The captivating sounds of modern guitar virtuosos often overshadow the instrument’s rich and lengthy history. While today’s YouTube stars showcase mind-blowing riffs on electric guitars, the essence of the guitar, in various forms, stretches back to the earliest days of civilization. Understanding the Guitar Background reveals a fascinating evolution across millennia.
The precise origins of the guitar remain shrouded in mystery, yet linguistic clues point to ancient roots. The very word “guitar” likely derives from the ancient Greek term κιθάρα (kithara). Greek mythology credits Hermes with the invention of the kithara, crafting it from a tortoise shell. Illustrations of Apollo, the god of music, frequently depict him with this instrument, highlighting its cultural significance.
The kithara itself was a sophisticated instrument. It featured a wooden soundboard and a box-shaped resonator to amplify sound. Two hollow arms extended from the resonator, connected by a crossbar. Initially strung with three strings that ran from the crossbar over a bridge to the lower end, later versions expanded to as many as twelve strings.
Ancient musicians typically employed a plectrum, a precursor to the modern guitar pick, to strum the strings of the kithara. The left hand played a role in damping unwanted string vibrations and occasionally stopping strings to create harmony. Solo performances sometimes involved plucking strings with both hands for richer textures. The playing posture and even the use of a strap for the kithara bear striking resemblance to modern guitar techniques, showcasing a continuous thread in musical instrument design.
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Exploring the Historical Shapes of Guitars
Guitar Shapes: From Prehistoric Echoes to Medieval Forms
To truly grasp the guitar background, we must journey further back to instruments that predate written history: the oud and the lute. These instruments are widely considered as key ancestors in the lineage of the guitar.
Legend attributes the design of the oud, an early Arab stringed instrument, to Lamech, a figure in biblical genealogy. The story suggests that Lamech conceived the oud’s shape after observing his deceased son’s body hanging from a tree – a somber yet powerful origin story. The oud travelled westward with the Moors during their expansion into Southern Spain in 711 AD, marking a significant step in the guitar’s westward journey.
Shapes Evolving: 15th Century to the Contemporary Guitar
The lute, another crucial instrument in the guitar background, existed in diverse shapes and sizes, generally characterized by a rounded back. Its influence spread from Egypt to Greece and subsequently to Rome, where it journeyed further into Europe.
Remarkably, pictorial evidence of a lute-like stringed instrument surfaces as early as 3500 to 3200 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia – present-day Nasiriyah City, Iraq. This ancient depiction shows a woman on a boat, her hand position suggesting she is actively playing a stringed instrument. This discovery underscores the deep historical roots of plucked string instruments.
Throughout Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, long and short-necked lutes continued to appear in visual records. Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the British Museum house clay tablets and papyrus scrolls bearing these historical instrument depictions, providing tangible links to the past.
By the close of the Renaissance, the lute had undergone significant evolution, with some versions boasting up to 20 or 30 strings. However, the lute-like shape started to lose favor. In Spain, during the 15th and 16th centuries, musicians increasingly preferred instruments with the curved body shape that we readily associate with guitars today.
These Spanish instruments, known as Baroque guitars, effectively displaced the lute as the dominant stringed instrument for musicians from roughly 1600 to 1750. Further refinements, including the adoption of five courses of gut strings and movable frets, enhanced the playability of these early guitars.
The vihuela, another instrument contributing to the guitar background, gained popularity in Spain, Portugal, and Italy during this era. Its distinctive incurving sides created an hourglass-like body shape. A descendant of the vihuela is still played by Mariachi groups, showcasing the instrument’s lasting legacy.
By the 1790s, the evolution of Spanish guitars largely stabilized. They had adopted a standard body shape and six courses of strings, closely resembling the modern guitar in form, though smaller in size. Antonio de Torres Jurado, a Spanish musician and luthier, revolutionized guitar design in the mid-1800s. His creations are considered the blueprint for all subsequent guitars. Many regard him as “one of the most important inventors in the history of guitar,” fundamentally shaping the guitar background we recognize today.
Torres Jurado’s guitars featured a wider body, a thinner soundboard, and a more pronounced curve at the waist. He also replaced traditional wooden tuning pegs with geared machine heads, a crucial improvement for tuning stability. His innovative approach to body construction and fan bracing—the internal system of wooden supports—gave his classical guitars their signature rich and resonant sound.
Andres Segovia, an influential Spanish guitarist, championed Torres’ classical guitar, establishing it as a prominent concert instrument. Segovia’s virtuosic performances and complex compositions, now recognized as “classical guitar” music, further cemented the Torres guitar’s place in musical history.
Around the same period, European immigrants brought a steel-string version of the Spanish guitar to America. This transatlantic migration marked a pivotal moment in the guitar background, leading to the development of new shapes and styles, including the flat top, archtop, and ultimately, the modern electric guitar.
The Emergence of Modern Guitars
The flat top acoustic guitar remains the most widely played acoustic guitar type nearly two centuries after its invention. Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier, is credited with creating the flat top guitar. Martin replaced the older fan bracing with X-bracing, a stronger structure that could withstand the greater tension of modern steel strings, which had posed challenges for Torres-style guitars.
The higher tension of steel strings on flat top guitars also necessitated a change in playing style, encouraging guitarists to use picks more frequently. This shift profoundly impacted the music created on these instruments. While classical guitars are known for precise and delicate melodies, steel strings and picks facilitated brighter, chord-driven music. The increased use of picks also spurred the development of the pickguard, now a standard feature below the soundhole on most flat top guitars.
Orville Gibson is widely recognized for the creation of the archtop guitar. This design incorporates f-holes, an arched top and back, and an adjustable bridge, all contributing to increased tonal volume and projection. Gibson modeled his guitar bodies after cellos, aiming for greater loudness. Jazz and country musicians quickly embraced archtop guitars, and they also found a place in big band and swing music alongside flat tops.
George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker secured the first patent for the electric guitar in 1931. Simultaneously, numerous inventors and luthiers were exploring electric amplification for stringed instruments. Les Paul pioneered the solid body electric guitar for Gibson Guitars, and Leo Fender introduced the Fender Telecaster in 1951. The Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Gibson SG models collectively represent a crucial stage in the guitar background, transforming the guitars of the past into the solid-body electric guitars that continue to dominate popular music today.
Sources
https://www.ancient.eu/Kithara/
http://www.guitarhistoryfacts.com/guitar-inventor/antonio-torres-jurado/
