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The history of the classical guitar and its repertoire spans over four centuries, including its ancestor the baroque guitar. Throughout the centuries, the classical guitar has evolved principally from three sources: the lute, the vihuela, and the Baroque guitar. The popularity of the classical guitar has been sustained over the years by many great players, arrangers, and composers. A very short list would include Gaspar Sanz (1640–1710), Fernando Sor (1778–1839), Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829), Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909), Andrés Segovia (1893–1987), John Williams (1941), and Christopher Parkening (1947).

Renaissance origins

While the precise lineage of the instrument is still unclear, historians believe that the guitar is the descendant of several ancient instruments. These ancient instruments from which the guitar has evolved include the Greek kithara, gittern, lyre, European and Middle Eastern lutes, and the Spanish vihuela. The guitar is first mentioned in literature in the 13th century. The poem El Libro de Buen Amor by Juan Ruiz describes two early instruments, guitarra morisca and guitarra latina.

Allí sale gritando la guitarra morisca,

de las bozes aguda e de los puntos arisca.

El corpudo laúd que tiene punto a la trisca,

la guitarra latina con ésos se aprisca.

“Then came out, with a strident sound, the two-stringed Moor’s guitar,

High-pitched as to its range, as to its tone both harsh and bold;

Big-bellied lute which marks the time for merry, rustic dance,

And Spanish guitar which with the rest was herded in the fold.”^[1]

What still remains unclear is whether the guitar is indigenous to Europe or rather it was brought to Europe by Arabs. Provoking further ambiguity, Ruiz describes both a Moorish and a Spanish guitar. Instruments called guitars in some variety were first mentioned in literature beginning in the 13th century, though many of these records describe what are now classified as gitterns.^[2]

The first incarnation of what is now called the guitar first appeared during the Renaissance. The Renaissance guitar contained four pairs of strings called courses. The Renaissance guitar shared most similarities with the Spanish vihuela, a six-coursed instrument with similar tuning and construction.^[3] Many prominent vihuelists also composed and wrote instructional methods for guitar as well. Alonso Mudarra's Tres Libros de Música en Cifra para Vihuela, (Sevilla, 1546) included music for both solo vihuela and solo four-course guitar. Another notable composer of both guitar and vihuela music is Miguel de Fuenllana.^[4] Juan Bermudo published Declaración de Instrumentos Musicales in 1555, a treatise containing a section on plucked string instruments. This publication examined the relationship between the guitar and vihuela, and also differentiated between four and five-course guitars. The five-course guitar did not phase out the four-course instrument until the Baroque period.

One of the first major methods published for five-course guitar is Joan Carles Amat's Guitarra Española de Cinco Órdenes published in 1596.^[5]Notable composers for the baroque guitar include Francesco Corbetta, Robert de Visée, and Gaspar Sanz.

From the mid 18th century through the early 19th century, the guitar evolved into a six-string instrument, phasing out courses by preference to single strings. These six-string guitars were still smaller than the modern classical guitar. The design of the modern classical guitar can be attributed to Antonio de Torres. The construction of these guitars has been considered the standard in "traditional" instruments since the mid 19th century.

Technique

The guitar is most commonly played with the right hand plucking, picking or strumming the strings and the left hand fretting the notes on the fretboard. Yet different styles of playing have evolved over the years, including country style fingerpicking techniques such as chicken picking, as well as plectrum style picking methods, such as sweep picking. Techniques such as tapping have also been developed. (Tapping involves the right hand tapping the note on the fretboard and then pulling-off to a note fretted in the left hand. This technique can thus be used to play higher pitched and then lower pitched notes in quick succession, which would previously be unattainable with conventional style playing.) More recently, picking styles have been developed to promote speed and accuracy in notes, such as sweep picking. Sweep picking involves using a plectrum, and it allows arpeggios to be played on the guitar at very accurate and fast speeds.

Romantic guitar

Instrument

The Romantic Guitar has a much larger body giving it a soft and deeper sound.

Repertoire

The first 'Golden Age' of the classical guitar repertoire. Composer-guitarists.

Notable composers:

• Mauro Giuliani 1781–1829
• Johann Kaspar Mertz 1806–1856
• Giulio Regondi 1822–1872
• Fernando Sor 1778–1839

Modern classical guitar

Agustín Barrios

In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously only players of the instrument had done.

Francisco Tárrega, Roberto Gerhard (1896–1970), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959)

How it has evolved

The bowl shaped harp, or the ‘tanbur’ marked the start of the stringed instrument era we nowadays know as the guitar. Prehistoric people made these instruments out of tortoise shells and animal gut for strings. The Archaeological Museum in Cairo is home to ultimate vintage guitar which belonged to the Egyptian singer Har-Mose. It was made from polished cedar wood and an animal hide soundboard. In Europe, an instrument called an ‘oud’ was brought to Spain by the Moors and the Europeans renamed this instrument to a ‘lute’, at the same time as adding frets and changing the body to a pear-like shape.

The lute was around in Europe from around 450AD all the way up to mid-renaissance and improvements to the instrument were made along the way; including better quality wood for the boy and freeboard, better quality strings and innovative shapes to produce slightly different sounds. In Central Asia and Northern India, the traditional folk-stringed instrument remained unchanged for several hundred years.

The prefix ‘tar’ was placed in front of the number of strings on the instrument to illustrate its full name. For example, in modern Persian, ‘do’ is two, ‘se’, is three, ‘char’, is four and ‘panj’ is five; hence, a dotar has two strings, a setar has three strings, a chartar has four strings and a panjchar/panchtar has five strings. Everything was logical.

In the European renaissance, the four string (four-course) instrument has become dominant. However, near the end of the 16th Century in Italy, the five course guitarra battente began to replace the four string instrument and the standard tuning for which was the modern day A, D, G, B, E for the top five strings. The amount of frets on the guitar also went up from eight, to ten and eventually twelve. The Italians were once again the driving force of the final developments from five course guitars to the big six and this was a fairly easy job as it consisted of replacing/reworking the nut and bridge and plugging in another tuning peg hole for the sixth and final string.

An incredibly ornate guitar made by a German man called Joakim Thielke (1641 – 1719), was altered in this way and became a success. The modern classical guitar ‘look’ took its present form when the Spanish maker Antonio Torres increased the size of the body, altered the whole guitars proportions and introduced the revolutionary ‘fan’ top bracing in around 1850. This design drastically improved the guitars tone, volume and durability and was so good and intuitive; it remains almost the same to this very day.^[6]

Contemporary classical guitar

Instrument

Modern concert guitars occasionally follow the Smallman design which replaces the fan braces with a much lighter balsa brace attached to the back of the sound board with carbon fiber. The balsa brace has a honeycomb pattern and allows the (now much thinner) sound board to support more vibrational modes. This leads to greater volume and longer sustain.

Technique

Repertoire

Short list of significant compositions for the contemporary classical guitar. For a longer list see the article Selected contemporary repertoire for guitar.

• Luciano Berio Sequenza XI
• Stefan Beyer Schabefleisch^[7]
• Elliott Carter Changes
• Aldo Clementi 12 Variazioni, Fantasia su frammenti di M.G.
• Franco Donatoni Algo, Åse (Algo II)
• Brian Ferneyhough Kurze Schatten II
• Alberto Ginastera Sonata
• Hans Werner Henze Royal Winter Music I and II
• Ernst Krenek Suite
• Bruno Maderna Y Después
• Tristan Murail Tellur
• Maurice Ohana Si le jour parait....., Tiento
• Giacinto Scelsi Ko-Tha
• Michael Tippett The Blue Guitar

Bibliography

• Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical bris, London : Calder, 1980.
• Antoni Pizà: Francesc Guerau i el seu temps (Palma de Mallorca: Govern de les Illes Balears, Conselleria d'Educació i Cultura, Direcció General de Cultura, Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics, 2000)

External links

• The guitar in Europe: four centuries of masterpieces by Sinier de Ridder
• Thematic essay: The guitar Jayson Kerr Dobney, Wendy Powers (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Classical Guitar Illustrated History by François Faucher on Classicalguitarmidi.com.
• Classical Guitar Museum (UK)

References

Guitar portal