he guitar is definitely an ancient and respectable instrument, whose history
could be traced back more than 4000 years. Many theories happen to be advanced
about the actual instrument's ancestry. It's often been claimed how the guitar
is a development from the lute, or even from the ancient Greek kithara.
Investigation done by Doctor. Michael Kasha within the 1960's showed these
claims to become without merit. He showed how the lute is because of a separate
type of development, sharing common ancestors using the guitar, but getting had
no impact on its development. The influence within the opposite direction is
actually undeniable, however - the actual guitar's immediate forefathers were a
significant influence on the development from the fretted lute in the fretless
oud that the Moors brought together to to The country.
The sole
"evidence" for that kithara theory may be the similarity between the actual
greek word "kithara" and also the Spanish word "quitarra". It's hard to imagine
the way the guitar could have evolved in the kithara, which was a totally
different type associated with instrument - specifically a square-framed
clapboard harp, or "lyre". (Right)
It might also be passing strange if
your square-framed seven-string clapboard harp had provided its name towards the
early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Doctor. Kasha turns the actual question
around and asks in which the Greeks got the actual name "kithara", and
highlights that the very first Greek kitharas experienced only 4 strings once
they were introduced through abroad. He surmises how the Greeks hellenified the
actual old Persian name for any 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". (See beneath.
).
The particular Ancestors
The earliest stringed instruments proven to
archaeologists are pan harps and tanburs. Given that prehistory people have got
made bowl harps making use of tortoise shells and also calabashes as resonators,
with a bent stick to get a neck and more than one gut or cotton strings. The
world's museums consist of many such "harps" from your ancient Sumerian,
Babylonian, and also Egyptian civilisations. Around 2500 : 2000 CE more complex
harps, such because the opulently carved 11-stringed tool with gold decoration
within Queen Shub-Ad's grave, started to show up.
"Queen Shub-Ad's harp"
(from the particular Royal Cemetery inside Ur)
A tanbur means "a long-necked
stringed instrument using a small egg- or perhaps pear-shaped body, having an
arched or spherical back, usually using a soundboard of timber or hide, plus a
long, straight neck". The tanbur probably developed from your bowl harp because
the neck was straightened out allowing the string/s being pressed down to
generate more notes. Tomb paintings and also stone carvings inside Egypt testify
to the fact harps and tanburs (together together with flutes and percussion
instruments) have been being played inside ensemble 3500 - 4000 years
back.
Egyptian wall portray, Thebes, 1420 BCE
Archaeologists
have found many similar relics inside the ruins of the particular ancient
Persian and also Mesopotamian cultures. A number of these instruments have
survived into contemporary times in almost unrevised form, as witness the
particular folk instruments with the region like the particular Turkish saz,
Balkan tamburitsa, Iranian setar, Afghan panchtar and also Greek bouzouki.
The actual oldest preserved guitar-like device
At 3500 years of age, this
is the best vintage guitar! It belonged towards the Egyptian singer Har-Mose. He
was buried together with his tanbur near to the tomb of their employer, Sen-Mut,
builder to Queen Hatshepsut, who had been crowned in 1503 BCE. Sen-Mut (who,
it's suspected, was much more than just main minister and architect towards the
queen) built Hatshepsuts stunning mortuary temple, which stands about the banks
of the Nile even today.
Har-Moses instrument experienced three strings
along with a plectrum suspended in the neck by the cord. The soundbox was made
from beautifully polished cedarwood as well as had a rawhide "soundboard". It
may be seen today in the Archaeological Museum within Cairo.
Queen
Hatshepsut.
Exactly what guitar, anyway?
To distinguish guitars from other members
with the tanbur family, we must define what any guitar is. Medical professional.
Kasha defines any guitar as possessing "a long, fretted throat, flat wooden
soundboard, ribs, plus a flat back, frequently with incurved sides".
The
oldest identified iconographical representation of your instrument displaying
every one of the essential features of your guitar is any stone carving with
Alaca Huyuk inside Turkey, of any 3300 year outdated Hittite "guitar" together
with "a long fretted throat, flat top, possibly flat back, sufficient reason for
strikingly incurved sides".
The particular Lute (Al'ud,
Oud)
The particular Moors brought the particular oud to The
world. The tanbur acquired taken another distinct development in the particular
Arabian countries, transforming in its size and remaining fretless.
The
Europeans added frets for the oud and referred to as it a "lute" : this derives
from your Arabic "Al'ud" (literally "the wood"), by means of the Spanish
identify "laud".
A lute or oud means a "short-necked tool with many strings,
a large pear-shaped physique with highly vaulted again, and an intricate,
sharply angled peghead".
Renaissance lute by Arthur Robb
.Beautiful instruments!
It is hard to see how the guitar -
with "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most
often with incurved sides" - could possibly have evolved from the lute, with its
"short neck with many strings, large pear-shaped body with highly vaulted back,
and elaborate, sharply angled peghead".
The guitar
The name "guitar"
comes from the ancient Sanskrit word for "string" - "tar". (This is the language
from which the languages of central Asia and northern India developed. ) Many
stringed folk instruments exist in Central Asia to this day which have been used
in almost unchanged form for several thousand years, as shown by archeological
finds in the area. Many have names that end in "tar", with a prefix indicating
the number of strings:
Dotar
two = Sanskrit "dvi" - modern Persian "do"
-
dotar, two-string instrument found in Turkestan
three = Sanskrit
"tri" - modern Persian "se" -
setar, 3-string instrument, found in Persia
(Iran),
(cf. sitar, India, elaborately developed, many-stringed)
four
= Sanskrit "chatur" - modern Persian "char" -
chartar, 4-string instrument,
Persia (most commonly known as "tar" in modern usage)
(cf. quitarra, early
Spanish 4-string guitar,
modern Arabic qithara, Italian chitarra,
etc)
five = Sanskrit "pancha" - modern Persian "panj" -
panchtar, 5
strings, Afghanistan.
Indian SitarThe Indian
sitar almost certainly took its name from the Persian
setar, but over the centuries the Indians developed it into a completely new instrument, following their own aesthetic and cultural ideals.
Persian Setar
Chartar ("Tar")
Tanburs and harps spread around the ancient world with travellers, merchants and seamen. The four-stringed Persian chartar (note the narrow waist!) arrived in Spain, where it changed somewhat in form and construction, acquired pairs of unison-tuned strings instead of single strings and became known as the quitarra orchitarra.
From four-, to five-, to six-string guitar
As we have seen, the guitar's ancestors came to Europe from Egypt and Mesopotamia. These early instruments had, most often, four strings - as we have seen above, the word "guitar" is derived from the Old Persian "chartar", which, in direct translation, means "four strings". Many such instruments, and variations with from three to five strings, can be seen in mediaeval illustrated manuscripts, and carved in stone in churches and cathedrals, from Roman times through till the Middle Ages. Right: Roman "guitar", c:a 200 CE.
Mediaeval psalter, c:a 900 CE.
Angel with guitar, St. Stephen's church, 1591.
By the beginning of the Renaissance, the four-course (4 unison-tuned pairs of strings) guitar had become dominant, at least in most of Europe. (Sometimes a single first string was used.) The earliest known music for the four-course "chitarra" was written in 16th century Spain. The five-course guitarra battente (left) first appeared in Italy at around the same time, and gradually replaced the four-course instrument. The standard tuning had already settled at A, D, G, B, E, like the top five strings of the modern guitar.
In common with lutes, early guitars seldom had necks with more than 8 frets free of the body, but as the guitar evolved, this increased first to 10 and then to 12 frets to the body.
5-course guitar by Antonio Stradivarius, 1680
A sixth course of strings was added to the Italian "guitarra battente" in the 17th century, and guitar makers all over Europe followed the trend. The six-course arrangement gradually gave way to six single strings, and again it seems that the Italians were the driving force. (The six-string guitar can thus be said to be a development of the twelve-string, rather than vice versa, as is usually assumed.)
In the transition from five courses to six single strings, it seems that at least some existing five-course instruments were modified to the new stringing pattern. This was a fairly simple task, as it only entailed replacing (or re-working) the nut and bridge, and plugging four of the tuning peg holes. An incredibly ornate guitar by the German master from Hamburg, Joakim Thielke (1641 - 1719), was altered in this way. (Note that this instrument has only 8 frets free of the body.)
At the beginning of the 19th century one can see the modern guitar beginning to take shape. Bodies were still fairly small and narrow-waisted.
6-string guitar by George Louis Panormo, 1832
The modern "classical" guitar took its present form when the Spanish maker Antonio Torres increased the size of the body, altered its proportions, and introduced the revolutionary "fan" top bracing pattern, in around 1850. His design radically improved the volume, tone and projection of the instrument, and very soon became the accepted construction standard. It has remained essentially unchanged, and unchallenged, to this day.
Guitar by Antonio Torres Jurado, 1859
Steel-string and electric guitars
At around the same time that Torres started making his breakthrough fan-braced guitars in Spain, German immigrants to the USA - among them Christian Fredrich Martin - had begun making guitars with X-braced tops. Steel strings first became widely available in around 1900. Steel strings offered the promise of much louder guitars, but the increased tension was too much for the Torres-style fan-braced top. A beefed-up X-brace proved equal to the job, and quickly became the industry standard for the flat-top steel string guitar.
At the end of the 19th century Orville Gibson was building archtop guitars with oval sound holes. He married the steel-string guitar with a body constructed more like a cello, where the bridge exerts no torque on the top, only pressure straight down. This allows the top to vibrate more freely, and thus produce more volume. In the early 1920's designer Lloyd Loar joined Gibson, and refined the archtop "jazz" guitar into its now familiar form with f-holes, floating bridge and cello-type tailpiece.
The electric guitar was born when pickups were added to Hawaiian and "jazz" guitars in the late 1920's, but met with little success before 1936, when Gibson introduced the ES150 model, which Charlie Christian made famous.
With the advent of amplification it became possible to do away with the soundbox altogether. In the late 1930's and early 1940's several actors were experimenting along these lines, and controversy still exists as to whether Les Paul, Leo Fender, Paul Bigsby or O.W. Appleton constructed the very first solid-body guitar. Be that as it may, the solid-body electric guitar was here to stay.