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The history of the classical guitar and its repertoire span over four centuries, including its ancestry the baroque guitar. The popularity of the classical guitar has been sustained over the years by many great players, arrangers, and composers. A very short list might include Gaspar Sanz (1640-1710), Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909), Andrés Segovia (1893-1987), and John Williams (1941).

=Origins= Instruments similar to what we know as the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient central Asia as the cithara. Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capitol of Susa. The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, possibly from earlier Greek word kithara. Prospective sources for various names of musical instruments that guitar could be derived from appear to be a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit-, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and -tar a widely attested root meaning "chord" or "string".

The word guitar may also be a Persian loanword to Iberian Arabic. The word qitara is an Arabic name for various members of the lute family that preceded the Western guitar. The name guitarra was introduced into Spanish when guitars were brought into hort list of signifiant compositions for the contemporary classical guitar. For a longer list see the article Peninsula">Iberia by the Moors after the 10th century. ([http://www.iranian.com/Music/2002/November/Guitar/index.html See related article).

=Renaissance era= See main article about the vihuela. Vihuelaplayer.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Orpheus playing a vihuela. Image from the famous tabulature by Luis de Milán, Libro de música de vihuela de mano intitulado El maestro (1536). The text surrounding the image praises Orpheus as the inventor of vihuela. Most vihuelas are much smaller than the engraving suggests.]]

Instrument
The Spanish vihuela appears to be an intermediate form between the ancestral guitar and the modern guitar, with lute-style tuning and a small, but guitar-like body. It is not clear whether this represents a transitional form or simply a design that combined features from the two families of instruments. In favor of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud. (See the article on the lute for further history.) The Ancient Iranian lute, called tar in Persian also is found in the word guitar. The tar is thousands of years old, and could be found in 2, 3, 5, and 6 string variations.

Technique

Repertoire

See main article Vihuela repertoire.

=Baroque guitar= See main article about the Baroque guitar

See also Baroque music

Instrument

The voboam family, Paris, France. Nicholas Alexandre Voboam II, René Voboam, Domenico Sellas

Technique

Repertoire

See main article Baroque guitar repertoire

Main compositions and composers for the baroque guitar:

="Early romantic guitar" or "Guitar during the Classical music era"= See main article Early romantic guitar

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Instrument

The earliest extant six string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 - after 1831) The Classical Mandolin by Paul Sparks (1995) Early Romantic Guitar in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin. This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar. Stalking the Oldest Six String Guitar Authenticity of guitars before the 1790's is often in question. This also corresponds to when Moretti's 6-string method appeared, in 1792.

Technique

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Repertoire

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=Romantic guitar=

See main article Romantic guitar

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Instrument

Technique

Repertoire

See main article Romantic guitar repertoire

The first 'Golden Age' of the classical guitar repertoire. Composer-guitarists.

Notable composers:

=Modern classical guitar= See the main article Modern classical guitar.

See also Modern art and 20th century classical music

Instrument

Antonio de Torres Jurado, Ignacio Fleta, Hermann Hauser Sr., Robert Bouchet

Technique

Francisco Tárrega, Emilio Pujol, Andrés Segovia

Repertoire

In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously only players of the instrument had done. Francisco Tárrega, Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

=Contemporary classical guitar= See main article Contemporary classical guitar.

See also Contemporary art and Contemporary classical music

Instrument

Modern concert guitars often, but by no means always, follow the Smallman design which replaces the fan braces with a much lighter balsa brace attached to the back of the sound board with carbon fiber. The balsa brace has a honeycomb pattern and allows the (now much thinner) sound board to support more vibrational modes. This leads to greater volume and longer sustain.

Greg Smallman, Matthias Dammann

Technique

See main article Classical guitar technique

Repertoire

Short list of signifiant compositions for the contemporary classical guitar. For a longer list see the article Selected contemporary repertoire for guitar.

=New perspectives=

Instrument

Technique

Repertoire

=Bibliography= See also Classical guitar bibliography

  • Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical Guitar, London : Calder, 1980.

=External links=

  • * Classical Guitar Illustrated History by François Faucher on Classicalguitarmidi.com.

Classical guitar | Acoustic guitars

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "History of the classical guitar".

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