The History of the Guitar

Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Music Faculty Research Music Fall 12-2015 The iH story of the Guitar Júlio Ribeiro Alves Marshall University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/music_faculty Part of the Musicology Commons, Music Pedagogy Commons, Music Performance Commons, Music Practice Commons, and the Other Music Commons Recommended Citation Alves, Júlio Ribeiro. The iH story of the Guitar: Its Origins and Evolution. Huntington, 2015. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Music Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The History of the Guitar: Its Origins and Evolution A Handbook for the Guitar Literature Course at Marshall University Júlio Ribeiro Alves To Eustáquio Grilo, Inspiring teacher and musician 1 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Chapter 1: The Origins 6 Chapter 2: The Guitar in the Renaissance 14 The Vihuela 15 The Four-Course Guitar 31 The Lute 40 Chapter 3: The Guitar in the Baroque 43 Chapter 4: The Guitar in the Classic and Romantic Periods 68 Towards the Six-String Guitar 68 Guitar Personalities of the Nineteenth Century 76 Chapter 5: The Transition to the Twentieth Century 102 Chapter 6: The Guitar in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century In the Twenty-First Century 138 Notable Performers 139 The Guitar as an Ensemble Instrument 149 Guitar Composers of the Twentieth and Twenty First Centuries 154 New Improvements in Guitar Strings and Construction 161 Conclusion 163 Bibliography 165 2 Introduction “Las Mujeres y Cuerdas Las mujeres y cuerdas De la guitarra, Es menester talento Para templarlas. Flojas no suenan, Y suelen saltar muchas Si las aprietan.”1 The poem above, used by Catalan composer and guitarist Fernando Sor in one of his Seguidillas Boleras, was well known in Spain during the 1800’s. It represents an account of the presence and popularity of the guitar in Spain during that time. Although the status of the instrument differed in other countries and periods, people from the most diverse social layers have rendered themselves to the deepness and beauty of its sound in a variety of genres and styles, disseminated in a vast literature throughout history. The sound of stretched strings over some type of resonance box seems to have been part of social aggregations from their beginnings. It was strong enough to be influential even in the realm of mythology. A legend from the fourth Homeric hymn describes the invention of the first plucked-string instrument and associates it with a magical power, capable to captivate even a god. The instrument is portrayed as a central element in the resolution of a conflict between the brothers Hermes and Apollo, two of the sons of Zeus. 1Brian Jeffery, ed., Six Seguidillas Boleras (London: Tecla Editions, 1976), 12. The English translation is “Women and guitar strings: It is needed talent to tune them. If they are slack they don’t sound; and lots of them, if you tighten them too much, break.” 3 According to the story, the first had invented the first plucked-string instrument by stretching strings made from cow gut into the carapace of a dead turtle. Homer also tells us that as an infant, Hermes had stolen Apollo’s cattle. At some point, Hermes was compelled by Zeus to reveal the theft to his brother, who then demanded his cattle to be returned. When Hermes was on the way to do so, he played his invention. Incapable to resist the beautiful and mysterious sonority of Hermes’s instrument, Apollo agreed not to kill his brother and even allowed him to keep the stolen cattle in exchange for the instrument. The Bible also mentions the existence of an instrument of a different sort, but which also applied the principle of stretching strings. This harp-like instrument is mentioned in the book of Genesis. In the description of the genealogy of Cain, it is mentioned that a woman named Adah gave birth to two sons: Jabal and Jubal. The first one would have been “the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock,” while the second is mentioned as “the father of all who play the harp and the flute.”2 The notion many times attributed to the guitar of having an inexplicable sound, capable of penetrating and reaching even unknown dimensions of one’s self, seems to fit adequately to the puzzling reality of the origins of its historical process. Although scholars have presented ideas regarding the origin of the guitar and its inclusion in the European society, most of what has gotten to us about this matter can only be guessed. On the other hand, there are several sources that make possible the understanding of the history and the literature of the instrument since the fourteenth century. This book has neither the purpose of reinventing nor of rewriting the history of the instrument. Conceived as instructional material for the guitar students at Marshall 2Gen.4:20-21(Life Application Study Bible: King James Version). 4 University (or anyone interested in the subject), it presents the historical process of the guitar in a clear and attainable fashion. Several topics related to the guitar will be discussed in detail throughout the book: the postulates associated with its origins, its evolution through the centuries, its repertoire, composers, performers, techniques, etc., culminating with the achievement of the privileged status of a respected concert instrument which it currently possesses. 5 Chapter 1: The Origins There is no documentation that allows one to define the facts concerning the genesis of the guitar with absolute certainty. Thus, one can only speculate about subjects such as the place of origin or the specific dates in which the first guitars (or instruments resembling a guitar) were made. Connections of this sort can be perhaps supported by iconographic examples that reveal instruments portraying a guitar-like shape. Nonetheless, evidence is scarce and attempts to prove the existence of the guitar as a distinct instrument prior to the fifteenth century are only conjectures. In the classification of musical instruments, the guitar is a member of the chordophone family. A chordophone is an instrument in which the sound is made by the vibration of strings.3 The family tree of the chordophones presents five groups: bows, harps, zithers, lyres, and lutes. The guitar belongs to the group of the lutes, which is further subdivided into two sub-groups: bowed and plucked instruments.” 4 The oldest example of a chordophone is believed to be the musical bow, which would have been developed from the hunting bow. In its simplest form, it had one single string fastened to the ends of a flexible stick. As it developed, extra strings with other lengths allowing for new pitches, and resonators made from a gourd, or wood, or some other material, were added. The result is an instrument called the bow harp. 3Ruth Midgley, ed.: Musical Instruments of the World (Holland: Paddington Press Ltd., 1976), 164. 4This classification would be more thorough if the term “strummed” was inserted together with “plucked.” Hornbostel and Sachs present a different classification for the instruments of the chordophone family, grouping them into two distinct categories: the simple chordophones (zither-type instruments: bar zithers, tube zithers, raft zithers, board zithers, trough zithers, and frame zithers), and the composite chordophones (lutes, harps, and harp lutes). 6 The linguistic origin of the guitar can be traced back to Sanskrit derived languages such as Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu, from the northern India, and to those of central Asia, most specifically modern Persian. An analysis of the cardinal numbers involving Sanskrit and Persian (Old and Modern) reveals several types of instruments connected with the word târ, meaning string. The instruments were named by adding a prefix that indicated the number of strings it had. Thus, the Sanskrit words dvi, tri, chatur, and pancha, associated to the numbers two, three, four, and five, became the words do, se, char, and panj in modern Persian. Some of these instruments such as the dotâr in Turkistan, and the setâr in modern Iran are still in existence today. Following this line of reasoning, the chartâr, a four- string version of the târ, would eventually have reached Spain in the beginnings of the A.D. era. The name chartâr would have become the Spanish word quitarra. The similarity between this word and the Greek kithara is quite obvious, and according to Michael Kasha, the fact that both the earliest Greek kitharas and lyres had four strings could explain the connection between the words.5 In spite of the etymological relationship between the terms kithara and guitar, the widely spread notion that the guitar evolved from the kithara has been long ago proved to be mistaken. Nonetheless, several books in which the origin of the guitar is mentioned to some extent still associate it with this Greco-Assyrian instrument.6 Kasha’s article, dated from August 1968 published in the Guitar Review, indicates four postulates which were 5Michael Kasha, “A New Look at the History of the Classic Guitar,” Guitar Review No.30 (August 1968): 3. 6Nicholas Bersaraboff, Ancient European Musical Instruments; an Organological Study of the Musical Instruments in the Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 241. 7 formulated and confronted against the archeological and written evidence: the accordatura, the morphology, the complexity, and the geographical continuity postulates. Two of the postulates described by Kasha are used in the article to refute the notion that the guitar had its roots in the kithara.

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