| Compared to some musical instruments, the guitar is | | | | Arabic, Al ud) had a soundbox shaped like a melon or |
| a relative newcomer dating from the Middle Ages. It's | | | | a giant pear sliced in half. When the Arabs and Moors |
| origins, go back to long before the beginnings of | | | | invaded Spain in the eighth century, they took many |
| recorded history. | | | | examples of the instrument with them. Gradually "Al |
| The first instrument was probably nothing more than | | | | ud" spread from Spain, whose people called it the |
| a bow in the hands of a prehistoric hunter. One day, | | | | "laud". to become the French liuth, the German laute |
| some nameless innovator attached a hollow gourd to | | | | and the English lute. |
| the shaft of a bow. By hugging the gourd to his | | | | Centuries before this, after the fall of Rome, the |
| chest and bending the shaft back and forth with one | | | | music-loving Celts of Western Europe had added a |
| hand (to change the tension on the string), he | | | | fingerboard to the kithara, and called the resulting |
| produced resonant notes by plucking the string with | | | | instrument the chrotta, which may simply have been |
| his other hand. Primitive instruments of this type are | | | | their way of pronouncing the old name. In Provence, |
| still played in various parts of Africa. | | | | in South of France, the new instrument was called |
| A natural outgrowth of the single-string bow was the | | | | the crota. It was there, in all probability, that the |
| "bow-harp", consisting of several strings attached to | | | | guitar had its first beginnings, for Provence |
| a single soundbox and strung so as to yeild different | | | | experienced a cultural flowering during the 11th and |
| notes when plucked by the fingers.This "one string, | | | | 12th centuries, in which music played a paramount |
| one note" principle was common to all instruments of | | | | role. |
| the harp family known to early inhabitants of the | | | | Troubadours who accompanied themselves on the |
| lands around eastern end of the Mediterranean | | | | crota as they sang songs of love and war were key |
| Sea.They included the Nubian kissar, the Greek | | | | figures in Provencial society. often of knightly rank, |
| kithara and the lyre of the Greeks, Assyrians and | | | | they were poets and lyricists who generally |
| other Near Eastern peoples. David, King of Israel and | | | | composed works as they sang. |
| slayer of Goliath, was said to have been proficient on | | | | To keep up with the ever-more sophisticated tastes |
| the lyre. | | | | of their noble audiences and so win fame and |
| Although the Egyptian nefer (which had both | | | | distinction over their rivals, some troubadours began |
| soundbox and a neck) was in use well before the | | | | to tinker with their instruments. by slow stages, the |
| time of Christ, the first "neck" instrument about very | | | | crota was refined to produce clearer notes of purer |
| much is known was Chinese. The tzi-tze, as it was | | | | pitch and wider range, until it came to resemble in a |
| called after the emperor who invented it in the fifth | | | | general way, the modern guitar. |
| century B.C., was a small square box, punctured at | | | | The transition was interrupted by a bitter religious |
| the top, with four strings running the length of a | | | | war which ultimately destroyed the Provincial |
| thick bamboo cane. Historians believe that this | | | | civilization and it's way of life. Some of the Provincial |
| instrument influenced the development of Western | | | | troubadours fled to Italy, but more sought refuge in |
| stringed instruments, particularly the Arab ud which | | | | Spain, especially in nearby Catalonia. The Catalans, |
| eventually became the lute. | | | | long familiar with the lute, eagerly adopted the |
| From the Greek word kithara came the names of | | | | improved crota and began to "cross-breed" it with |
| both guitar and zither. In ancient Rome, the kithara | | | | the older instrument. Thus was laid in the thirteenth |
| was also called the fidula, which in time gave rise to | | | | century, the foundations of that devotion to the |
| the words vihela, once used in Spain for "guitar", and | | | | guitar which was to make Spain the leading center |
| violao, still used in Portugal. "viola" and "violin" stem | | | | for that instrument after well into the 20th Century. |
| from the same source, as does "fiddle". The ud (in | | | | |