Classical guitar

A classical guitar, also called a Spanish guitar, is a musical instrument from the family of musical instruments called chordophones. This instrument is most commonly used by classical guitarists playing classical music, but is also used for folk music.

Background information

The history of the classical guitar and its repertoire span over four centuries, including its ancestor the baroque guitar. The popularity of the classical guitar has been sustained over the years by many great players, arrangers, and composers. A very short list might include Gaspar Sanz (1640-1710), Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909), Andrés Segovia (1893-1987), Julian Bream (1933), and John Williams (1941).

By using the fingers to pluck instead of a plectrum or bow, the performer can play polyphonic music. It is common to encounter classical guitar music that sustains two, three, or four musical lines or voices.

Using the right hand fingers to pluck the strings requires more space between the strings over the sound hole which in turn necessitates a fingerboard that is slightly wider than other guitars. Classical guitarists hold the instrument by raising the left leg (with a footstool), placing the guitar on that leg and holding the guitar in place with the right arm. Alternatively the left foot can be placed on the floor and a small support placed between the left leg and the guitar. Either of these positions support the guitar in a way that gives the player greater mobility and access to the strings and the fingerboard. The right hand is a classical guitarist's voice similar to that of a string player's bow. By using a combination of flesh and fingernail to pluck the strings, a classical guitarist is able to generate a wide variety of sounds.

The classical guitar's most characteristic physical feature is the use of nylon strings (which have, largely, supplanted the use of gut strings), although since the mid 1990s carbon fiber or composite treble strings have gained popularity for their nylon-like sound and significantly better reliability. Nylon strings give the classical guitar a unique, varied and rich color palette. The size and shape of the classical guitar have been nearly standard for over 100 years. The finest guitars are built with a solid Western red cedar or spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, traditionally a Spanish cedar or more recently a mahogany neck and an ebony fingerboard.

History

Main article: History of the classical guitar

The history of the classical guitar and its repertoire span over four centuries. Included in its ancestry is the baroque guitar. Throughout the centuries, the classical guitar has evolved principally from three sources: the lute, the vihuela, and the Renaissance five-string guitar.

Origins

Instruments similar to what we know as the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient central Asia as the cithara. Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capital of Susa.

Middle age

During the Middle Ages, guitars with three, four, and five strings co-existed. The Guitarra Latina had curved sides and is thought to have come to Spain from elsewhere in Europe. The Guitarra Morisca, brought to Spain by the Moors, had an oval soundbox and many sound holes on its soundboard. By the fifteenth century, four double-string guitars, similar to lutes, became popular, and by the sixteenth century, a fifth double-string had been added. During this time, composers wrote mostly in tablature notation. Italy was the center of guitar world during the 17th century, and the the Spanish school of guitar making only began to flourish late in the 18th century after the addition of the sixth string. During the 19th century, improved communication and transportation enabled performers to travel widely and the guitar became a widely known instrument. Guitar music became especially popular in Spain and Antonio de Torres developed the Spanish guitar in its modern form, with a broadened body, increased waist curve, thinned belly, improved internal bracing, single string courses replacing double courses, and a machined head replacing wooden tuning pegs.

Renaissance

The renaissance guitar

The gittern, English for renaissance guitar is a musical instrument resembling a small lute or guitar. It is related to but is not a citole, another medieval instrument. The gittern was carved from a single piece of wood with a curved ("sickle-shaped") pegbox. An example has survived from around 1450.

The Vihuela

The written history of the classical guitar can be traced back to the early sixteenth century with the development of the vihuela in Spain. While the lute was then becoming popular in other parts of Europe, the Spaniards did not take to it well because of its association with the Moors and their oppressive rule. They turned instead to the four string guitarra, adding two more strings to give it more range and complexity. In its most developed form, the vihuela was a guitar-like instrument with six double strings made of gut, tuned like a modern classical guitar with the exception of the third string, which was tuned half a step lower.

Baroque guitar

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"Early romantic guitar" or "Guitar during the Classical music era"

The earliest extant six string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 - after 1831) ^{[1] [2]} in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin. This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar. ^[3] Authenticity of guitars before the 1790's is often in question. This also corresponds to when Moretti's 6-string method appeared, in 1792.

Romantic guitar

This was the first 'Golden Age' of the classical guitar repertoire.

Modern classical guitar

In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously only players of the instrument had done.

Contemporary classical guitar

Contemporary concert guitars occasionally follow the Smallman design which replaces the fan braces with a much lighter balsa brace attached to the back of the sound board with carbon fiber. The balsa brace has a honeycomb pattern and allows the (now much thinner) sound board to support more vibrational modes. This leads to greater volume and longer sustain.

Famous Spanish Guitarists include Paco De Lucia and Grisha Goryachev, a Russian guitarist.

Classical guitar making

Main article: Classical guitar making

Physical characteristics

The classical guitar is distinguished by a number of characteristics:

• It is an acoustic instrument. The sound of the plucked string is amplified by the soundboard of the guitar which acts as a resonator.
• It has six strings. These can be used for slicing however a few classical guitars have eight or more strings to expand the bass range, and to expand the repertoire of the guitar.
• The three treble strings are made from nylon, as opposed to the metal strings found on other acoustic guitars. Nylon strings also have a much lower tension than steel strings, as do the predecessors to nylon strings, gut strings (made from ox gut). The lower three strings ('bass strings') are wound with metal, commonly silver plated copper.
• Because of the low tension of the strings the neck can be made entirely of wood, not requiring a steel truss rod.
• The interior bracing of the sound board can be lighter, due to the low tension of the strings. This can allow for more complex tonal qualities. A common classical guitar bracing pattern is the fan bracing. A center spruce brace is glued on the inside of the soundboard along the center line of the guitar to just before the bridge. Additional braces fan out on ether side of the first brace.
• A typical modern six-string classical guitar has a width of 48-54 mm at the nut, compared to around 42 mm for a modern electric guitar design. The classical fingerboard is normally flat and without inlays(Some have dot inlays on the side of the neck at the 5th and 7th frets), whereas the steel string fingerboard has a slight radius and inlays.
• Classical guitarists use their dominant hand fingers to pluck the strings. Players shape their fingernails, much the way a clarinetist will shape their reed to achieve a desired tone.
• Strumming is a less common technique in classical guitar, and is often referred to by the Spanish term "rasgueo", or for strumming patterns "rasgueado", and utilises the backs of the fingernails. Rasgueado is integral to Flamenco guitar.
• Tuning pegs (or "keys") at the head the fingerboard of a classical guitar point backwards (towards the player when the guitar is in playing position; perpendicular to the plane of the fretboard). This is in contrast to a traditional steel-string guitar design, in which the tuning pegs point outward (up and down from playing position; parallel to the plane of the fretboard).

Parts of the guitar

1. 1 Headstock
2. 2 Nut
3. 3 Machine heads (or pegheads, tuning keys, tuning machines, tuners)
4. 4 Fretwires
5. 5 Truss rod (not shown)
6. 7 Neck and 20 fretboard
7. 8 Heel
8. 9 Body
9. 12 Bridge
10. 14 Bottom deck
11. 15 Face (top deck)
12. 16 Body sides
13. 17 Sound hole, with Rosette inlay
14. 18 Strings
15. 19 Bridge saddle (Bridge nut)
16. 20 The Neck

Fretboard

Also called the fingerboard is a piece of wood embedded with metal fretwires that comprises the top of the neck. It is flat or slightly curved. The curvature of the fretboard is measured by the fretboard radius, which is the radius of a hypothetical circle of which the fretboard's surface constitutes a segment. The smaller the fretboard radius, the more noticeably curved the fretboard is. Pinching a string against the fretboard effectively shortens the vibrating length of the string, producing a higher tone (a string, unfingered, will vibrate from the saddle to the nut; once fingered, it will vibrate only along the distance between the saddle and the fretwire directly before the finger). Fretboards are most commonly made of ebony, but may also be made of rosewood or of phenolic composite ("macarta").

Frets

Frets are the spaces between the fretwires which are the metal strips (usually nickel alloy or stainless steel) embedded along the fretboard placed in points along the length of string that divide it mathematically. When strings are pressed down behind them, fretwires shorten the strings' vibrating lengths to produce different pitches- each one spaced a half-step apart on the 12 tone scale. For more on fret spacing, see the Strings and Tuning section below. Fretwires are usually the first permanent part to wear out on a heavily played guitar. They can be re-shaped to a certain extent and can be replaced as needed. Frets also indicate fractions of the length of a string (the string midpoint is at the 12th fret; one-third the length of the string reaches from the nut to the 7th fret, the 7th fret to the 19th, and the 19th to the saddle; one-quarter reaches from nut to fifth to twelfth to twenty-fourth to saddle). This feature is important in playing harmonics. Frets are available in several different gauges, depending on the type of guitar and the player's style.

Guitars have frets on the fingerboard to fix the positions of notes and scales, which gives them equal temperament. Consequently, the ratio of the widths of two consecutive frets is the twelfth root of two <math>\sqrt[12]{2}</math>, whose numeric value is about 1.059463. The twelfth fret divides the string in two exact halves and the 24th fret (if present) divides the string in half yet again. Every twelve frets represents one octave.

There are several styles of fret, which allow different sounds and techniques to be exploited by the player.

Truss rod

The truss rod is an adjustable metal rod that runs along the inside of the neck, adjusted by a hex nut or an allen-key bolt usually located either at the headstock (under a cover) or just inside the body of the guitar, underneath the fretboard (accessible through the sound hole). Most classical guitars do not have truss rods, as the nylon strings do not put enough tension on the neck for one to be needed. The truss rod counteracts the immense amount of tension the strings place on the neck, bringing the neck back to a straighter position. The truss rod can be adjusted to compensate for changes in the neck wood due to changes in humidity or to compensate for changes in the tension of strings. Tightening the rod will curve the neck back and loosening it will return it forward. Adjusting the truss rod affects the intonation of a guitar as well as affecting the action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard). Some truss rod systems, called "double action" truss systems, will tighten both ways, allowing the neck to be pushed both forward and backward (most truss rods can only be loosened so much, beyond which the bolt will just come loose and the neck will no longer be pulled backward).

Neck

A classical guitar's frets, fretboard, tuners, headstock, and truss rod, all attached to a long wooden extension, collectively comprise its neck. The wood used to make the fretboard will usually differ from the wood in the rest of the neck. The bending stress on the neck is considerable, particularly when heavier gauge strings are used (see Strings and tuning), and the ability of the neck to resist bending (see Truss rod) is important to the guitar's ability to hold a constant pitch during tuning or when strings are fretted. The rigidity of the neck with respect to the body of the guitar is one determinant of a good instrument versus a poor one. The shape of the back of the neck can also vary, from a gentle "C" curve to a more pronounced "V" curve.

Neck joint or 'heel'

This is the point at which the neck is either bolted or glued to the body of the guitar. Almost all acoustic guitars, with the primary exception of Taylors, and Greg Smallman have glued (otherwise known as set) necks.

On classical guitars, this portion is known as the 'heel' because it looks like a Spanish type shoe heel. Set necks usually feature dovetail joints, which offer stability and sustain. Other commonly used neck joints include mortise-and-tenon joints (such as those used by CF Martin & Co. guitars), and classical heel style neck joints (commonly found in classical guitars). Bolt-on necks, though they are historically associated with cheaper instruments, do offer greater flexibility in the guitar's set-up, and allow easier access for neck joint maintenance and repairs.

Body

The body of the instrument is a major determinant of the overall sound variety for acoustic guitars. The guitar top, or soundboard, is a finely crafted and engineered element often made of spruce, red cedar or mahogany. This thin (often 2 or 3 mm thick) piece of wood, strengthened by different types of internal bracing, is considered to be the most prominent factor in determining the sound quality of a guitar. The majority of the sound is caused by vibration of the guitar top as the energy of the vibrating strings is transferred to it. Different patterns of wood bracing have been used through the years by luthiers (Torres, Hauser, Ramirez, Fleta, and C.F. Martin being among the most influential designers of their times); to not only strengthen the top against collapsing under the tremendous stress exerted by the tensioned strings, but also to affect the resonation of the top. The back and sides are made out of a variety of woods such as mahogany, Indian rosewood and highly regarded Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra). Each one is chosen for their aesthetic effect and structural strength, and can also play a significant role in determining the instrument's timbre. These are also strengthened with internal bracing, and decorated with inlays and purfling.

The body of a classical guitar is a resonating chamber which projects the vibrations of the body through a sound hole, allowing the acoustic guitar to be heard without amplification. The sound hole is normally a round hole in the top of the guitar (under the strings), though some may have different placement, shapes or multiple holes.

As an instrument's maximum volume is determined by how much air it can move.

Binding, purfling and kerfing

The top, back and rim of a classical guitar body are very thin (1-2 mm), so a flexible piece of wood called kerfing (because it is often scored, or kerfed to allow it to bend with the shape of the rim) is glued into the corners where the rim meets the top and back. This interior reinforcement provides 5 to 20 mm or solid gluing area for these corner joints.

During final construction, a small section of the outside corners is carved or routed out and then filled binding material on the outside corners and decorative strips of material next to the binding, which are called purfling. This binding serves to seal off the endgrain of the top and back. Binding and purfling materials are generally made of either wood or high quality plastic materials.

Bridge

The main purpose of the bridge on a classical guitar is to transfer the vibration from the strings to the soundboard, which vibrates the air inside of the guitar, thereby amplifying the sound produced by the strings. The bridge holds the strings in place on the body. Also, the position of the saddle, usually a strip of bone or plastic across the bridge upon which the strings rest, determines the distance to the nut (at the top of the fingerboard). This distance defines the positions of the harmonic nodes for the strings over the fretboard, and is the basis of intonation. Intonation refers to the property that the actual frequency of each string at each fret matches what those frequencies should be according to music theory. Because of the physical limitations of fretted instruments, intonation is at best approximate; thus, the guitar's intonation is said to be tempered. The twelfth, or octave, fret resides directly under the first harmonic node (half-length of the string), and in the tempered fretboard, the ratio of distances between consecutive frets is approximately 1.06 (see "Frets" above).

Tuning

Main article: Guitar tuning

A variety of different tunings are used. The most common by far, known as "standard tuning" (EADGBE), is as follows:

• sixth (lowest tone) string: E (a minor thirteenth below middle C—82.4 Hz)
• fifth string: A (a minor tenth below middle C—110 Hz)
• fourth string: D (a minor seventh below middle C—146.8 Hz)
• third string: G (a perfect fourth below middle C—196.0 Hz)
• second string: B (a minor second below middle C—246.92 Hz)
• first (highest tone) string: E (a major third above middle C—329.6 Hz)

A guitar using this tuning can tune to itself by the fact the 5th fret on one string is the same note as the next open string i.e. a 5th fret note on the 6th string is the same note as the 5th string, apart from between the third and second string, where the 4th fret note on the third string equals the second string. Standard tuning has evolved to provide a good compromise between simple fingering for many chords and the ability to play common scales with minimal left hand movement. There are also a variety of commonly used alternate tunings - most of which are just common chord shapes that can be played open or made by moving the capo.

Multi-string classical guitar

Main article: Multi-string classical guitar

A Multi-string classical guitar is a classical guitar with more than 6 strings, usually between 7 and 10.

Repertoire

Main article: Classical guitar repertoire

The classical guitar repertoire in practical terms includes not only music written specifically for the classical guitar, but also music written for the guitar's predecessors and related instruments. These include the vihuela, popular in sixteenth-century Spain, and the lute used everywhere else in Europe in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Music written specifically for the classical guitar dates from the addition of the sixth string (the baroque guitar normally had five pairs of strings) in the late 18th century.

A guitar recital often includes not only music written originally for the lute or vihuela by composers such as John Dowland and Luys de Narvaez, but also music written for the harpsichord by Domenico Scarlatti, for the baroque lute by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, for the baroque guitar by Robert de Visee or even Spanish-flavored music written for the piano by Issac Albeniz and Enrique Granados. The most important composer who did not write for the guitar but whose music is often played on guitar is Johann Sebastian Bach whose works for solo violin and solo cello as well as those written for baroque lute have proved to be highly adaptable for the guitar. Indeed, they have become core repertoire for guitarists.

Of the music written originally for guitar the earliest important composers are from the classical period and include Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani both of whom wrote in a style strongly influenced by Viennese classicism. In the nineteenth century guitar composers such as Johann Kaspar Mertz were strongly influenced by the dominance of the piano. It is not until the end of the century that the guitar begins to emerge with its own unique atmosphere. Francisco Tarrega was central to this in his incorporation into his romantic miniatures the flavor of flamenco, which itself has Moorish influences. The colors of rasgueado, flamenco rhythmic patterns and the Phrygian mode all emerge in his music. This is part of the phenomenon of musical nationalism that was particularly characteristic of Spain in the late nineteenth century. The aforementioned piano composers Albeniz and Granados were central to this movement and their evocation of the guitar was so successful that guitarists have largely appropriated their music for piano to the guitar.

With the twentieth century and the wide-ranging performances of artists such as Andrés Segovia and Agustin Barrios-Mangore the guitar begins to regain some of the popularity it lost to the harpsichord and piano in the eighteenth century. It once more becomes the most popular instrument, but not in its classical version. Rather the steel-string and electric guitars, integral to the rise of rock and roll in the post-WWII era, triumph. But the classical guitar becomes widely popular once again. Barrios composed many excellent works and brought into the mainstream the characteristics of Latin American music as did the Brazillian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Andrés Segovia commissioned many works from Spanish composers such as Federico Moreno Torroba and Joaquin Rodrigo, Italians such as Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Latin American composers such as Manuel M. Ponce of Mexico. But the major honors for commissioning a modern repertoire for guitarists have to go to Julian Bream of Great Britain who managed to get nearly every British composer from William Walton to Benjamin Britten to Peter Maxwell Davies to write significant works for guitar. Bream's collaborations with tenor Peter Pears also resulted in song-cycles by Britten, Lennon Berkeley and others. There are also significant works by composers such as Hans Werner Henze of Germany.

Bibliography

Main article: Classical guitar bibliography

• Summerfield, Maurice, The Classical Guitar:It's Evolution, Players and Personalities since 1800 - 5th Edition, Blaydon : Ashley Mark Publishing Company, 2002.
• Various, Classical Guitar Magazine, Blaydon : Ashley Mark Publishing Company, monthly publication first published in 1982.
• Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical Guitar, London : Calder, 1980.
• Antoni Pizà: Francesc Guerau i el seu temps (Palma de Mallorca: Govern de les Illes Balears, Conselleria d'Educació i Cultura, Direcció General de Cultura, Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics, 2000) ISBN 84-89868-50-6

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