Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides".The term is used to refer to a number of such related instruments that were developed and used across Europe in the modern era.Some types of guitars, which are themselves related to these European instruments, originated in the Americas. origin of stringed instruments once known in central Asia and India. For this reason guitars are distantly related to contemporary instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, setar and sitar, among others. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.
The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre, French Guitare),loaned from the medieval Andalusian Arabic qitara, itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara,a descendant of Old Persian sihtar (Tar means string in Persian).
Illustration from a Carolingian Psalter from the 9th century, showing a guitar-like plucked instrument.The guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of Iberia in the 8th century.Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried.By 1200 AD, the four-string "guitar" had evolved into two types: the guitarra moresca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.In the 14th and 15th centuries the qualifiers "moresca" and "latina" were dropped and these four course instruments were simply called guitars.
The Spanish vihuela or (in Italian) "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is often considered a major influence in the development of the modern guitar. It had six courses (usually), lute like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply-cut waist. It was also larger than the contemporary four course guitars. By the late 15th century some vihuelas began to be played with a bow, leading to the development of the viol. By the sixteenth century the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, and more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guitars. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity in Spain and Italy during an era dominated elsewhere in Europe by the lute; the last surviving published music for the instrument appeared in 1576. Meanwhile the five-course baroque guitar, which was documented in Spain from the middle of the 16th century, enjoyed popularity, especially in Spain, Italy and France from the late 16th century to the mid 18th century.Confusingly, in Portugal, the word vihuela referred to the guitar, whereas guitarra meant the "Portuguese guitar", a variety of cittern.
