Today’s guitar heroes captivate audiences with breathtaking riffs and groundbreaking techniques, constantly pushing musical boundaries. Yet, the instrument they wield, or its ancient predecessors, boasts a lineage stretching back to the dawn of civilization. The story of the guitar is a rich tapestry woven through millennia, evolving in shape, sound, and significance across cultures.
The precise origins of the guitar remain shrouded in mystery, but linguistic clues point to ancient Greece. The word “guitar” itself likely descends from the Greek term “kithara.” Mythology credits Hermes, the messenger of the gods, with crafting the first kithara from a tortoise shell. However, depictions of Apollo, the god of music and light, frequently feature him playing this revered instrument, highlighting its cultural importance in ancient Greece.
The kithara was characterized by a wooden soundboard and a box-shaped body acting as a resonator. Two hollow arms extended upwards from the resonator, connected by a crossbar. Initially strung with three strings stretching from the crossbar to the base, passing over a bridge on the soundboard, the kithara eventually evolved to incorporate as many as twelve strings.
Ancient musicians typically employed a plectrum, the ancestor of the modern guitar pick, to pluck the strings of the kithara. The left hand served to dampen unwanted string vibrations and, at times, to fret notes and create harmonies. Solo performers occasionally utilized the fingers of both hands for plucking, showcasing the instrument’s versatility even in its early forms. The playing posture of the kithara mirrored that of the modern guitar, with musicians often employing a strap slung over the shoulder for support.
Ancient Kithara Instrument
The Historical Shape Evolution of Guitars
From Prehistoric Echoes to Medieval Forms
Delving deeper into Historical Guitar origins, we encounter instruments like the oud and the lute, which predate recorded history. These instruments are considered crucial precursors in the historical guitar timeline.
Legend attributes the design of the oud, an Arabic ancestor of the guitar, to Lamech, a figure from biblical genealogy. Inspired, it is said, by the shape of his deceased son’s body hanging from a tree, Lamech conceived the oud. This instrument journeyed westward with the Moors, arriving in Southern Spain in 711 AD and leaving an indelible mark on the musical landscape.
Shaping the Guitar: 15th Century to the Modern Era
The lute, exhibiting a diverse range of shapes and sizes, generally featured a rounded back. Its lineage traces back through the Egyptians and Greeks, eventually reaching Europe with the Romans.
Remarkably, a pictorial representation of a lute-like stringed instrument surfaces as early as 3500 to 3200 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia – present-day Iraq. This ancient image depicts a seated female figure on a boat, her hands positioned as if playing a stringed instrument, offering compelling visual evidence of early stringed instruments.
Throughout Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, pictorial records continued to feature both long-necked and short-necked lutes. Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum house numerous clay tablets and papyrus scrolls bearing these historical depictions.
By the close of the Renaissance, the lute had undergone significant developments, with some instruments boasting up to 20 or 30 strings. However, the lute’s characteristic shape began to wane in popularity. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish musicians increasingly favored instruments embodying the curved silhouette that we now readily associate with guitars.
These emerging instruments, known as Baroque guitars, effectively superseded the lute as the preferred stringed instrument for musicians from approximately 1600 to 1750. Further innovations, including the adoption of five courses of gut strings and movable frets, enhanced playability and accessibility.
The vihuela, distinguished by its inward-curving sides that created an hourglass-shaped body, gained prominence in Spain, Portugal, and Italy during this period. Even today, mariachi ensembles continue to utilize a modern variant of the vihuela, showcasing its enduring legacy.
The design trajectory of Spanish guitars solidified by the 1790s, establishing a standard body shape and six courses of strings that bore a striking resemblance to the modern guitar, albeit smaller in size. However, it was Spanish musician and guitar maker Antonio de Torres Jurado who revolutionized guitar construction in the mid-1800s. His innovations are widely credited with shaping the modern guitar and influencing all subsequent designs. He is considered a pivotal figure in historical guitar development.
Torres Jurado’s guitars featured a broadened body, a thinner soundboard, and an accentuated curve at the waist. He also replaced traditional wooden tuning pegs with geared tuning heads, improving tuning stability and ease. His groundbreaking approach to body design and fan bracing, the internal system of wooden struts, endowed his classical guitars with their distinctive, resonant voice.
Influential Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia championed Torres’ classical guitar, establishing it as a respected concert instrument. Segovia’s intricate musical compositions, now classified as “classical guitar” music, further cemented the instrument’s artistic significance.
Around the same era, European immigrants introduced steel-string versions of the Spanish guitar to America. This transatlantic exchange spurred a new chapter in the historical guitar narrative, leading to the emergence of the flat-top, archtop, and modern electric guitars.
The Rise of Modern Guitars
Nearly two centuries after its inception, the flat-top acoustic guitar remains the most prevalent form of acoustic guitar. Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier, is credited with creating the flat-top guitar. Martin replaced the traditional fan bracing with X-bracing, a stronger structural design that enabled the guitar body to withstand the increased tension of modern steel strings, which had posed challenges for older Torres-style guitars.
The taut steel strings of the flat-top guitar necessitated alterations in playing techniques, with guitarists increasingly adopting picks. This shift fundamentally altered the musical styles associated with these instruments. While classical guitars emphasized delicate, precise melodies, steel strings and picks facilitated brighter, chord-driven music. The widespread use of picks also prompted the development of the pickguard, now a standard feature beneath the soundhole of most flat-top guitars.
Orville Gibson is widely recognized as the originator of the archtop guitar. Characterized by f-holes, an arched top and back, and an adjustable bridge, the archtop guitar delivered enhanced tonal projection and volume. Gibson crafted guitars with bodies reminiscent of cellos, contributing to their louder sound. Jazz and country musicians swiftly embraced archtop guitars, and big bands and swing ensembles also incorporated flat-tops into their instrumentation.
George Beauchamp and his partner Adolph Rickenbacker secured the first patent for the electric guitar in 1931. Simultaneously, numerous inventors and luthiers were exploring electric amplification for these historical instruments. Les Paul pioneered the solid-body guitar manufactured by Gibson Guitars, while Leo Fender invented the Fender Telecaster in 1951. Collectively, the Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Gibson SG models represent pivotal milestones in the evolution of historical guitars into the solid-body electric guitars that continue to dominate contemporary music.
Sources
https://www.ancient.eu/Kithara/
http://www.guitarhistoryfacts.com/guitar-inventor/antonio-torres-jurado/
