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A Brief History of the Classical Guitar

The exact history is tough to come by, but there is a consensus that the modern classical guitar comes from two older instruments, the Vihuela, and the Baroque guitar. The Vihuela is a guitar-shaped instrument from the 15th and 16th century in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, while the Baroque Guitar is a 17th-century design with five-course strings. Courses are double strings that are plucked or strummed in unison.

The first incarnation of what we would consider a modern guitar began showing up during the Renaissance. It had four pairs of strings (i.e. courses) but was phased out by the five-course guitar a few years later. The standard tuning was A, D, G, B, E for the top five strings, which continues to this day. Also, around this time, the frets were increased from eight to ten, and finally twelve.

A little later in Italy, the six-course guitar became commonplace, but by the mid-18th century and early 19th century, the guitar evolved into a six-string instrument, which dropped the course-string design. However, these guitars were sti

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The History of the Modern Classical Guitar and its Deep Iberian Roots

BY MARK SMALL

Guitar aficionados are generally aware that our beloved instrument traveled a very long and somewhat uncertain path to Spain. Many significant developments in classical guitar design and technique, and many important performers and composers, flourished in Spain during the past few centuries, but the story indeed began many years—perhaps millennia—earlier. Scholars, however, are not in agreement on where the instrument that ultimately became the modern classical guitar originated before arriving in Europe.

Among several scholarly speculations, The NewGrove Dictionary of Music & Musicians includes one theory that the guitar descended anciently from the Greek kithara. Alexander Bellow’s Illustrated History of the Guitar includes numerous photos of artifacts tying the guitar to various ancient cultures. One photo of a stone relief from the Hittite Empire (modern-day Turkey) dating from 1300 BCE depicts a musician playing a stringed instrument with a long neck and a body with curved si

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History of the classical guitar

The evolution of classical guitars began with the influences of the gittern and vihuela in the 16th century and ended with the modern classical guitar in the mid-19th century.

Precursors to the classic guitar

Main article: guitar § History

See also: History of lute-family instruments, Lute § History and evolution of the lute, Gittern, and Citole § Origins

Renaissance stringed instruments

While the precise lineage of the instrument is still unclear, historians believe that the guitar is the descendant of the Greek kithara, gittern, lyre, European and Middle Eastern lutes, and the Spanish vihuela. The poem The Book of Good Love [circa 1330] describes two early instruments, guitarra morisca and guitarra latina.

Then came out, with a strident sound, the two-stringed Moor’s gittern,

High-pitched as to its range, as to its tone both harsh and bold;

Big-bellied lute which marks the time for merry, rustic dance,

And Spanish guitar which with the rest was herded in the fold^[1]

Instruments ca