and stems become inadequate in indicating subdivision of pulse.
And my other point - Petrucci did use ligatures, although he made the pragmatic decision to limit it to two-note ligatures. This was within the reasonable bounds of the extra pieces of type necessary, whereas three-note ligatures would entail hundreds of new pieces.
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