Today’s guitar virtuosos, celebrated on platforms like YouTube, continually redefine musical boundaries with groundbreaking techniques and sounds. However, the instrument they wield, in its various forms, boasts a lineage stretching back to the earliest chapters of human civilization. The guitar, or its ancestors, has resonated through history far longer than many realize.
The precise genesis of the guitar remains shrouded in the mists of time. Linguistic clues suggest the term “guitar” evolved from the ancient Greek word κιθάρα (kithara). Greek mythology fancifully credits Hermes with crafting the primordial kithara from a tortoise shell, though depictions of Apollo frequently feature him with this very instrument. The kithara served as a cornerstone of music in ancient Greece, accompanying singers, dancers, and public ceremonies.
This early stringed instrument 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 stretched from the crossbar to the lower end, passing over a bridge on the soundboard, the kithara eventually expanded to accommodate as many as twelve strings, demonstrating an early pursuit of richer tonal possibilities.
Musicians in antiquity typically employed a plectrum, the precursor to the modern guitar pick, to pluck or strum the kithara’s strings. The left hand was used to dampen unwanted strings, and also to stop strings against the neck for different notes or to create harmonies. Solo performers sometimes utilized the fingers of both hands to pluck melodies and accompaniments, showcasing early fingerstyle techniques. Holding the kithara bore a resemblance to modern guitar posture, and musicians often employed a strap, a band worn over the shoulder, mirroring today’s guitar straps.
Ancient Greek Kithara Player
From Ancient Shapes to Medieval Forms: The Oud and Lute’s Influence
Delving further into the history of guitar-like instruments, we encounter the oud and the lute, crucial predecessors that emerged well before recorded history. These instruments shaped the trajectory of stringed instrument development and are essential to understanding the history of the guitar.
Tradition credits Lamech, a figure from biblical genealogy, with designing an early Arabic ancestor of the guitar. Inspired, it is said, by the shape of his deceased son’s body hanging from a tree, Lamech conceived the oud. This pear-shaped, fretless instrument, with its distinctively warm and mellow tone, journeyed westward with the Moors during their invasion of Southern Spain in 711 AD, marking a significant step in the guitar’s westward migration.
The lute, another pivotal instrument in guitar history, appeared in diverse shapes and sizes, generally characterized by a rounded back. Its lineage traces back through Egypt and Greece, eventually reaching Rome, from where it spread throughout Europe. The lute became highly popular during the Renaissance, known for its delicate sound and complex polyphonic capabilities.
Archaeological evidence offers glimpses into even earlier stringed instruments. The oldest known pictorial representation of a lute-like instrument dates back to 3500-3200 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia – present-day Iraq. This ancient image, discovered in Nasiriyah City, depicts a female figure on a boat, her hands positioned on an instrument in a manner suggesting she is playing it. This discovery underscores the deep roots of plucked stringed instruments in human history.
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, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the British Museum house numerous examples of these depictions on clay tablets and papyrus, providing tangible links to the ancient ancestors of the guitar.
By the close of the Renaissance, the lute had undergone significant evolution, with some instruments boasting as many as 20 or 30 strings, reflecting a pursuit of greater tonal range and complexity. However, the lute’s characteristic shape began to wane in popularity as tastes shifted towards new instrument designs.
The Emergence of the Guitar Shape: Baroque and Beyond
The 15th and 16th centuries witnessed a pivotal shift in musical instrument preference, as musicians in Spain increasingly favored instruments exhibiting the curved figure-eight shape that defines the modern guitar. This period marked the gradual eclipse of the lute by emerging guitar forms.
These new instruments, known as Baroque guitars, effectively displaced the lute as the preferred stringed instrument for musicians from approximately 1600 to 1750. Refinements such as five courses of gut strings and movable frets enhanced playability, contributing to the Baroque guitar’s growing appeal. The gut strings produced a warmer, mellower sound compared to modern steel strings, perfectly suited to the musical aesthetics of the Baroque era.
Concurrently, the vihuela gained prominence in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Distinguished by its incurving sides, creating an hourglass-shaped body, the vihuela shared similarities with both the lute and the early guitar. A descendant of the vihuela still resonates in contemporary music: Mariachi ensembles continue to employ a version of the vihuela, demonstrating the instrument’s enduring legacy.
The evolution of Spanish guitars solidified by the 1790s. These instruments had attained a standard body shape and incorporated six courses of strings, closely resembling the modern guitar in overall form, though typically smaller in size. However, a transformative figure in guitar history was Spanish musician and luthier Antonio de Torres Jurado. In the mid-1800s, Torres Jurado revolutionized guitar design, establishing the template for all subsequent guitars. He is widely regarded as one of the most important innovators in the history of the guitar.
Torres Jurado’s innovations included a broadened body, a thinned belly (soundboard), and an increased curvature at the waist. He also replaced traditional wooden tuning pegs with more precise machined heads. His groundbreaking approach to body design and fan bracing – the internal system of wooden struts reinforcing the soundboard – endowed his classical guitars with their distinctive, rich and resonant voice, setting a new standard for instrument construction.
The influential Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia played a crucial role in establishing Torres’ classical guitar as a concert instrument. Segovia’s masterful performances and advocacy brought the classical guitar to international prominence. He also contributed significantly to the classical guitar repertoire, composing complex and expressive musical pieces that define what we now recognize as “classical guitar” music.
Around the same time as these developments in Spain, European immigrants introduced steel-string versions of the Spanish guitar to America. In this new environment, the modern guitar underwent further transformations, giving rise to the flat-top, archtop, and electric guitars that would define 20th-century music and beyond.
The Modern Guitar Revolution: Flat Tops, Archtops, and Electrics
The flat-top acoustic guitar has endured as the most popular type of acoustic guitar, nearly two centuries after its inception. Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier, is credited with creating the flat-top guitar. Martin ingeniously replaced the traditional fan bracing with X-bracing, a stronger and more robust system, enabling the guitar body to withstand the increased tension of modern steel strings. Steel strings had presented a structural challenge to earlier Torres-style guitars designed for the lower tension of gut strings.
The advent of tight steel strings on flat-top guitars also spurred changes in playing technique. Guitarists increasingly adopted the use of picks to effectively drive the steel strings, fundamentally altering the character of music played on these instruments. Whereas classical guitar music often emphasizes delicate melodies and fingerstyle techniques, steel strings and picks facilitated brighter, chord-driven music, paving the way for genres like bluegrass, country, and folk. The widespread 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. Characterized by features such as F-holes, an arched top and back, and an adjustable bridge, the archtop guitar was designed to produce greater volume and projection. Gibson crafted guitars with bodies resembling cellos in their arched construction, enhancing their acoustic output. Jazz and country musicians quickly embraced archtop guitars for their louder, more cutting tone, ideal for ensemble playing. Big bands and swing bands also adopted archtops, solidifying their place in early 20th-century popular music.
George Beauchamp and his partner Adolph Rickenbacker achieved a landmark in guitar history by securing the first patent for the electric guitar in 1931. Simultaneously, numerous other inventors and luthiers were independently exploring electric amplification for stringed instruments. Les Paul, for example, pioneered the solid-body electric guitar manufactured by Gibson Guitars, fundamentally altering guitar design and sound. Leo Fender further revolutionized the electric guitar landscape with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster in 1951. Together, the Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Gibson SG models became iconic and instrumental in the evolution of guitars from their historical roots into the solid-body electric guitars that continue to dominate popular music today. The electric guitar unleashed entirely new sonic possibilities, shaping genres like rock and roll, blues, and heavy metal, and forever changing the sound of modern music.
Sources
https://www.ancient.eu/Kithara/
http://www.guitarhistoryfacts.com/guitar-inventor/antonio-torres-jurado/
