Origins of the guitar

Origins of the guitar

Illustration from a Carolingian Psalter of the ninth century showing a similar instrument with a guitar.
The first traces of similar instruments in the guitar back to 3000 BC. About BC in Persia. Etymologically, the word " guitar " is a combination of two words : Guit which comes from the Sanskrit Sangita [ref. needed] meaning " music " and the second part târ purely Persian and means " rope ." Sanskrit was originally a language of the Aryans , the people of Iran and northwestern India. Despite the sounds around the word " guitar " is not derived from the word sitar, which means a stringed instrument , but may be passed by the Greek word kithara κιθάρα , and almost certainly by the Arab quitarra , then Spanish guitarra .


The Guitar Player by Jan Vermeer van Delft ( before 1670 ) .
The Moors brought the first guitars in Europe, in Spain in the tenth century. The modern form appeared in this country , after various changes in Latin and Moorish guitars, probably through the vihuela . Although neighboring lute, it is a different family and their evolution are different.

Gittern was a popular instrument during the fourteenth century. Gittern was played with a plectrum , had a flat body , the body and neck were constructed in a single piece of wood and usually had four simple chords.
Brothers Escudier wrote in their Dictionnaire de Musique , 1854 : " Nothing is known for certain about the origin of this instrument. It is generally believed that it is as old as the harp , and the Moors brought to Spain, where it then spread to Portugal and Italy. The time of Louis XIV , it was very fashionable in France , but it was the vogue was short-lived , and after shining a whole new sheen, there a few years ago , under the fingers of artists high skilled , it is now almost completely abandoned as the most ungrateful and most monotonous of instruments2 .

 " In fact, the guitar underwent an extraordinary vogue in Northern Europe during the first third of the nineteenth century, which was about guitaromanie before being eclipsed as a domestic instrument and sitting by the piano, while its low volume forbade him in practice the concert.

As for the origin of the word , the dictionary says Alain Rey about the word " is borrowed from the thirteenth century (1275-1280 quitarre ) morisca the Spanish guitarra ( guitar moreshe French , 1349 ) (... ) the Spanish word goes back to the Greek kithara (see zither) perhaps through Arabic kittàra . The relationship with the Persian tar sih " three strings " instrument name , and related words ( Egyptian , Chaldean ) , is not clear . The number of strings varies (seven in Greece ), several instruments are designated by that name. The medieval Spanish guitarra latina knows , close to our current guitar, and moresca three-stringed lute and close ovoïde3 form . "

The Spanish luthier Antonio Torres gave in 1874 to the guitar shape and dimensions of the current classical guitar. Many variations have been created in the twentieth century from the Torres guitar .
Christian Frederick Martin , a German maker in 1833 emigrated to the United States , created a line of instruments which, after conversion to metal strings in the early twentieth century , is the origin of folk guitars. In the same country , the firm founded by luthier Orville Gibson guitar adapted to the convex shape of the violin, with a separate bridge the tailpiece. The invention of the electric guitar, 1930 , gave a new development to the use of the instrument.