Today’s guitar virtuosos on platforms like YouTube captivate audiences with groundbreaking riffs and techniques, constantly pushing musical boundaries. Yet, the instrument they wield, in its various forms, boasts a lineage stretching back to the very dawn of civilization. While the modern electric guitar feels like a relatively recent invention, the story of the guitar family is an epic journey through millennia.
The precise origins of the guitar remain shrouded in mystery, its ancient roots intertwined with myths and archaeological discoveries. The very word “guitar” is believed to stem from the ancient Greek term “kithara” (κιθάρα). Greek mythology credits Hermes, the messenger of the gods, with crafting the first kithara from a tortoise shell. Illustrations of Apollo, the god of music and arts, frequently depict him playing this revered instrument, highlighting its cultural significance in ancient Greece.
The kithara itself was a sophisticated instrument for its time. It featured a wooden soundboard and a box-shaped resonator body that amplified its sound. Extending from the resonator were two hollow arms connected by a crossbar. Initially strung with three strings made of gut, running from the crossbar over a bridge to the lower end of the instrument, the kithara evolved over time to incorporate as many as twelve strings, allowing for a richer and more complex sound.
Musicians in antiquity typically played the kithara using a plectrum, a precursor to the modern guitar pick, to strum or pluck the strings. The fingers of the left hand were employed to dampen unwanted strings and, at times, to stop strings against the neck to produce different notes and harmonies. Skilled soloists even plucked strings with the fingers of both hands, showcasing the instrument’s versatility. Remarkably, the way a kithara was held closely resembles the posture of a modern guitar player, and historical depictions suggest the use of straps, similar to guitar straps, for comfortable playing while standing or moving.
Ancient Greek Kithara Player
Tracing the Guitar’s Shape: From Ancient Times to Today
Delving deeper into the History About The Guitar, we find its shape evolving from even older stringed instruments, primarily the oud and the lute, whose origins predate written records. These instruments are considered the direct ancestors of the guitar, carrying its musical DNA through centuries.
Legend attributes the initial design of the oud, an Arabic instrument considered a precursor to the guitar, to Lamech, a figure from the Bible who was Noah’s grandfather. The story suggests that Lamech was inspired to create the oud’s distinctive pear-like shape after observing the form of his deceased son’s body hanging from a tree. This instrument journeyed westward with the Moors when they crossed into Southern Spain in 711 AD, marking a crucial step in the guitar’s westward migration and development.
The lute, another key ancestor, emerged in various forms and sizes but generally featured a rounded back. Its influence spread from ancient Egypt to Greece and subsequently to Rome, where it was adopted and disseminated throughout Europe. Archaeological evidence provides visual confirmation of the lute’s antiquity. The earliest known pictorial representation of a lute-like instrument dates back to 3500 to 3200 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia – present-day Nasiriyah City in Iraq. This ancient image portrays a woman seated in a boat, her hands positioned on what is clearly a stringed instrument, indicating she is in the act of playing music.
Throughout Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, visual records continued to depict both long-necked and short-necked lutes, solidifying their importance in these ancient cultures. Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the British Museum house numerous clay tablets and papyrus scrolls bearing these pictorial records, offering tangible proof of the lute’s historical prevalence.
By the close of the Renaissance period, the lute had undergone significant development, with some versions boasting as many as 20 or 30 strings, reflecting a desire for greater tonal range and complexity. However, the lute’s characteristic shape began to wane in popularity as the 15th and 16th centuries approached. During this period, Spanish musicians increasingly favored instruments that exhibited the curved figure-eight shape that we readily associate with guitars today.
These emerging instruments, known as Baroque guitars, effectively supplanted the lute as the preferred stringed instrument for musicians spanning roughly from 1600 to 1750. Further innovations, including the standardization of five courses of gut strings (pairs of strings tuned in unison or octaves) and the introduction of movable frets, enhanced the playability and accessibility of these early guitars.
Another instrument gaining traction in Spain, Portugal, and Italy during this era was the vihuela. The vihuela featured incurving sides, resulting in a distinctive hourglass-shaped body. Interestingly, a descendant of the vihuela continues to be played today by Mariachi groups, demonstrating the instrument’s enduring legacy within certain musical traditions.
The evolutionary trajectory of Spanish guitars largely stabilized by the 1790s. These instruments had adopted a standard body shape and six courses of strings, closely resembling the configuration of the modern guitar, although they were generally smaller in size. A pivotal figure in guitar history, Spanish musician and luthier Antonio de Torres Jurado, revolutionized guitar design in the mid-1800s. His innovations are widely credited with establishing the blueprint for all subsequent guitar designs, leading many to consider him “one of the single most important inventors in the history of guitar.”
Torres Jurado’s guitars incorporated several key advancements. He broadened the body, thinned the soundboard (belly), and increased the curvature at the waist, contributing to enhanced resonance and projection. He also replaced traditional wooden tuning pegs with geared tuning machines, offering improved tuning stability and ease of use. His groundbreaking approach to body design and fan bracing – the internal system of wooden struts that reinforces the soundboard – endowed his classical guitars with their characteristic rich and powerful voice.
The influential Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia played a crucial role in popularizing Torres’ classical guitar, establishing it as a respected concert instrument. Segovia’s exceptional talent and dedication to the instrument, coupled with his composition of sophisticated musical pieces specifically for the guitar, solidified what we now recognize as “classical guitar” music.
Around the same time that Torres Jurado was innovating in Spain, European immigrants carried a steel-string version of the Spanish instrument to America. On American soil, the guitar underwent further transformation, branching into new shapes and finding a new place in musical history with the development of the flat-top guitar, the archtop guitar, and ultimately, the modern electric guitar.
The Rise of Modern Guitars
The flat-top acoustic guitar has persisted as the most prevalent type of acoustic guitar for nearly two centuries since its inception. Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier, is credited with creating the flat-top guitar. Martin’s crucial innovation was replacing the traditional fan bracing pattern with X-bracing. This stronger bracing system enabled the guitar’s soundboard to withstand the increased tension exerted by modern steel strings, which had posed structural challenges for earlier Torres-style guitars designed for gut strings.
The higher tension of steel strings on flat-top guitars also prompted a shift in playing style. Guitarists began to favor using picks more frequently, fundamentally altering the type of music produced on these instruments. Classical guitars, with their gut strings, are known for their precise and delicate melodic capabilities, whereas steel strings and picks facilitated brighter, chord-driven music, paving the way for genres like folk, blues, and country. The increased use of picks also led to the development of the pickguard, now a standard feature below the soundhole on most flat-top guitars, protecting the soundboard from pick scratches.
Orville Gibson is widely recognized as the originator of the archtop guitar. This design incorporated distinctive features such as F-holes (soundholes shaped like f-holes found on violins), an arched top and back, and an adjustable bridge. These elements collectively enhanced the instrument’s volume and tonal projection. Gibson drew inspiration from cello construction, creating guitar bodies that resonated more powerfully, resulting in a louder sound. Jazz and country musicians quickly embraced archtop guitars, and they also became popular in big band and swing music ensembles alongside flat-top guitars.
A pivotal moment in guitar history arrived with the invention of the electric guitar. George Beauchamp and his partner Adolph Rickenbacker secured the first patent for the electric guitar in 1931. Simultaneously, numerous other inventors and luthiers were actively exploring electric amplification for stringed instruments. Les Paul, for example, pioneered the solid-body electric guitar manufactured by Gibson Guitars. Independently, Leo Fender invented the Fender Telecaster in 1951. The Fender Telecaster, the Gibson Les Paul, and the Gibson SG collectively became iconic and highly influential electric guitar models, shaping the evolution of guitars from their historical roots into the solid-body electric guitars that continue to be essential instruments in contemporary music.
Sources
https://www.ancient.eu/Kithara/
http://www.guitarhistoryfacts.com/guitar-inventor/antonio-torres-jurado/
