Contrary to popular opinion, the guitar is not a relatively new instrument but has its roots in very ancient sources. Not only is it interesting to trace its development through history, but it also throws light on the fluctuation of its repertoire.

Together with all stringed instruments, the guitar owes its existence to the hunting bow of primitive man. The twang of the bow eventually seems to have inspired the creation of crude instruments in the shape of the lyre, the harp and the lute, which were made from wood or tortoise shell and animal sinew. In the seventh century B.C. the lyre and the cithara (a larger and more sophisticated version of the lyre mounted on a large wooden soundboard) were popular instruments in Greece, and it is from the word 'cithara' that the word 'guitar' is derived. The earliest lute', the most direct forerunner of the guitar, seem to have originated in the civilisations of Egypt and Babylonia C. 1000 B.C. Thc lute was known to thc Greeks as thc 'pandoura' and was a very crude three-stringed instrument, although far superior to thc lyre because it had a short fingerboard made of wood, giving it a much greater range of notes.
These early stringed instruments do not seem to have reached Europe until the eighth century A.D., when bands of nomadic gypsies appeared throughout Europe, making a particular impression on the Latin races. In the same century the Moorish invaders brought the 'rebec', which was a primitive type of three-stringed violin played with a bow, to Spain. It became the popular instrument of the people, played by street musicians and minstrels, so much so that in the thirteenth century the Church of Spain banned Roman Catholics from playing the instrument because of its frivolous image. However, the rebec had become so popular by this time that, rather than give it up, the people played it with the hand instead of a bow, thus retaining the instrument but not disobeying the Church. This instrument was gradually modified to become the mandola, and by the sixteenth century it had developed into a much more sophisticated instrument called the 'vihuela', the most popular instrument played by the Spanish aristocracy. There were three types of vihuelas:

de pendola  played with a plectrum
de arco  played with a bow
de mano  played with the hand.

By the sixteenth century however. the vihuela de mano was the only type played. Many pieces were written for it, some of which are still in the guitar repertoire today. In I535 the first instructional book on playing the vihuela was published, called 'Libro de Vihuela intitulado El Maestro' (Book of Music for the Hand-plucked Vihuela entitled The Teacher) by Luis Milan, containing graded pieces for the beginner to the virtuoso player. This was followed by books by Narvaez in 1538 and finally one by Mudarra in 1546. This last book contained a marvelous collection of compositions for the vihuelist, showing what a wide range of pieces he was expected to play. Not only were there dances, such as pavanes, galliardes and fantasias, but also love songs, ballads and motets. Some were original works and some were adapted from Flemish masters like Josquin des Pres. There is no doubt that the vihuela had reached a very high artistic level, but its glory was short-lived; by the beginning of the seventeenth century the 'guittarra' had replaced the vihuela in Spain.

It is impossible to give a precise date when the guitar per se came into being. However, it is known that during the fourteenth century there were two instruments bearing the name 'guittarra': the 'guittarra latina' and the 'guittarra Morisca'; the former had a flat back and a single sound hole and was used for playing chords, the latter a vaulted back, several sound holes and a large fingerboard and was used for playing melodies. The 'guittarra Morisca' had disappeared from Spain by the sixteenth century, when the guitar had become the instrument of the working class, leaving the vihuela to the aristocracy. At this time the guitar had four pairs of strings, tuned to the same pitch as the inside strings of the vihuela: CFAD. In the middle of the sixteenth century another string was added and the pitch of the other strings was tuned up a tone: ADGBE. This is the tuning of the five upper strings in the guitar today.
The guitar reached England in Tudor times in the shape of the 'gittern', which was played with a plectrum and used for song accompaniment. By 1621 it had been superseded by the larger Spanish guitar, which won popularity through its stronger tone and greater versatility. By the mid-seventeenth century the guitar was being played throughout Europe. In 1627 the first instructional book on playing the Spanish guitar was published, entitled Guittarra Espanola y Vandola; in it the author, Dr. Juan Carlos y Amat, described how to play the songs and dances of the day using a chord system on the first four frets.
By now the guitar looked similar to the present-day instrument, although it possessed only eight frets and was less 'waisted' than the modern version. These early guitars were often elaborately decorated with inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl. They had four pairs of strings tuned AaDdGgBb and a single top string, E, called a chanterelle.
A foremost guitarist of the seventeenth century was the Italian Francesco Corbetta, who was guitar-master to Louis XIV of France. During his lifetime he published several books of guitar tablature and travelled both in Europe and across the Channel to England, where he inspired Charles II to take up the instrument. Corbetta dedicated a collection of his pieces, La Guittarre Royalle, to Charles II, which consisted of many courtly dances such as gavottes, jigs and minuets. His pupil Robert de Visee (1650-1725) continued as court guitarist and also achieved fame as a composer; some of his compositions are still performed, notably the Suite in D Minor, which is justly famous. Gaspar Sanz (1640-1710) was guitarist to the Viceroy of Aragon and was also a famous composer of the period, though perhaps best known as the author of Instruccion de Musica sobre la Guittarra Espanola.
Gaspar Sanz was the last serious composer of this period to play the guitar; the harpsichord was gaining in popularity together with the violin and 'cello, particularly in Northern Europe. In Spain, however, the guitar was as popular as ever an instrument to play, but it is interesting to note that the greatest Spanish court instrumentalist of the time, Domenico Scarlatti (1685- 1757), who lived and worked in Spain and Portugal for forty years, did not compose for the guitar at all, although his works are clearly influenced by it.
But although composers were turning more and more to other instruments, the guitar was still played by many people and it continued to develop in design. In the late eighteenth century a sixth string was added, tuned two octaves lower than the top E string This is often accredited to a German instrument maker, August Otto, although Mediterranean guitarist, inspired by the six-string vihuela, had been experimenting with six-string guitars for at least a century. At this time mid-Europe, despite an interest in the guitar as a novelty instrument, was caught up in the exciting new world of opera, symphony orchestras and, of course, the piano. The French guitar-makers at the end of the eighteenth century abandoned the double strings in favour of six single strings, since the gut strings were difficult to keep in tune with one another. For the same reason, the three bass strings were made of silk wound with silver wire, whilst the three treble strings were made of gut; this also strengthened the tone of the bass srings and added variety to the overall tone colour.
The number of frets varied from nine to seventeen, but by this time they were invariably inlaid in the finger-board and made of brass, as apposed to the moveable frets which were tied on, as in the very early guitars. The tuning pegs were either at the side of the head of the guitar, like those of a violin, or at the back, like those of a Flamenco guitar. Inside the guitar, the belly was braced by two to five bars running transversely across it.
A final development, but one that was perhaps the most important of all, was a book published in 1799 by Fernando Ferandiere entitled Arte de tocar Ia Gittarra Espanola por Musica. This was the first instructional manual to teach the method of playing from notes rather than tablature.
The Romantic period between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries saw great composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt composing principally for the piano or orchestra. Some of these composers showed some interest in the guitar, such as Schubert, who composed many songs with guitar accompaniment; or Berlioz, who described the guitar as a miniature orchestra; or Paganini, who was almost as fine a guitarist as he was a violinist and composed quite extensively for the guitar. However, the guitar had its own exponents, including the three Italians Carulli (1720-1841) Carcassi (1792-1853) and Giuliani (1781-1829) and the Spaniards Aguado (1784-1849) and Sor (1780-1839). The most outstanding was Fernando Sor, who spent most of his life in France and also made a great impact on London Society when he made his concert debut there in 1815. He wrote scores of compositions for the guitar and also a remarkable book on guitar technique called Methode pour la Guitare, published in 1830. He helped to develop the structural design of the guitar by commissioning instruments made of thin, lightweight woods, and a new form of internal bracing called 'fan strutting'. This was a method (still used) of using five struts, spread like an open hand, beneath the belly of the guitar, which had the effect of distributing the vibrations of the strings, thus enriching the bass notes and enlarging the tone generally. This period began to establish the names of great guitar-makers: Torres in Spain, Panormo in London and Lacot in France.
But the guitar continued to wane in popularity during the rest of the nineteenth century and was not revived until the turn of the century with the inspired example set by the brilliant Spanish guitarist Francisco Tarrega (1854-1909). Apart from giving concerts, composing and transcribing many classical works suitable for guitar, he was a gifted teacher and did much to establish a technique, particularly for the right hand. Through him a whole new generation of performers and composers grew up. One of his most famous pupils was Miguel Llobet, whose own circle of friends and pupils included Andres Segovia.

The twentieth-century history of the guitar is well known: the ever-increasing repertoire, including works by leading contemporary composers such as Benjamin Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett and Lennox Berkley, and, of course, the ever-increasing interest both amongst performers and concert-goers. It seems that this time the guitar is here to stay.

(Extracted from  The Historical Outline, Teach Yourself The Guitar by Dale Fradd)

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Further reading

Frederick V. Grunfeld, The Art and Times of the Guitar (Macmillan).
P. J. Bone, The Guitar and Mandolin (Schotts GA).
A. P. Sharpe, The Story of the Spanish Guitar (Clifford Essex).
Alexander Bellow, The Illustrated History of the Guitar.