by Paul Guy
The guitar is an ancient and
noble instrument, whose history can be traced back over 4000 years. Many
theories have been advanced about the instrument's ancestry. It has often been
claimed that the guitar is a development of the lute, or even of the ancient
Greek kithara. Research done by Dr. Michael Kasha in the 1960's showed these
claims to be without merit. He showed that the lute is a result of a separate
line of development, sharing common ancestors with the guitar, but having had
no influence on its evolution. The influence in the opposite direction is
undeniable, however - the guitar's immediate forefathers were a major influence
on the development of the fretted lute from the fretless oud which the Moors
brought with them to to Spain.
The sole "evidence" for the kithara theory is the
similarity between the greek word "kithara" and the Spanish word
"quitarra". It is hard to imagine how the guitar could have evolved
from the kithara, which was a completely different type of instrument - namely
a square-framed lap harp, or "lyre". (Right)
It would also be passing strange if a square-framed seven-string lap harp had given its name to the early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Dr. Kasha turns the question around and asks where the Greeks got the name "kithara", and points out that the earliest Greek kitharas had only 4 strings when they were introduced from abroad. He surmises that the Greeks hellenified the old Persian name for a 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". (See below.)
It would also be passing strange if a square-framed seven-string lap harp had given its name to the early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Dr. Kasha turns the question around and asks where the Greeks got the name "kithara", and points out that the earliest Greek kitharas had only 4 strings when they were introduced from abroad. He surmises that the Greeks hellenified the old Persian name for a 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". (See below.)
The Ancestors
"Queen Shub-Ad's harp" (from the Royal Cemetery in Ur)
A tanbur is defined as "a long-necked
stringed instrument with a small egg- or pear-shaped body, with an arched or
round back, usually with a soundboard of wood or hide, and a long, straight
neck". The tanbur probably developed from the bowl harp as the neck was
straightened out to allow the string/s to be pressed down to create more notes.
Tomb paintings and stone carvings in Egypt testify to the fact that harps and
tanburs (together with flutes and percussion instruments) were being played in
ensemble 3500 - 4000 years ago.
Egyptian wall painting, Thebes, 1420 BCE
Archaeologists have also found
many similar relics in the ruins of the ancient Persian and Mesopotamian cultures.
Many of these instruments have survived into modern times in almost unchanged
form, as witness the folk instruments of the region like the Turkish saz,
Balkan tamburitsa, Iranian setar, Afghan panchtar and Greek bouzouki.
The oldest preserved guitar-like instrument
Har-Moses instrument had three
strings and a plectrum suspended from the neck by a cord.
The soundbox was made
of beautifully polished cedarwood and had a rawhide "soundboard". It
can be seen today at the Archaeological Museum in Cairo.
Queen
Hatshepsut
What is a guitar, anyway?
The oldest known iconographical representation of an instrument displaying all the essential features of a guitar is a stone carving at Alaca Huyuk in Turkey, of a 3300 year old Hittite "guitar" with "a long fretted neck, flat top, probably flat back, and with strikingly incurved sides".
The Lute (Al'ud, Oud)
The Moors brought the oud to Spain. The tanbur had taken another line of development in the Arabian countries, changing in its proportions and remaining fretless.
The Europeans added frets to the oud and called it a "lute" - this derives from the Arabic "Al'ud" (literally "the wood"), via the Spanish name "laud".
A lute or oud is defined as a "short-necked instrument with many strings, a large pear-shaped body with highly vaulted back, and an elaborate, sharply angled peghead".
Renaissance lute by Arthur Robb
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
three = Sanskrit "tri" - modern Persian
"se" -
setar, 3-string instrument, found in Persia (Iran),
(cf. sitar, India, elaborately developed, many-stringed)
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)
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
panchtar, 5 strings, Afghanistan
Indian Sitar
Persian
Setar
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 or chitarra.
From four-, to five-, to six-string guitar
Mediaeval psalter, c:a 900 CE.
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.