The development of the guitar from the 16th to the 19th century.
The guitar was probably born in North Africa, being the result of combining the construction of the lute, kitary i lyry. Around the 13th century, the guitar appeared in Europe, where she settled for good in Spain, becoming a national instrument there.
Initially, it was an instrument with three or four pairs of strings. Each couple had the same outfit, though sometimes the lowest pair was tuned in the octave. At the end of the 16th century, guitars with five pairs of strings appeared, and the sixth string did not appear until the eighteenth century. The first collections containing works for guitar existed in the 16th century.
The tuning of the first guitars is C-F-A-D. At the end of the 16th century, it was raised one ton up, which led to the D-G-H-E outfit. In addition, the addition of a fifth pair of strings allowed for the tuning A-D-G-H-E. The eighteenth century brought another change of dress, which is still valid today: E-A-D-G-H-E.
The guitar of that time was quite oblong in shape, with a poorly exposed notch that is so characteristic today. The sound box was much smaller than it is today, and the sound hole was covered with a piece of parchment, which had a purely decorative function. The strings were made from animal intestines.
The initial models of guitars had a headstock “outgoing” directly from the neck and constituting a straight extension thereof. The studs were always perpendicularly mounted in the headstock and located at the rear. As for the thresholds, they were made as strings tied perpendicularly to the axis of the neck; their number did not exceed ten.
W 1627 a guitar with metal strings and a new element was created – strunnik. This guitar was called chitarra battente. A little later, experiments with the scale took place, which was enlarged to 74,3 cm in a guitar by Antonio Stradivari. Guitars from this period were often richly decorated with mother-of-pearl and ivory inlays.
At the end of the 18th century, the use of pairs of strings was gradually abandoned, replacing them with single strings. The guitar began to take a shape more similar to today's. A new head design was created, characterized by two longitudinal slots (this solution is currently the most popular).
The proportions of the sound box became similar to those currently known in 1860 year with the guitar, whose constructor was Antonio de Torres.