Spanish Guitar

Spanish guitar music is some of the world’s most famous music. It’s graceful, elegant and it combines a virtuoso style with classical music inspired by both the Moors and the Romans. This beautiful style of music is known around the world. But what isn’t known around the world is that the modern six string guitar was invented in Spain.

Spaniards in Andalusia during the 1790’s took the guitar to new heights when they added a sixth string to it. The addition of this sixth string – the low E string – was the advent of the modern guitar, which was derived from both the Moorish lute (a small, pear-shaped wooden stringed-instrument) and two other types of pre-modern Spanish guitars: the vihuela and the guitarra latina. The vihuela guitar was used for finger picking with its 11 strings, five of which were double strings and one that was a single string. However, the guitarra latina was a strumming guitar that had four double strings.

Nonetheless, the addition of the sixth string was the beginning of the world-renowned Spanish guitar. Around 1800, the talented Spanish guitarist Ferdinand Sor introduced the six-stringed Spanish guitar to the world. He and several other gifted guitarists traveled throughout Europe playing their beautiful guitar music to other famous composers and anyone who would listen.

But it was two men – Antonio Torres and Francisco Tarrega – who truly revolutionized the modern guitar. Torres’s fast fingers and gifted eye looked at the guitar’s body and decided it needed some improvement. He increased its size and scale length, while flattening the fret board and hollowing out the interior body to improve its sound. These improvements are still used today and accepted as the functional and best-sounding modern guitar. And although Torres built a better guitar, Tarrega used this new guitar and played it before large audiences throughout Europe. His style of playing taught guitarists how to hold the guitar and how to position their hands to perform the best.

The introduction of the sixth string, and Torres and Tarrega’s dedication to the guitar made Spain the inventor of the modern guitar. The modern guitar can be seen anywhere, but its style is indigenous to such great artistry as Flamenco and the famous finger picking of the world-renowned Spanish guitarists.