.The use of specific musical instruments follows public tastes in musical styles. To understand the stringed instruments of any age, it helps to know something of the historical context that led to their development: both the musical precedents and the historical events that had an impact at the time. Music, especially songs with lyrics, are commonly written in response to current events – common experience seeking expression.
The following time-line is a work-in-progress of the history of the guitar and its role supporting musical styles. If you have corrections, clarifications, additional thoughts, insights or information, please contact us. 1400 – 1600 Renaissance Period. The gittern (English for Renaissance guitar) resembles a small lute or guitar. It was carved from a single piece of wood with a curved (“sickle-shaped”) peghead. An example has survived from around 1450.
The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see interval). Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century: the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music ╨ in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them.
Stringed instruments gained strings to extend their usable range. The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths.
This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality. The Italian humanist movement, rediscovering and reinterpreting the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome, influenced the development of musical style during the period. The first guitars are thought to have originated during the 15th Century in Spain.
These had four ‘courses’ of strings or sets of two strings tuned to the same note to give the guitar resonance. However the Lute was consistently favored by the public over the Guitar until the end of the 15th Century.1487. Johannes Tinctoris described two forms of the instrument: one “invented by the Spanish which both they and the Italians call the viola This viola differs from the lute in that the lute is much larger and tortoise shaped, while the viola is flat and curved inwards on each side.” ‘Viola’ or ‘vihuela’ in Spanish, is not referring to the modern viola, but an early guitar.
The other instrument described by Tinctoris is “the instrument invented by the Catalans, which some call the guiterra and others the ghiterne the guiterra is used most rarely because of the thinness of its sound. 1730 – 1820 Classical Period. Europe began to move to a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, now described as ‘Classicism’. While still tightly linked to the court culture and absolutism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was cleaner – one that favored a clearer division between parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity.
The development of ideas in “natural philosophy” established itself in the public consciousness (with Newton’s physics taken as a paradigm): structures should be well founded in axioms and be both well articulated and orderly. This taste for structural clarity worked its way into the world of music, moving away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period, towards a style where a melody over a subordinate harmony – a combination called homophony – was preferred. This meant that the playing of chords, even if they interrupted the melodic smoothness of a single part, became a much more prevalent feature of music. This, in turn, made the tonal structure of works more audible. Changes in the economic and in social structure also moved the new style forward. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, and there was a rise in the public taste for comic opera. This led to changes in the way music was performed, the most crucial of which was the move to standard instrumental groups and the reduction in the importance of the continuo ╨ the harmonic fill beneath the music, often played by several instruments.
One way to trace this decline of the continuo and its figured chords is to examine the decline of the term obbligato (meaning a mandatory instrumental part in a work of chamber music). In the Baroque world, additional instruments could be optionally added to the continuo; in the Classical world, all parts were noted specifically (though not always notated), so the word “obbligato” became redundant. By 1800, the term was virtually extinct. The best-known composers of this period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven is also sometimes regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic; Franz Schubert is also something of a transitional figure. 2000.
21 year old Justin Frankel wrote ‘Gnutella’. This peer-to-peer file sharing protocol is so decentralized that, unlike Napster, it could not be shut down.2001.
On September 11th between 8:46am and 10:28am, a series of coordinated attacks on United States soil by 19 Al-Qaeda suicide terrorists were launched. 4 commercial passenger jet liners were highjacked. 2 of the planes were slammed into Tower 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center in New York City. 1 was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington Virginia and 1 plot was foiled by the passengers and ultimately crashed into a field near Shanksville Pennsylvania. There were no survivors on any of the flights.
In total, 2,993 people died in the attacks. iTunes was introduced by Apple as a proprietary digital media player application to organize, distribute and maintain some copyright control over audio and video media. Songs could be found, bought and cataloged individually. On October 23rd, iPod portable media players were introduced by Apple to store and play the music and video purchased on iTunes. XM Satellite Radio was launched on September 25th as a digital radio service with 73 music channels, 39 news, talk, sports and entertainment channels, 23 play-by-play sports channels and 21 regional traffic & weather channels. The new service was subscription based at $9.95 per month / per receiver.
On September 7th, Acoustic Music.Org opened its doors in Guilford, CT. 26 year old Bram Cohen wrote a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that worked well with large files and called it: BitTorrent. This protocol has become a standard for distributing large amounts of data on the internet. In August alone, more than 3 billion music files were traded on-line by peer-to-peer protocol like Napster for free. The music industry was not amused. Napster was attacked with traditional lawsuits and forced to shut down for encouraging, aiding and abetting copyright infringement. In November, George Harrison began radiotherapy at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City for lung cancer that had metastasized to his brain.
He was under the care of Dr. Gilbert Lederman, a staff radiation oncologist. A complaint was later brought against Dr. Lederman by the Harrison estate alleging that the Dr. Repeatedly revealed Harrison’s confidential medical information in television interviews and, close to death, forced him to autograph a guitar. The complaint alleges that Dr.
Lederman and his family came to visit Harrison and began singing and playing a guitar they brought. In labored breaths, Harrison asked: “Please stop talking.” After the performance, Dr. Lederman asked Harrison to autograph the guitar. Harrison responded: “I do not even know if I know how to sign my name any more.” Dr.
Lederman took Harrison’s hand and guided his hand while encouraging him by saying, “Come on, George. You can do this.
The suit was settled out of court under the condition that the guitar be “disposed of”. On November 29th George Harrison died at a Hollywood Hills mansion that was previously owned by Courtney Love.
The cause of death was listed on his Los Angeles County death certificate as “metastatic non-small cell lung cancer”. He was cremated at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River by his close family in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition. Jack Johnson released his debut album.2002. Sirius Satellite Radio was launched nation-wide as competition to XM Satellite Radio on July 1st (It had been available in four States on February 14th). Jam-Master Jay of Run-DMC (Jason William Mizell 1/21/65-10/30/02) is shot and killed in his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens NY. The murder has not yet been solved.
January 1st saw the introduction of the Euro to replace francs, lire, guilders, marks, pesetas, drachmas, escudos and markkas. November 25th: the Department of Homeland Security was formed to unify 22 separate intelligence agencies.2003. The human genome project was completed on April 14th.
On April 28th, Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store: music could be downloaded for 99 cents per song. It was a theoretical win-win: small amounts of money, legal rights and the artists would be paid. It was not at all clear whether the system would work since it was so easy to download music for free.
The landscape of music distribution was changing: now you could legally buy the music you wanted – not forced to buy whole albums for a single song. Every track had to compete for the public’s acceptance.2004. Eric Clapton is honored at a Buckingham Palace ceremony as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Thursday, June 24th: Auction House Christies – New York held the 1st of several sales of the Eric Clapton guitar collection for the benefit of the Crossroads Centre for addiction rehabilitation, Antigua. Lot number 88 was ‘Blackie’: the Fender Stratocaster that Clapton had assembled from various used Strats (see 1972). The instrument had been used steadily by Clapton since 1972 for touring, writing and recording.
The winning bid was $850,000 before the buyer’s premium, approximayely $959,000 after. The bidders were financially backed by Guitar Center. This set a new record for the highest amount fetched by an electric guitar. Also sold at the same auction was the Gibson ES-335 TDC used by Clapton during the Cream years ($750,000 before buyer’s premium) as well as the 1966 Martin Style 00-21 used by George Harrison to write “Here Comes The Sun” and later given to Clapton ($75,000 before buyer’s premium). The auction raised approximately $6,000,000 for the Crossroads Centre.2005.
Youtube was introduced on April 25th – Among its many other voyeuristic opportunities, musicians could actually see how it was done. August 29th, hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana. The catastrophic failure of the poorly engineered and poorly maintained protective levee system left the reality of a man-made disaster. The roots of the levee failure included environmental policies that systematically removed and/or destroyed the coastal wetlands that had provided the first line of hurricane defense for centuries.2006. Ahmet Ertegun, at age 83, slipped backstage at a Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on October 29th. He struck his head on the concrete floor, was rushed to the hospital, but never recovered.
He died on December 14th and was buried next to family members in Turkey.