Romantic guitar

From the late 18th century the guitar achieved considerable general popularity though, as Ruggero Chiesa stated, subsequent scholars have largely ignored its place in classical music. It was the era of guitarist-composers such as Fernando Sor, Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliani and Matteo Carcassi. In addition several well-known composers not generally linked with the guitar played or wrote for it: Luigi Boccherini and Franz Schubert wrote for it in several pieces, Hector Berlioz was a proficient guitarist who neither played keyboards nor received an academic education in music, the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini played guitar informally and Anton Diabelli produced a quantity of guitar compositions (see List of compositions by Anton Diabelli).

• Name — Romantic guitar • Background — string • Classification — String instrument (plucked) • Hornbostel Sachs — 321.322 • Hornbostel Sachs Desc — Composite chordophone • Inventors — Ferdinando Gagliano (first known) • Developed — 18th century • Attack — Fast • Related — * Acoustic guitar • Baroque guitar • Classical guitar • Gittern • Lute • Parlor guitar • Builders — * Johann Georg Stauffer • René François Lacôte • Christian Frederick Martin • Antonio de Torres Jurado

The first known guitar built to be strung with single strings rather than pairs of strings was built in 1774 by Ferdinando Gagliano in Naples. This guitar, which was displayed in the Heyer Museum, Cologne before that museum was dispersed, showed some important differences from the modern classical guitar. It had 5 single strings, inlaid brass frets, a long neck relative to string length (the fretboard meeting the body at the 11th fret), a pegged bridge and a characteristic figure-8 shaped tuning head. It lacked only a sixth string to make it identical with the early romantic guitar. The earliest extant six-string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is also known for developing the mandolin. This guitar shows no sign of modification from a double-course guitar. The authenticity of guitars before the 1790s is often in question. Moretti's 6-string method appeared in 1799. Around the same time France also began to produce guitars with six single courses and Spain soon followed. Italian, French, and Spanish six-string guitars differed from the baroque guitar in similar ways. In addition to the advances already mentioned the guitar was gradually given more pronounced curves and a larger body while ornamentation was more restrained, remaining mostly around the edges of the body and the sound hole, which lacked a decorative rose to allow more volume. Frets were no longer of tied gut but fixed strips of some harder material, first ebony or ivory then metal. Wooden pegs were later replaced by metal tuning machines.

• Antoine de Lhoyer (1768–1852) • Francesco Molino (1768–1847) • Ferdinando Carulli (1770–1841) • François de Fossa (1775–1849) • Joseph Küffner (1776–1856) • Fernando Sor (1778–1839) • Anton Diabelli (1781–1858) • Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829) • Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) • Dionisio Aguado (1784–1849) • Carl Blum (1786–1844) • Charles Michael Alexis Sola (1786–1857) • Matteo Carcassi (1792–1853) • Josiah Andrew Hudleston (1799–1865) • Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806–1856) • Napoléon Coste (1805–1883) • Adam Darr (1811–1866) • Eduard Bayer (1822–1908) • Giulio Regondi (1822–1872) • Jacques Bosch (1825–1895) • Julian Arcas (1832–1882) • Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909)

• Johann Georg Stauffer • René François Lacôte • Jean Nicolas Grobert • Christian Frederick Martin • Antonio de Torres Jurado • Louis Panormo • Joseph Pons • Etienne Laprevotte • Gennaro Fabricatore