In the 16th century, the 4 course guitar was also known as the gittern or guiterne in England and France, so it must not be confused with the unrelated medieval gittern, carved from a solid piece of wood.
Another confused but often-repeated idea about the guitar in particular is the notion of instrument evolution. Guitar videos, websites and magazines repeatedly claim that anything with strings and a neck must be some kind of guitar, stretching back in an evolutionary line.
Most of the surviving music for the 4 course renaissance guitar comes from Spain and France, where it therefore seems to have been most popular.
A convergence of musical styles gave rise to innovations in guitar technique, as blues and jazz influenced folk music. Then the temporary popularity of skiffle, with its simple chordal playing style, made the guitar accessible to almost anyone, rather like the rasgueado style did in the late 16th and into the 17th century.
Juan Bermudo in his "Declaracion de Instrumentos" (1555) describes the guitarra as having four courses tuned as the second to fifth courses of the vihuela. Mudarra describes it as having ten frets and a bordón on the fourth course at an octave below. TUNINGS.
The Baroque guitar (c. 1600–1750) is a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets. The first (highest pitched) course sometimes used only a single string.
The six-course guitar, like the contemporary harpsichord and the five-course guitar, is highly registered in its colour; the pairing of its (gut) strings means that notes sounded at in a low, medium and very high position sound very different, and the higher you play on any string, slightly and increasingly out of tune ...
What contributed to the guitar's decline in the 19th century? All: the piano's popularity, Changing tastes in culture, and large orchestras. Which musical form provided Mertz with a wealth of repertoire? Fernando Sor wrote guitar duos for which guitarist friend?
six coursesThe twelve-string guitar has twelve strings, in six courses.
Share. By Sweetwater on Mar 23, 2016, 7:04 PM. A pair of strings aligned so closely to one another that they can be sounded with a single pluck. For example, a standard 12-string guitar has six double courses of strings, while a mandolin has four courses (four pairs of strings).
The Greatest Classical GuitaristsAndrés Segovia. Born in Andalusia, Spain, in 1893, Andrés Segovia is regarded as one of the finest guitarists of all time. ... John Williams. ... Julian Bream. ... Miloš Karadaglić ... Manuel Barrueco. ... Pepe Romero.
The 6 string guitar gradually became more standardized, and modern features appeared. Wooden pegs became normal for holding the strings in place on the sound board; bone and ivory saddles were intrduced; the modern fret board shape was developed by Georg Staufer, a German luthier.
The earliest six-string guitar is dated 1779, and is commonly believed to have been made by Gaetano Vinaccia, a member of the family of Italian luthiers, or stringed instrument builders, who developed the mandolin.
From 1820 on, Carcassi spent the majority of his time in Paris. In 1823, he performed an extremely successful series of concerts in London that earned him great fame, both as a performing artist and as a teacher.
Andrés SegoviaThe Most Illustrious Andrés SegoviaDied2 June 1987 (aged 94) Madrid, SpainGenresClassicalOccupation(s)MusicianInstrumentsGuitar6 more rows
Music during the nineteenth century dramatically reflected class differences (including education, literacy, manners) between city folks and their rural counterparts. During the nineteenth century, "highbrow" was a phrase used to describe entertainment that appealed to the rural counties of the country.
Free plan for a 4 course guitar, reconstructed by Jesus Alonso Yllana as part of his thesis on musical instruments found in underwater archaeological excavations, kindly made available as a free download.
"El plano de esta guitarra de cuatro órdenes es consecuencia del desarrollo de una metodología de trabajo para el estudio de restos arqueológicos de instrumentos musicales aparecidos en excavaciones arqueológicas subacuáticas. Con este objetivo, se eligieron los restos pertenecientes a unas guitarras de cuatro órdenes.
Part of Folias by Gaspar Sanz, 1675, played on 5 course baroque guitar by Ian Pittaway. Left we see the ‘thumb inside’ technique of the renaissance guitar (and renaissance lute), right is the ‘thumb outside’ technique of the baroque guitar (and baroque lute).
The guitar: a brief history from the renaissance to the modern day. The origins of the guitar are much-discussed and much-disputed, and some pretty wild and unsubstantiated claims are made for its heritage, based on vaguely guitary-looking instruments in medieval and even pre-medieval iconography, about which we often know little or nothing ...
The gittern meaning guitar should also not be confused with the gittern (gitterne, gyttern, gyttron, etc.) that was a small cittern (cithern, cistre, psittyrne, cythara, etc.), known in England before 1550 and popular in the the 17th century.
The guitar on the left above shows 3 strings and 5 pegs, and on the right there are 3 strings and 3 pegs. It is possible to interpret this as a guitar with 3 courses (left), a single top course and 2 doubles, and another 3 course guitar (right) with 3 single strings.
No longer was the hand parallel to the strings with the thumb placed inside the hand for a smooth, full sound; now the hand was at an angle to the strings, with the thumb completely outside of the hand, to enable the strumming style and give a sharper, more trebly tone.
Even before the invention of steel guitar strings, the technology that would lead to the electric guitar was discovered: electrical induction. This was in 1830, but it was to be another century before it was applied to the guitar, using up to three pickups – coiled copper wire around a magnet – to produce an electromagnetic signal when steel strings vibrate near to them, the signal then fed through a cable to an amplifier. The first move towards thus electrifying the guitar was seen by the public on 20th October 1928 in an article in The Music Trades. The Stromberg Electro was “an electronically operated device that produces an increased volume of tone for any stringed instrument.” In 1929 this was developed into the first specific electric guitar. The Chicago Musical Instrument Catalog featured an advertisement for an electric guitar with its amplifier: “Every tone is brought out distinctly and evenly, with a volume that will fill even a large hall.”
The idea of instrument evolution itself needs to be examined. An assertion of evolution in the natural biological world within a genus or from one genus to another has to be backed by evidence, and there is plenty of data to provide it. But the ‘evolution’ of an instrument cannot develop on the same lines as biology.