Guitar
The Origins of the Modern Guitar
W
HEN I FIRST BEGAN studying classical guitar, back
in early 1970s, books about the instrument’s history
all seemed to have a curious gap in them. There was plenty
of information about the guitar as we know it today (with six
single strings tuned E - A - d - g - b - e’, originally made from
gut, but nowadays from nylon), which first became popular
in early nineteenth century, when composer-performers like
Mauro Giuliani, Ferdinando Carulli, and Fernando Sor created
the repertoire that still forms the basis of today’s teaching
methods. Some of these books also discussed the earlier
five-course guitar, which had become fashionable amongst
European aristocracy in the seventeenth century (when Louis
XIV of France and Charles II of England both employed court
guitarists), but had subsequently – it was implied – fallen
into disuse in mid-eighteenth century. However, none of the
history books I consulted contained more than a few curt
paragraphs about the period between 1750 and 1810 (“did
people suddenly stop playing the guitar during those sixty
years?” I wondered), or explained precisel H