Classical guitar

The classical guitar or Spanish guitar is a musical instrument of the chordophone family. (A chordophone is a musical instrument in which the sound is produced by the vibration of a string stretched between two fixed points.) It is a plucked stringed musical instrument consisting of a hollow body with a soundhole in the center of the top part, a neck on which a fingerboard is attached, and six strings. Frets are built into the neck, allowing the sound continuum to be divided into 12 notes of the tonal system, facilitating their interpretation.

The guitar is the fruit of centuries of evolution of chordophones. The origin of the chordophone is known to historians and researchers from the civilizations of Asia Minor (Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians...) around 2,500 BC. Since then, chordophones have evolved in different ways with different numbers of strings and shapes. Some instruments of the family include the cuatro, ukulele, requinto, charango, and various types of guitarron, such as the Mexican guitarron often used by mariachi.

The guitar we know today is the heritage of the instrument invented by Antonio de Torres, a guitar maker from the city of Almeria, located in Andalusia (Spain). De Torres established the modern canons and proportions. The modern classical guitar is a multifaceted instrument used in both classical and popular music. The classical guitar is the main instrument of popular music from Spain and Latin America. It is worth noting the importance of the guitar in flamenco, a musical genre that originated in Spain in the 18th century. Nowadays, flamenco guitarists usually use a guitar with slight variations in construction, called a flamenco guitar. The classical guitar is also quite common among singer-songwriters.

Parts of the Classical Guitar

The guitar has undergone changes in its form over the centuries. In addition to the number of strings, variations of the instrument arose allowing it to be adapted to the musician's needs to take its modern form. The guitar is almost entirely built of wood. Many different species are used today, although rosewood from India, Madagascar, and Brazil, fir, mahogany, cedar from Canada, spruce, cypress (very popular among guitars used by flamenco guitarists), and ebony are most commonly used. Today, makers distinguish between the classical guitar and the flamenco guitar. This is due to the historical evolution of these two instruments, related not only to sound but also to the social origin of their performers. Cypress was abundant and a more accessible wood, which influenced the final price of the instrument, making it more accessible to musicians of rural and humble origins dedicated to flamenco. On the other hand, a percussive sound with a powerful attack was sufficient and suitable to accompany the cante in the noisy Madrid cafes where flamenco began to spread. In fact, when the flamenco guitar began to play a leading role as a solo instrument, it became closer to the classical guitar.

The main parts of the guitar: the body, which consists of the top and the back, connected at the sides by the ribs, the neck with frets, the strings, the bridge, and two saddles through which the energy of the vibrating string is transmitted to the entire guitar construction for sound to occur. Usually, a classical guitar has 6 strings. Some guitarists play a 7-string guitar, for example in Brazil or Russia. Constructionally, they still belong to the classical guitar in the modern understanding of this instrument.

Strings for the classical guitar are made of nylon or carbon. Bass strings have a metal winding, for which thin wire of various alloys of copper, nickel, silver, and tungsten is used.

The guitar body consists of the top (usually made of spruce or cedar, rarely fir or cypress), the back and sides made of the same wood species (most often mahogany, rosewood, ziricote, cypress, maple, walnut), an inlaid soundhole rosette, and internal parts – blocks, braces, footers, wedges, or linings.

History of Origin of the Classical Guitar

The origin and evolution of the guitar and its family are not too clear, as many similar instruments were used in ancient times, so the trajectory of development of this instrument is usually traced through pictorial and sculptural images found throughout history. There is archaeological evidence in bas-reliefs found in Alaca Höyük (north of modern Turkey) around 1000 BC. The Hittites and Assyrians built stringed instruments similar to the lyre (the simplest ancient string instrument), but with the addition of a soundboard, which are considered the predecessors of the guitar. Images of an instrument that resembles a guitar were also found on drawings from Ancient Egypt.

There are several hypotheses about the origin of the guitar. One gives it a Greco-Latin origin and claims that the guitar is a descendant of the fidicula. Another of the most popular versions believes that the guitar is an instrument introduced by the Arabs during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and that it later appeared in Spain.

Both hypotheses have an etymological background. Apparently, the first chordophones reached the Greeks, who slightly distorted the name – kithara or kettara. According to Corominas, the accent reveals the origin of the word from the Greek word kithára. The word kithara, which later came from citara (zither) and finally cedra (cedar) in Spanish, was apparently used to designate an instrument without a neck (more like a lyre), while it is assumed that the Greek word was used to designate the instrument to which it was added at the beginning of our era. Many scholars and musicologists link the arrival of the guitar in Spain through the Roman Empire in the 400s.

Another hypothesis has the Arabic word qīārah as an etymological basis, designating a guitar, which, although original from the Greek language, could have been introduced by Arabic conquerors rather than Romans. There is also an Arabic hypothesis about the origin of the lute, which claims that the first instrument with a neck was the Arabic oud, whose name the Spanish eventually mistakenly merged with their article: the feminine "oud" became the masculine "lute". It was the Arabs who introduced this instrument in Spain, where it evolved according to the musical tastes of the population under Arabic rule.

In India, these instruments were known in Sanskrit as the Sitar. The modern name comes from two Indo-European words that gave rise to the Spanish word guitar (Guitarra): the root guīt (which gave the Sanskrit word guitá: "song" (as in "Bhagavad Gita", "Song of the Lord") or sangīt: "music") and the root tar, which means "string" or "chord".

From the Middle Ages, sources have survived from which two types of "guitars" can be distinguished in the 11th and 12th centuries. On the one hand, the Moorish mandora, which has the oval shape of a half-pear, resembling the Arabic laud and mandolin. On the other hand, the Latin guitar, with a flat top and a neck, whose pegbox is similar to a violin's. The first of these types agrees with the hypothesis of the oriental origin of the guitar, a variation of the Assyrian lute that spread through Persia and Arabia until it reached Spain during the Islamic presence on the Iberian Peninsula. The second type reinforces the hypothesis of the Greco-Latin origin of the instrument. Both types are presented in the miniatures of Cantigas de Santa María by Alfonso X the Wise (Alfonso X el Sabio), from 1270, even older images that have survived in Western Europe, in the Roman Catholic monastery Zwiefalten (now territory of Germany), they date back to 1180.

In the fourteenth century, medieval French poets Guillaume de Machaut and Eustache Deschamps use the name "guiterna" in their works, but it is not clear which of the above types of instrument is mentioned.

The Latin guitar evolved into two distinct instruments: the vihuela, which was equipped with six double strings (vihuelas were widely used among the aristocracy and professional troubadours and musicians) and the guitar with four double strings, which was more popular.

In the 16th century, numerous compositions for the guitar began to be written, centered in Spain. The first known work for a four-string guitar is in the composition "Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela", published in 1546 by Alonso Mudarra in Seville. At that time, it was common to confuse the names of these instruments, and it was at the end of the century that they began to be distinguished. The guitar was used mainly as an accompaniment instrument and primarily in the rasgueado technique.

In the 17th century, the oldest known treatise on the Spanish guitar appeared, published in Barcelona in 1596 by Juan Carlos Amat under the title "Spanish Guitar of Five Orders" (Guitarra española de cinco órdenes). In 1606, Girolamo Montesardo published the first great work for guitar in Bologna titled "Nuovaventione d 'per sonare. Il Balletti Involatura espagnuola sopra la chitarra and GA Colonna Intavolatura alla chitarra di spagnuola" in 1620.

Although all countries claim their involvement in the invention of the guitar (with special mention of France), aspects such as shape, structure, and tuning originate directly from the guitar as created by Iberian luthiers, not forgetting Europeans such as Johann Stauffer, from whom the designs of his student C. F. Martin were borrowed. The inclusion of the fifth string is attributed to the Malaga musician and poet Vicente Espinel (Ronda, 1550). The attribution of this invention was made by Lope de Vega, but it was refuted by Nicolao Doizi de Velasco (1640) and Gaspar Sanz (1684) in their treatises on the Spanish guitar. Their claims are supported by the fact that eleven years before the birth of Espinel, Bermudo mentioned a guitar with five strings. However, although Espinel was not the inventor of the Spanish five-string guitar, he was probably the one most responsible for its popular distribution among all social classes in Spain. Gaspar Sanz expresses respect in the preface to his book "Instruction of Music on the Spanish Guitar" (Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española).

Other authors made significant contributions to the literature of the guitar, for example, Luis de Briceño in 1626, Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, and Francisco Guerau. On the Iberian Peninsula, the guitar was already widely used at the end of the seventeenth century when Gaspar Sanz composed his "Instruction of music on the Spanish guitar and method of its first rudiments" (Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española y método de sus premiers rudimentos, hasta tañerla con destreza).

In any case, it seems clear that it was in Spain that the guitar acquired its character, because unlike the guitars built in other countries in Europe, guitars were overloaded with inlays and ornaments that made playing practically impossible. At the same time, the Spanish guitar was created to be played and became such a popular instrument that even Sebastián de Covarrubias, chaplain to Philip II and Spanish lexicographer, said: "The guitar is not worth more than a cowbell, it is so easy to play that there is no peasant who could not become a guitarist".

Romantic Guitar

At the beginning of the 18th century, Jacob Otto added a sixth string to the guitar, and modern tuning was standardized, which became the most significant change this instrument underwent. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the history of the modern guitar reached a great height with the Spaniard Francisco Tarrega, creator of the modern school and author of changes in the use of hand placement and the way of plucking the strings.

Romantic guitar. Circa 1830.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some guitars used six single strings and bracing bars under the soundboard were used in construction. These bars were added to strengthen the construction and allowed the top to be made thinner for greater resonance and better sound distribution across the soundboard. Other new developments included the use of a raised reinforced neck of ebony or rosewood, as well as the appearance of a metal screw mechanism instead of wooden pegs. It is important to note that the raised fretboard had a great influence on the playing technique. The strings were too far from the soundboard, so it was necessary to support one of the fingers of the right hand to support the others.

Modern Spanish Classical Guitar

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the work of the Spaniards Agustin Caro, Manuel Gonzalez, Antonio de Lorca, Manuel Gutierrez, and other European masters, including René Lacote and the Viennese Johann Stauffer, we find the characteristics of the most direct predecessors of the classical guitar. Johann Stauffer has a legendary reputation. In his shop, CF Martin learned to construct guitars, who later moved to the United States and whose firm continues to produce guitars today. He also developed a raised fretboard at the request of Luigi Legnani, a guitarist and first performer of the concertos of the Genoese violinist Niccolo Paganini. Other developments in guitar construction include an adjustable neck reinforced with a steel truss rod and worm gear tuners, which are still used in modern guitars today.

In the nineteenth century, the guitar began to approach today's form and dimensions. In the south of Spain, some masters, such as Manuel Soto and Solares, began to create instruments with greater capabilities, around 1850 when Antonio de Torres began to work. He eventually became the master who established the canonical dimensions of the modern classical guitar. Supported by Julian Arcas, Antonio Torres Jurado, in his workshop in Almeria, perfected the structural parts of the guitar, including seven wooden bars – fan braces located under the soundboard. The size of the soundboard and the width of the neck also increased. These innovations influenced the improvement of sound volume and bass, as well as the opening up of left-hand technique to enrich the repertoire. Now the guitar was ready for both the soloist and the instrumental ensemble.