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 he
history of the guitar is nothing if not complex.
Many pages could be devoted to outlining what we
don't know about this instrument in differrent lands
and areas. The old saying, "What's hit is history;
what's missed is mystery," puts the burden of ignorance
("missing") squarely on the shoulders of us, who
do the "hitting." It is with a certain sense of
personal inadequacy and humility that I submit to
the readers this first "problem area" in need of
the enlightening embrace of disinterested research:
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The migrating guitar
 Historians
now believe that Spanish explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries
carried with them on their voyages around the world, probably
as a modest means of musical diversion, a five-course folk
instrument that was like a "poor man's vihuela." It was variously
called a guitarra española, a Spanish guitar, or a baroque
guitar, and was supposedly a strummed, chorded instrument
often used to accompany folk songs. It had so-called "re-entrant"
tuning, meaning that the fifth (A) and fourth (D) courses
were higher in pitch than the third (G). Disregarding for
a moment the likelihood of lower-octave doubling of certain
courses, the basic tuning looked like this:
In
various articles over the past decade, Richard Hudson (among
others) has postulated that such seemingly European musical
forms as the chaconne and passacaglia were derived from repetitive
ethnic sung dances discovered in the New World by Spanish
sailors, who evidently mimicked them on their guitars and
used them as the basis of obscene Spanish verses which they
made up themselves. The forms, or formulas, were brought back
to Spain in this fashion. From Spain the catchy songs found
their way to Italy, where a higher order of musician (usually
a harpsichordist) would take up improvising them. This is
apparently how the chaconne and the passacaglia (originally
called "ciaccona" and "passacaglio") came to be the noble
art forms we associate with European composers of the 18th
century.
A
few contextual questions remain to be investigated in the
light of the above scenario:
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Do any traces of the ciaccona and passacaglio
dances survive in the ethnic music of the West Indies
or South America?
Was the Spanish guitar of those early
days gut-strung? The climate at sea, coupled with the
expense of good gut strings and their unsuitability
to repeat strumming, would suggest that sailors perhaps
favored wire strings, even in the 16th century. What
evidence exists in South American guitar-like folk instruments
today to support or refute this thesis?
Does the re-entrant tuning of the Hawaiian ukulele trace
itself back to the tuning of the baroque (Spanish) guitar?
Do its four strings suggest that some early Spanish
guitars had only four courses of strings? Or four single
strings? And what about the ukulele's size? Any reflection
of the possible Spanish prototypes?
What other aspects of the Spanish guitar
with (possibly) wire strings survive in the New World?
Where does the modem Hawaiian guitar ("steel guitar")
come from? Is it a cross between instruments of the
koto family (oriental) and the guitar (Spanish)?
Why does the American or "Western" guitar invariably
have steel strings? Is it because of a Spanish wire-strung
guitar precedent?
Did the technology of drawing wire exist in 16th-century
Spain? In 17th-century Spain? Or in Italy of the same
period? Obviously it must have.
Did the strumming tradition for the five-course Spanish
guitar of the early 17th century remain somehow alive
for two hundred years among the gypsies of Andalucia,
to emerge anew as flamenco guitar music on the six-string
(gut strung) Spanish guitar of the mid-l9th century?
Has anyone found evidence that flamenco guitars of the
last century were ever strung with wire strings? Or
rather, was the rise of flamenco strumming a wholly
new development made possible by the creation of the
"new" Spanish guitar by such makers as Torres, in the
mid-l9th century?
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There
may be no answers to some of these questions, no easy answers
to others, and still others may already have been put to rest
unknown to this writer. It is clear, however, that credible
answers to these questions by and large will only come after
some basic research into South American musical traditions
is carried out by someone cognizant of the problems and issues,
and aware of the various pieces that may interlock in the
multi-dimensional puzzle.
Chapter
II
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issue n.4
