Guitar History

efore the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides".[1] The term is used to refer to a number of such related instruments that were developed and used across Europe in the modern era.[2] Some types of guitars, which are themselves related to these European instruments, originated in the Americas.The guitar, as usually defined, refers to a set of closely related stringed instruments created and used across Europe since the medieval period, making it a truly European instrument. The defining developments of the guitar occurred where it was especially popular during the modern era, in Latin Europe, namely Spain, Italy and France. Precursors of the guitar can be traced back as much as 4000 years to an Indo-European origin of stringed instruments once known in central Asia and India. For this reason guitars are distantly related to contemporary instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, setar and sitar, among others. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.[3]The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre, French Guitare),[4] loaned from the medievalAndalusian Arabic qitara[5], itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara,[6] a descendant of Old Persian sihtar (Tar means String in Persian).

The guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after theirconquest of Iberia in the 8th century.Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut(lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfri

ed.[9] By 1200 AD, the four string "guitar" had evolved into two types: theguitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.[10]The Spanish vihuela or "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is often considered an important influence in the development of the modern guitar. It had lute- and viol-style tuningin

fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply-cut waist, very similar (or identical to) contemporary viols. Indeed the vihuela or viola da mano can be understood simply as a viola d'arco played with the fingers. By the sixteenth century the vihuela's construction had more common with the modern guitar with its curved one-piece ribs than with the viols, and more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course Renaissance guitar. The vihuela enjoyed

only a short period of popularity in Spain and Italy during an era dominated elsewhere in Europe by the lute; the last surviving published music for the instrument appeared in 1576. Meanwhile, the Renaissance guitar and five-course baroque guitar enjoyed increasing popularity, especially in Italy and France, from the 16th to the 18th centuries.Confusingly, in Portugal the word vihuela referred to the guitar, whereas guitarra meant the "Portuguese guitar", a variety of cittern