
The vihuela de penola was played with a pick, while the vihuela de arco was played with a bow. The vihuela, popular during the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy and Spain, fits directly into the evolutionary line and came in three varieties. (“The Guitar Player” by Johannes Vermeer, 1672)īeyond the guitar’s morphology, tunings and playing techniques must also be considered when tracing its genealogy. The five-course Baroque guitar originated in Spain and gradually overtook the four-course instrument there in the 17th century. Many parties throughout the centuries in several Western Europe countries contributed to the evolution of the modern guitar before Spain became a dominant force from the late 18th century forward in producing many groundbreaking, composers, performers, and luthiers. Other historians posit theories that the pear-shaped oud found in pre-Islamic Arabian lands influenced the development of the lute, which appeared in Europe in the 15th century and is part of the guitar’s lineage. Coptic lutes discovered in Egypt dating from 300–700 AD had flat backs and sides and superficially resemble the shape of a modern guitar body. Another theory is that the guitar is a distant cousin to the long-necked lutes of early Mesopotamia. One photo of a stone relief from the Hittite Empire (modern-day Turkey) dating from 1300 BCE depicts a musician playing a stringed instrument with a long neck and a body with curved sides that vaguely resembles a guitar. Alexander Bellow’s Illustrated History of the Guitar includes numerous photos of artifacts tying the guitar to various ancient cultures. Scholars, however, are not in agreement on where the instrument that ultimately became the modern classical guitar originated before arriving in Europe.Īmong several scholarly speculations, The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians includes one theory that the guitar descended anciently from the Greek kithara. Many significant developments in classical guitar design and technique, and many important performers and composers, flourished in Spain during the past few centuries, but the story indeed began many years-perhaps millennia-earlier. Guitar aficionados are generally aware that our beloved instrument traveled a very long and somewhat uncertain path to Spain. Frost said.From the September 2018 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY MARK SMALL “We were able to capture the subtle and rich colors of Mattias’ extraordinary guitar and his playing, which has much nuance and an inward beauty,” Mr. “For me, my pupil Mattias became the obvious choice.”

“When, for health reasons, I decided to finish playing the guitar, I wished that the instrument I had collected from Ignacio Fleta in January 1972 and which had been my faithful companion for nearly forty years, could get to live on with someone who took good care of the guitar,” Mr. Schulstad, who named the guitar “Erik,” after his teacher.

Fleta led to a guitar, completed in 1971 - during Fleta’s “golden age” - which in 2010 was passed from Mr. (Eduardo Sainz de la Maza was a pupil of Miguel Llobet, who is a featured arranger on the album, and brother to Regino Sainz de la Maza, who was dedicated Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.) The meeting between Mr.

Schulstad’s first teacher Erik Möllerström was introduced by his teacher Eduardo Sainz de la Maza to luthier Ignacio Fleta (read: Stradivarius), championed by Andrés Segovia. The album features a rare guitar, with both history and a story.
