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History Of The Guitar
The history of the guitar is a long and varied story. The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but over it’s history has had as few as four and as many as forty-two strings as we see in Pat Metheny’s “Pikasso” guitar made by Linda Manzer.
We can probably define a guitar as being an instrument having “a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, with incurved sides”. Of course, this definition applies to pre-electric instruments.
Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 4,000 years. While today’s acoustic guitar first appeared in Spain, it was itself a product of the long and complex history that saw a number of related guitar types developed and used across Europe. The roots of the guitar can be traced back thousands of years to an Indo-European origin in instruments, then known in central Asia and India. For this reason the guitar itself is distantly related to instruments such as the tanbur and setar, and the Indian sitar.
The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying all the essential features of a guitar being played is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard. The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre, French Guitare), loaned from the medieval Andalusian Arabic qitara, itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara, a possible descendant of Old Persian sihtar.
The modern guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century. Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried. By 1200 AD, the four string “guitar” had evolved into two types: the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.
The Spanish vihuela or “viola da mano”, a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries is, due to its similarities, often considered an important influence in the development of the modern guitar. It had lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. Its construction had as much in common with the modern guitar as with its contemporary four-course (course is a pair of strings) renaissance guitar. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity; the last surviving publication of music for the instrument appeared in 1576. It is not clear whether it represented a transitional form or was simply a design that combined features of the Arabic oud and the European lute. In favor of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud.
The Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes.
The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the early renaissance to the late baroque eras. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment.
Medieval lutes were 4 or 5 course (a pair of strings) instruments, plucked using a quill for a plectrum. There were several sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance, seven different sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from the era before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.
In the last few decades of the 15th century, in order to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingertips. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the 16th century, but continued to be used to accompany singers as well.
By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 26-35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head in order to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played "open", i.e. without fretting/stopping them with the left hand.
Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine.
The Baroque guitar developed during the baroque era (c1600-1750). The instrument was smaller than a modern guitar, of lighter construction, and had gut strings. The frets were also usually made of gut, and tied to the neck. A typical instrument had five courses, of which either four or five were double-strung making a total of nine or ten strings.
The baroque guitar became quite popular in some of the European courts. One of the most well-known guitarists was Robert de Visee. About 1680 he became a chamber musician to Louis XIV of France, in which capacity he often performed at court. He is also mentioned (in 1709) as a singer in the royal chamber, and in 1719 he was named “Guitar Master of the King” (maître de guitare du Roy).
Modern Guitar
The so-called Early Romantic guitar is the guitar of the Classical and Romantic period of classical music (c.1815-1910). It is the immediate precursor of the modern classical guitar, and was the first significant period of classical guitar repertoire. By this time guitars were standardized as six-string instruments (compared to, for example, the Baroque guitar with nine or ten strings paired to make five courses).
The earliest extant six string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin.
The guitar became very popular during this era with many works written for guitar, a number of fine luthiers (guitar makers) creating instruments and great guitar virtuosos such as Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani touring the European continent.
Antonio de Torres (13 June 1817 – 19 November 1892) was a Spanish guitarist and guitar maker who is credited with designing the specifications for the modern day guitar.
Torres reasoned that the soundboard was key to the guitars sound. To increase its volume, he made his guitars not only larger, but fitted them with thinner, hence lighter soundboards that were arched in both directions, made possible by a system of fan-bracing for strength.These bracing struts were laid out geometrically, based on two isosceles triangles joined at their base creating a kite shape, within which the struts were set out symmetrically. While Torres wasn’t the first to use this method he was the one who perfected the symmetrical design.
Andrés Segovia, (21 February 1893–2 June 1987) was a Spanish classical guitarist born in Linares, Jaén, Spain. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures of the classical guitar in the beginning and mid 20th century. He is the person who took the modern day classical guitar and positioned it as a serious instrument for playing classical music.
-Research from Wikipedia
