My Music And Song's

Archive for the ‘Guitar’ Category

The acoustic guitar came to America in the 1850s, thanks mainly to immigrants from Eastern Europe. Guitar maker Christian Friedrich (C. F.) Martin left his native Germany because of dissatisfaction with the restrictive guilds that oversaw all instrument making back home.Meanwhile, factories were built to turn out inexpensive guitars by the dozens, and mail order catalogs like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward began selling five-dollar instruments.

In the nineteenth century the guitar was promoted as a parlor instrument for young ladies to play. In the time before phonographs and radio, music-making was a favorite amateur activity. Young women were especially encouraged to learn music as an important social skill. While the piano was large and ungainly, the guitar was small and sweet voiced  at the time, most guitars were far smaller than today’s jumbo models, and they were all strung with gut strings in the classical style. Because of this, the guitar was thought to be an ideal instrument for young ladies, and it soon became popular.

As stage performers began taking up the guitar in the early twentieth century, they clamored for louder instruments that could fill a concert hall. Guitar makers responded by making bigger guitars; others began experimenting with different shapes for the guitar’s body to improve bass response and volume. The Martin company made an important contribution in the teens with the introduction of their so-called D or Dreadnought guitar. With a wider lower bout (or half of the body), and with construction strong enough to withstand the newly introduced steel strings, the instrument was immediately popular for its loud bass volume and carrying power.

The history of the guitar includes periods of fantastic popularity followed by periods of decline. The eighteenth century proved a time of low ebb for the guitar, until at its end the double strings gave place to single ones, and the sixth string was added to create the familiar form of today’s guitar. Sheep’s gut was used for the first three strings. The basses were formed by winding silver-plated copper wire onto a core of silk thread.

With the sixth string came a new wave of popularity with the public, led and inspired by virtuoso players who also composed and wrote instruction methods for the guitar in its new form. The main centers were Vienna and Paris, and great players such as Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829) from Italy and Fernando Sor (1778–1839) from Spain were drawn to emigrate to the north where enthusiastic audiences and students awaited them. Both composed extensively for the guitar, and laid the foundation for the solo repertoire. Ferdinando Carulli (1770–1841) produced a guitar method that is used to this day, and the “25 Melodious Studies” of Matteo Carcassi (1792–1853) are still part of the standard student repertoire.

Following this great wave of popularity came a period of decline and neglect, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the guitar was little played and rarely heard in concert. It was really thanks to Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909) that public interest was again awakened.

In the Christian era, the guitar is mentioned in two forms in the thirteenth century: the Latin guitar and the Moorish guitar. Both are illustrated in beautiful miniatures in the manuscript “Cantigas de Santa Maria” attributed to Alfonso the Wise of Spain. Of the two, the Latin guitar is closer to the figure-eight shape of the guitar as it developed in Spain and Italy. In early sixteenth-century Spain, the vihuela became the instrument of choice for the serious musician. The vihuela was in fact an early form of the guitar, with six pairs of strings. Vihuela music may be played without alteration on the modern guitar.

The only significant difference was the pairing of strings to produce a stronger sound, comparable to the 12-string guitar of today. The vihuela was played with the fingers, and a considerable repertoire of music existed for it in the notation form known as “tablature.” The tuning was like that of the Renaissance lute, which in the rest of Europe was considered the “King of Instruments” and whose music is now a fertile source for guitarists.

At the same time, a smaller guitar, first with four and then with five sets of strings (known as courses), developed as a less sophisticated instrument for chording and the strumming style known as rasgueado used as accompaniment for the dance.