The guitar is one of the most easily recognized  instruments in the world. Its popularity may rise from its ability to produce music both simple and complex; or from its appearances in the courts of kings and on VH1; or simply because it is easy to carry along on a journey. It is these and many other characteristics that have enabled it to endure the ages.

Whether played for an audience of thousands in an auditorium, for a few around a camp fire, or for the sole enjoyment of the performer, this versatile and noble instrument is at the center of many genres of music.

An ancient instrument, the guitar is known by many names across many cultures. One of its ancestors , the tanbur, has been depicted  on 4,000-year old stone carvings and tomb paintings found in Egypt. The oldest surviving tanbur was discovered in the tomb of an egyptian singer who was buried with it c. 1500 B.C.E.

The ancient Greeks called it kithara. The Moors brought the oud to Spain where later, during the Middle Ages, it was called the vihuela. Italians of the seventeenth century referred to it as the chitarra spagnola.

Guitars of early Renaissance Europe had strings arranged in pairs (courses) of four, five, or six. The modern 12-string guitar is an example of a six-course instrument. Four-course guitars were common through the mid sixteenth century, but were soon edged out by the extended range of the five-course guitar.

A sign of the guitar’s growing acceptance in musical circles was the fact that Antonio Stradivari, the famed maker of world class violins, began building guitars in the second part of the seventeenth century.

During the 1700s the six-course guitar was common. By 1800, in response to the nuances of Classical and early Romantic music, the pairs had been replaced by six single strings. The typical guitars of today are their descendants.

Electric guitars came on the scene in the 1920s, and amplifiers followed a decade later, making it possible for guitarists to be heard in performance with other instruments. Amplification was the beginning of the guitar’s rise to its unprecedented popularity within, and its profound influence on, music and popular culture of today.