The classical guitar is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor of the modern steel-string acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from the Spanish vihuela and gittern of the 15th and 16th century. Those instruments evolved into the 17th and 18th-century baroque guitar—and by the mid-19th century, early forms of the modern classical guitar. Today's modern classical guitar was established by the late designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier, Antonio Torres Jurado.
The vihuela is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of the lute in Italy and has a large resultant repertory. There were usually five or six doubled strings.
Fernando Sor was a Spanish classical guitarist and composer of the early Romantic era. Best known for writing solo classical guitar music, he also composed an opera, three symphonies, guitar duos, piano music, songs, a Mass, and at least two successful ballets: Cinderella, which received over one hundred performances, and Hercule et Omphale.
A guitar solo is a melodic passage, instrumental section, or entire piece of music, pre-written to be played on a classical, electric, or acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular music such as blues, swing, jazz, jazz fusion, rock and heavy metal, guitar solos often contain virtuoso techniques and varying degrees of improvisation. Guitar solos on classical guitar, which are typically written in musical notation, are also used in classical music forms such as chamber music and concertos.
A wind quintet, also known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players.
Roland Dyens was a French classical guitarist, composer, and arranger.
Dimitri Illarionov is a German-based Russian classical guitarist. He is a winner of the Guitar Foundation of America Competition and Francisco Tárrega Guitar Competition.
Eliot Hamilton Fisk is an American classical guitarist.
Hopkinson Smith is an American lutenist and pedagogue, longtime resident in Basel, Switzerland.
The evolution of classical guitars began with the influences of the vihuela and gittern in the 16th century and ended with the modern classical guitar in the mid-19th century.
The early romantic guitar, the guitar of the Classical and Romantic period, shows remarkable consistency from 1790 to 1830. Guitars had six or more single courses of strings while the Baroque guitar usually had five double courses. The romantic guitar eventually led to Antonio de Torres Jurado's fan-braced Spanish guitars, the immediate precursors of the modern classical guitar.
Stefano Grondona is an Italian classical guitarist born in 1958. In 2002 he formed the guitar ensemble Nova Lira Orfeo XXI, based on Lira Orfeo - a Barcelona music society of which Miguel Llobet was founder and director.
The following is a bibliography of classical guitar related publications.
Carlo Barone is a classical guitarist and conductor specializing in the performance practice of 19th-century music, especially 19th-century guitar works.
John Doan is an American guitarist and composer.
John Griffiths is a musician and musicologist specialised in music for guitar and early plucked instruments, especially the vihuela and lute. He has researched aspects of the sixteenth-century Spanish vihuela, its history and its music. He has also had an international career as a solo lutenist, vihuelist, and guitarist, and as a member of the pioneer Australian early music group La Romanesca. After a thirty-year career at the University of Melbourne (1980–2011), he now works as a freelance scholar and performer.
Michael Nicolella is an American classical guitarist and composer. Described as an iconoclast, he is known for his versatile, adventurous and eclectic approach to repertoire, including the incorporation of electric guitar into his concert programs and recordings. Nicolella's repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the present. His most recent recording is his own arrangement of the complete cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach; while his past four recordings focused on contemporary music, including his own compositions, alongside those of Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze and Steve Reich. He has championed music by such emerging composers as Laurence Crane and Jacob ter Veldhuis and has premiered many works written for him by other composers, including: Joshua Kohl,, David Mesler, Christopher DeLaurenti and John Fitz Rogers, who in 2001 wrote the forty-five-minute piece Transit for Nicolella, scored for electric guitar and computer generated sound. His own compositions include works for solo guitar, chamber music with guitar, a classical guitar concerto, and an electric guitar concerto. His most recent major composition for soprano, guitar and orchestra, The Flame of the Blue Star of Twilight, was premiered by the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and soprano Alexandra Picard in April 2012. He has performed and collaborated with a wide range of groups and artists including: violinist Gil Shaham, rock singer Jon Anderson, best known for his work as lead vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes, broadway legends Bernadette Peters and Brian Stokes Mitchell, the Seattle Guitar Trio, jazz singer Johnaye Kendrick, classical music comedians Igudesman and Joo and is a frequent guest with the Seattle Symphony. Nicolella is a graduate of Yale University, Berklee College of Music and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. He is currently based in Seattle, where he serves on the music faculty of Cornish College of the Arts. He is married to the painter Ann Gale.
Eythor Thorlaksson was an Icelandic guitarist and composer.
Lex Eisenhardt is a performer and recording artist on early plucked instruments, such as the vihuela, the baroque guitar, and the 19th-century Romantic guitar. He studied lute and guitar at the Utrecht Conservatory. In 1981 he was appointed professor of guitar and early plucked instruments at the Sweelinck Conservatorium. In the forefront of the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) on the guitar, Eisenhardt was the first to make several gramophone recordings with music by the Catalan composer Fernando Sor on a period instrument from the early 19th century. He has given solo recitals and lectures in many European countries, Australia, and the United States. Well-known guitarists such as Johannes Moller and Izhar Elias studied with him.
