THE HISTORY OF THE GUITAR

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Term Paper Title	THE HISTORY OF THE GUITAR
# of Words	2194
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	8.78

THE HISTORY OF THE GUITAR

     The guitar is a fretted, stringed instrument, and is a member of the lute family.  It originated in Persia and reached Spain during the twelth-century, where itšs versatility as both a solo and accompanying instrument were established.  The theory of the guitar was discovered in the early centuries.  They found that the sound of a bowstring could be enhanced by attaching a resonating chamber -most like a tortiseshell- to the bow.  From the bow came essentially three main types of stringed instruments: the Harp family, which was the sound of plucked strings indirectly transmitted to an attached sound box.  The second was the Lyre family, which was strings of a fixed pitch are attached to the directly to a sound chamber.  And the third was the Lute family, this was were the pitch of strings was altered by pressing them against a neck that is attached directly to a sound chamber.  Within the Lute family came two groups. The lutes proper which had rounded backs and the guitar type instruments with their flat backs.

     Guitar-shaped instruments appear in stone bas-relief sculptures of the hittites in northern Syria and Asia Minor from as far back as 1350 B.C.

The word guitar also has origins in the middle and far east, deriving from gut, is the Arabic word for four, and tar, the Sanskrit word for string.   The earliest European guitars did have four courses of gut strings.  A

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course is a pair of strings tuned in unison.  These early guitars were distinguished from lutes by body sides that curved inward to form a waist and by four courses of strings.  Some but not all early guitars had a flat back, while lutes always had a flat back.  In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the lute was the dominant fretted instrument.  The lute with was pear-shaped and had five or more courses of strings was generally regarded as a higher class of instrument.  By 1546 the guitar had gained enough popularity to merit the publication of a book of guitar music.  By this time guitars had added another course, and modern tuning had come into existence.  Chord positions were the same as they are today.  The frets of the early guitars were made of gut and tied around the neck.  This made placement of frets very difficult.  The early guitars were also much shorter in length than todays guitars.

     The second most popular instrument during the Middle ages was the cittern.  It was more like the modern guitar than any other during that time. ...

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