Classical Guitar

Classical Guitar Some believe that the classical Guitar dates back as far as the ancient Near East, places like Babylonia. The artefacts excavated from Babylonia contain paintings or other forms of art work which show people playing an instrument which bares large similarities to the Guitar. This dates back to as far as 19001800 B.C. There were also similar instruments found from the Persian Empire. Both showed the resemblance to the guitar that we know today, however there were differences. The earliest clear form of the guitar was from the Egyptian Empire and the Roman Empire, about 30 B.C. to 400 A.D. Some of the painted artefacts excavated by historians seemed to show a musician playing an instrument with a similar shaped body to the guitar with clear frets marked onto it. During those times the main string instrument was the bow-shaped harp and so it is not surprising that many don’t date the guitar that far back. None of those instruments had however the same body shape and the same sound hole that we associate with the modern day guitar. The origins of the guitar therefore could not be fully associated with those instruments however in the 3rd century A.D. there was an instrument that appeared and sounded like the modern day classical guitar. It had a large wooden body, fully hollow inside and had the sound hole roughly where it is found on a guitar nowadays, the neck of the guitar was considerably thinner. This later on became known as the Carolingian instrument and retained its form up to the 14th century. Similar instrument have also been found in French and Spanish Cathedrals. Up until the sixteenth century the guitar was not recognised as the instrument it is today. In the sixteenth century the first “official” classical guitar was made and it is known as the vihuela. There are different theories as to who created the vihuela. Many believe that it was the fairly poor Spanish peasants who created an instrument that they could bring into their life for entertainment. The other theory is that it was created by the Africans from countries such as Morocco that had emigrated into Spain. One thing is certain is that the guitar was created in Spain and it was the instrument for the poor. Since many poor people could not read music they wrote down their musical ideas in the form of tablature. The vihuela was a considerably small instrument and had two variations of it, there was the five and four string. The latest stages of the vihuela were in the late 1700 when most adaptations to it had taken place. The four string guitar emerged as the favourite of the two and took its form as the main guitar instrument. The earliest (official) known tuning was G, D, F#, B. The four string guitar slowly faded away and the five string guitar started to take center stage. It had a lot of similarities to the four string vihuela, in fact the only difference was the number of strings. Its tuning was A, D, G, B, E. The earliest six string guitar took form of the Baroque era guitar. It however appeared different to the vihuela

in terms of its sound hole, instead of having a single large one it had a lot small ones scattered around the front of the body or it was smaller in size. The Baroque took its influence from all across Europe but mainly from Italy where composers such as Francisco Corbetta, the most famous guitar composer of his era, was slowly increasing the popularity of the guitar. However this didn’t change anything as the piano was still the centre stage of all music related performances. The six string guitar as it is known and seen today, also known as the Spanish Guitar, came about in the 18th century. It however did not come from Spain but from Italy. The most famous classical guitar composers and performers are still alive today although many are in their later stages of life. The most famous and outstanding classical performer and composer is Paco De Lucia. He made his first public appearance at the age of just 11 in his home town of Algeciras, he then on went to write and perform music that no one else could, and still today no one can say that they have learned his work properly, as it is near impossible. This all lead to him being branded as the God of the guitar in the classical circles. Another outstanding classical guitarist who is probably more well known than Paco is Andres Segovia, again a Spanish born classical musician who however does not prefer to play in style of Flamenco but instead does many covers of Baroque based music written for orchestras or solo instruments, these include the Gavotte en rondeau. One of the most outstanding composers for classical guitar would have to be Heittor Villa-Lobos who is a Brazillian composer who wrote about 2,000 musical composition. His most famous work would have to be his 12 studies which are well known across the globe. There are many other outstanding composers such as Fernando Sor and performers like Andres Miolin.