Today’s guitar heroes captivate millions online with breathtaking guitar riffs, constantly pushing musical boundaries. It’s easy to forget that the guitar, in some form, boasts a history stretching back to the earliest days of civilization. While the precise answer to where the Guitar Originated remains shrouded in mystery, tracing its lineage reveals a fascinating journey through ancient instruments and evolving designs.
Ancient Ancestors: Tracing the Guitar’s Earliest Roots
The very word “guitar” is believed to stem from the ancient Greek term “kithara” (κιθάρα). Greek mythology credits Hermes with the invention of the kithara, crafting it from a tortoise shell. However, depictions of Apollo, the god of music and light, frequently feature him playing this instrument, highlighting its cultural significance in ancient Greece.
The kithara itself was a sophisticated instrument. It featured a wooden soundboard and a box-like resonator body. Extending from the resonator were two hollow arms connected by a crossbar. Initially strung with three strings made of gut, running from the crossbar down to the lower end and across a bridge on the soundboard, the kithara evolved to have as many as twelve strings in later iterations.
Players of the kithara typically used a plectrum, a precursor to the modern guitar pick, to strum or pluck the strings. The musician’s left hand would be used to dampen unwanted string vibrations and, at times, stop strings to create different notes or harmonies. Skilled soloists would even employ both hands to pluck the strings. The playing posture and the use of a strap slung over the shoulder to hold the kithara closely mirror how modern guitarists play today, showcasing a remarkable continuity across millennia.
Ancient Kithara player, showcasing early stringed instrument playing techniques
Beyond the kithara, the story of where the guitar originated also leads us to the Middle East and instruments like the oud and lute. These instruments predate recorded history and are considered key predecessors to the guitar.
Tradition suggests that Lamech, a figure from the Bible and an ancestor of Noah, conceived the design for an early Arabian instrument resembling the guitar. Inspired, according to legend, by the shape of his deceased son’s body hanging from a tree, Lamech created the oud. This instrument journeyed westward with the Moors when they entered Southern Spain in 711 AD, marking a significant step in the guitar’s westward expansion.
The lute, another crucial ancestor, developed a variety of forms and sizes but generally featured a rounded back. Its influence spread from Egypt to Greece and then to Rome, eventually making its way across Europe with Roman expansion.
Archaeological evidence provides further clues to the guitar’s origin. A pictorial record dating back to 3500 to 3200 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) depicts a woman on a boat playing a lute-like stringed instrument. Her hand position clearly indicates she is playing a stringed instrument, providing compelling visual evidence of these early instruments.
Throughout Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, depictions of both long-necked and short-necked lutes appear consistently. Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the British Museum hold numerous examples of these pictorial records on clay tablets and papyrus, solidifying the historical presence of these lute-like instruments.
From Lute to Guitar: The Evolution of Shape
By the late Renaissance, the lute had undergone considerable development, with some versions boasting up to 20 or 30 strings. However, the lute’s characteristic rounded shape began to lose favor. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish musicians started to prefer instruments with the curved shape we now readily associate with modern guitars.
These emerging instruments are known as Baroque guitars. They effectively replaced the lute as the preferred stringed instrument for musicians between roughly 1600 and 1750. Further innovations, such as the use of five courses of gut strings and movable frets, enhanced playability.
During this period, the vihuela, another Spanish instrument, gained popularity in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The vihuela featured incurving sides, creating an hourglass-like body shape. A modern descendant of the vihuela is still used today in Mariachi music, demonstrating the enduring legacy of these early Spanish stringed instruments.
The design of Spanish guitars largely stabilized by the 1790s. They possessed a standard body shape and six courses of strings, resembling the modern guitar but in a smaller form. A pivotal figure in guitar history is the Spanish musician and luthier Antonio de Torres Jurado. In the mid-1800s, Torres Jurado revolutionized guitar construction, creating the template for all subsequent guitars. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant innovators in the history of the guitar.
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 tuning machines, improving tuning stability. His groundbreaking approach to body design and fan bracing – the internal system of wooden supports – gave his classical guitars their distinctive, resonant voice.
Influential Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia championed Torres’ classical guitar as a concert instrument. Segovia’s virtuosity and his commissioning of new compositions specifically for the classical guitar cemented its place in the world of concert music and helped define what we now recognize as “classical guitar” music.
Around the same time, European immigrants brought a steel-string version of the Spanish guitar to America. This marked another turning point, as the modern guitar began to take on new forms and roles, leading to the development of the flat-top acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, and the modern electric guitar.
The Rise of Modern Guitars
The flat-top acoustic guitar remains the most widespread type of acoustic guitar 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 system that could withstand the greater tension of modern steel strings, which had posed challenges for earlier Torres-style guitars designed for gut strings.
The higher tension of steel strings on flat-top guitars also influenced playing styles. Guitarists increasingly adopted the use of picks to achieve a louder and brighter sound. This shift fundamentally changed the musical landscape of the guitar. While classical guitars are known for their delicate and precise melodies, steel-string guitars and picks facilitated the development of brighter, chord-driven music styles. The widespread use of picks also led to the invention of the pickguard, now a standard feature below the soundhole on most flat-top guitars.
Orville Gibson is widely recognized as the originator of the archtop guitar. This design incorporates f-holes, a carved arched top and back, and an adjustable bridge. These features significantly enhanced the instrument’s volume and tone projection. Gibson modeled his guitars’ bodies after cellos, aiming for increased loudness. Jazz and country musicians quickly adopted archtop guitars, and they became essential instruments in big band and swing ensembles, sometimes alongside flat-top guitars.
The electric guitar era began with George Beauchamp and his partner Adolph Rickenbacker, who secured the first patent for an electric guitar in 1931. Simultaneously, numerous other inventors and luthiers were experimenting with electric amplification for guitars. Les Paul pioneered the solid-body guitar for Gibson Guitars, while Leo Fender invented the Fender Telecaster in 1951. The Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Gibson SG models became iconic and instrumental in transforming the guitars of the past into the solid-body electric guitars that dominate popular music today.
The journey of the guitar, from its ambiguous ancient beginnings to the diverse range of modern instruments, is a testament to ongoing innovation and cultural exchange. While pinpointing the exact place where the guitar originated remains an ongoing quest, its rich history reveals a captivating story of musical evolution.
Sources
https://www.ancient.eu/Kithara/
http://www.guitarhistoryfacts.com/guitar-inventor/antonio-torres-jurado/
