The word "guitar" is also phonetically linked to the Greek instrument "khitara" (or "cithara" in latin) which was a harp like instrument that was popular during the ancient Greek period1. Many stringed instruments that were decendants of this kithara (such as the citole, gittern, cithern) were introduced to English speaking countries in Europe between the 14th and 16th Centuries. It was around the early 17th Century that the word guitar began appearing in the English language and there is certainly a strong indication that the word has come about as through its connections (both phonetically and physically) with the greek "khitara"2. In fact, the modern greek word for guitar is "khitara".
The latter half of the 20th Century, saw the emergence of important pioneers for the instument who encouraged established composers of Western classical music to write for the instrument. Two of the most important of these pioneers were Andrés Segovia and Julian Bream. Both Segovia and Bream were hugely successful soloists frequently performing at some of the most prestigious venues in the world (Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall) at a time when the classical guitar was not considered a "serious" instrument4. Their illustrious careers caught the attention and admiration of a number of leading composers who were encouraged by them to write for the solo classical guitar. Segovia collaborated with a number of in-demand composers including Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Manuel Maria Ponce and Alexandre Tansman while Bream worked several iconic British composers such as Benjamin Britten, Malcolm Arnold and William Walton5. These composers not only brought to the classical guitar a high level of repertoire but also their own cultural influences in the works that they scored for the guitar. Such cultural influences covered a broad range of Western cultures through stylistic influences and the cultural backgrounds of the composers themselves .
In order to understand how repertoire and new music may be able to influence the cultural identity of the classical guitar, let us explore a very brief overview of the history of the instrument in order to contextualise this investigation in terms of the cultural heritage that is already associated with the classical guitar.
Much of the classical guitar’s cultural heritage is evident in the history of the instrument’s own physical evolution. The word “guitar” reveals a lot about its ancestry as it shares a similar suffix (-tar) with other plucked string instruments such as the sitar, the dutar or the ektara. This suffix in many Eastern languages such as Bengali or Persian translates as “string” with the prefix usually indicating the number of strings:
The etymology of the word “guitar” already reveals how culturally diverse the instrument’s ancestry is. Origins for the modern name come for the Mediterranean, the Middle East and East Asia. So how then did this incarnation of the “classical guitar” find its more recent history rooted in the "Western" world?
The answer to this question lies in the word that we associate with this type of guitar, classical. The classical guitar is a type and style of guitar that is used to perform classical music. Here we already faced with another cultural implication as classical music in this context represents art music of the Western tradition. This is opposed to Indian classical music, Persian classical music, Andalusi classical music as well as many other forms of non-western classical styles.
The history and evolution of the classical guitar can be quite difficult to pinpoint since the instrument was developing and changing in different ways across different Western cultures. There are, however, certain cultural trends and musical figures that greatly influenced the development of the instrument that ultimately resulted the the modern classical guitar that we recognise today.
For example, the guitar is a core part of many traditional forms of art in Spanish culture: ranging from the popular folkloric music of the many different regions within Spain to the unique style and history of flamenco3. The cultural importance of the guitar in Spain resulted in many Spanish composers, who were interested in both the developing classical traditions from other parts of Europe as well as their own Spanish culture, to write classical music for the instrument. This tradition began with Fernando Sor and Dionisio Aguado during the early 19th Century and continued into the 20th Century with more Spanish composers writing and arranging exclusively for (as well as performing) the classical guitar such as Francisco Tárrega, Miguel Llobet and Emilio Pujol. In this way, the classical traditions of Western music making, originating from a variety of Western cultures (German, French, Italian, Austrian, etc), as well as the influence of Spanish culture became an important part of the classical guitar's repertory from the 19th Century onwards.
Todays canonical repertoire of the classical guitar is the direct result of cultural impacts and pioneers like the aforementioned. The majority of these works concern cultures coming from the Western world because of the tradition of Western classical music. However, one important composer brought, at the time, a relatively new cultural influence to the classical guitar world. This composer was Tōru Takemitsu and his innovative works for the solo classical guitar incorporated elements of Japanese culture to the classical guitar world to produce fresh and unique compositions that have become a part of this classical guitar canon5. His works for solo classical guitar shall be the topic of the first chapter of this investigation.
