Who Invented The Guitar?

The guitar as we know it today, with six single strings and a fretted neck is a relatively young instrument.

A plucked string instrument, needless to say it is related to the lyre, the vihuela, the lute and the baroque guitar. But it was not until the second half of the 18th Century that the guitar with six single strings, tuned in E A D G B E, as they are today, appeared on the scene.

The Baroque guitar was really quite different to today’s guitar. It was a small treble instrument with four courses (meaning double strings) and later five courses. In character with the baroque period these small guitars were usually richly decorated. Instead of an open sound hole it had a beautifully ornamented rose and gut frets tied around the neck. The tuning was c-f-a-d. It was not as popular as the lute, which was regarded as artistically superior to the guitar because the wider range and extra strings allowed for more ambitious music to be composed and performed on it.

During the second half of the 18th century we can observe the gradual transition towards today’s guitar. In Spain a six-course instrument became increasingly popular and in 1761 the Italian born famous guitarist Giacomo Merci was advocating his manner of stringing the guitar with single strings: "…single strings are easier to put in tune and to pluck cleanly. Moreover they render pure strong and smooth sounds approaching those of the harp; above all if one used slightly thicker strings" (from ‘Traite des agreements de la musique executes sur le guitarre’)

It seems that the first guitars built specifically for six strings were made in Italy (not Spain) in the late 18th century by Neapolitan instrument makers such as Gagliano, Fabricatore, Valenzano, Trotto, and Vinaccia, to cite a few. These instruments were soon copied faithfully in other parts of Europe.

In the early decades of the 19th century the guitar had lost most of what it had in common with the lute and resembled very much the basic instrument of today: Instead of wooden pegs machine heads came in use for tuning, fixed metal frets, sometimes ivory or ebony, replaced the gut frets, the sound hole was open instead of the ornamented rose, the neck became narrower and the proportions developed to allow the 12th fret to be at the junction of the body and neck.

At the turn of the century Fernando Sor, famous guitar virtuoso and composer made the guitar hugely popular. He performed all over Europe in Spain, France, England and Russia. He was not the only famous guitarist in his time:  Mauro Giuliani, Matteo Carcassi, Fernando Carulli, Dionysio Aguado, all performed, taught, composed and published large amounts of guitar repertoire. One may safely call these accomplished musicians the Patron Saints of  the modern classical guitarist.

Of course no Guitar history is complete without mentioning Andres Segovia, may be the greatest guitarist of all times. His genius inspired many composers to write for this beautiful instrument and Segovia himself transcribed large amounts of compositions for the guitar.

He undoubtedly established the classical guitar once and for all as an internationally respected concert instrument on the world’s music stage. 

CJ Lucerne