According to researchers, the history of the guitar dates back to the 18-19th centuries BC. The first drawings of the instrument were found in Babylonia. The clay tablets depict silhouettes of people playing musical instruments that look very much like guitars.
From time immemorial
The guitar (quitarra in Spanish) is a wooden stringed instrument with a long neck and a figure-eight resonator. The guitar is the main instrument in arranging compositions of blues, country, flamenco and rock music.
Preserved ancient sculptural images of the prototype of the guitar, which existed in the 2nd millennium BC. They were made of turtle shell or pumpkin and, apparently, were covered with leather. Similar instruments still exist in Iran, the Balkans and Greece. Interestingly, at about the same time in northern India, a dutar with a smoothly rounded body and a neck with tuning pegs appeared.
The main stage in the process of modernizing the instrument was the improvement of the resonator, which was a combination of a soundboard, a top, and shells. It is believed that a new corps was invented in China in the 3rd-4th centuries AD. e. Then the craftsmen first began to make the top deck in the form of a solid wood panel. Various versions of the prototype of the guitar were very popular and quickly spread throughout the world. The simplicity of design and ease of learning made these ancient instruments extremely popular with both ordinary people and the nobility. Hieroglyphs denoting instruments similar in shape to a guitar are also found on the ancient Egyptian pyramids. It is characteristic that these hieroglyphs literally mean "good", "good", beautiful."
Improvement and triumph
The earliest documents testifying to the spread of the guitar in Medieval Europe date back to the X-XI centuries in Spain. Structurally, the tools of those years look much simpler. Until the beginning of the 16th century, guitars were three- and four-stringed. The first five-string guitar was made in the 16th century in Spain, where it received popular recognition. The strings were pulled double and very rarely single. The fifth string gave the guitar a new sound and expanded the capabilities of the instrument. More and more composers and performers began to give preference to this instrument. Compositions written especially for the guitar began to appear more and more often. Already in the XVI-XVII centuries, teaching aids for teaching guitar and musical pieces were published.
The appearance of the six-string guitar dates back to the second half of the 18th century. Single strings were used on such a guitar, which greatly simplified the playing technique and contributed to the further popularization of the instrument. The possibilities of this tool boggled the imagination of contemporaries. This time is considered the beginning of the heyday of the guitar, which lasted until the end of the 19th century and the appearance of the piano.
