Spanish guitar - the strings of our soul

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The mesmerizing sounds of the guitar hardly leave anyone indifferent. The Spanish guitar has a rich and very ancient history. There is a version that the primitive man used his bow as a musical instrument. To do this, not one bowstring was pulled over him, but several. Depending on the thickness and strength of the tension, the strings from the bowstring sounded differently.

Pedigree

The Spanish guitar (from the Spanish quitarra) has a rich pedigree, like the saz, sitar, tambourica, dutar - musical devices that are still found among certain nationalities. Instruments with stretched strings and a neck were made from gourds and tortoise shells. A similar thorn-stringed instrument, which appeared as early as three thousand years BC, became the prototype of the modern guitar. It is believed that its ancestry originates from the countries of the Middle East, and it acquired its name from the Greek word "kithara" (kithara). But the homeland of the guitar in the classical form in which we know it today, of course, is Spain. The Spanish guitar appeared here in the 13th century. AD thanks to the Arabs who arrived with the new instrument. Subsequently, it acquired two varieties: Latin andMauritanian. It is the Latin version that, in its sound and design, begins to resemble a modern classical guitar. The game on the Latin (or Roman) cithara was carried out using a pinch, that is, the punteado technique. Playing the Moorish (or Arabic) cithara is a rasgeado (with all fingers) technique, which formed the basis of the famous Spanish flamenco style.

Evolution

In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, the lute and vihuela - ancient stringed plucked instruments - the Spanish guitar deservedly takes its rightful place as a beloved musical instrument.

She was then already considered an accompanying instrument with four double strings, to which Vicente Espinel later added a fifth. In this form, the guitar is recognized by Europe as Spanish. Unlike the solo vihuela, an aristocratic court instrument, the guitar with its chordal technique is spreading among the people. The Spanish guitar fight captivates the heart, and the sounds are extracted from the strings of the listener's soul. Its transformation, evolution, honing of skills by the performers brings popularity to the guitar, enriches history. Her fame takes on a clear outline, and the iconography becomes more precise. At the end of the 17th century, the vihuela got rid of the seventh string, and the guitar, on the contrary, acquired its sixth doubled. And these two instruments become identical.

The Renaissance period becomes a golden time of prosperity, rise as for everythingart, and for the guitar. The paths of the vihuela and the guitar diverge: the guitar begins its path of development of dynamics - without bows and elongated plectrums, without bulky forms. The favorite of the public is given attention in terms of its decoration. However, at first, the guitar could not conquer Spain, even being very popular throughout Western Europe. To this day, the kind of melodic guitar that it acquires in the 18th century has survived - with double strings, later replaced by single ones. Spanish melodies on the guitar conceal the eternal light and soul of the country's history. The melody, much deeper than the text, preserves half-erased details of time and place.