History of lute-family instruments

In theory, families of musical instruments descend from the musical bow.

Henri Breuil surveyed the Trois Frères caves in France and made an engraving that attempted to reproduce a c. 13,000 B.C. cave painting into a black-and-white lithograph engraving.[4] His engraving showed a mysterious figure, a "man camouflaged to resemble a bison", in the midst of a mass of herd-animals, "herding the beasts and playing the musical bow".[4][5][6] The artwork is confused, and those who are trying to reproduce the art in color have had to work to bring out legible images.[5][6] One interpretation of the "magician-hunter" image considers his hunting-bow to be a musical bow, used as a single-stringed musical instrument.[6][7]

Whether the bow in the cave illustration is a musical instrument or the hunting tool in a paleolithic hunt, musicologists have considered whether the bow could be a possible relative or ancestor to chordophones, the lutes lyres, harps and zither families.[8] Curt Sachs said that there was good reason not to consider hunters' bows as likely musical bows.[9] One reason was that the oldest known musical bows were 10 feet long, useless for hunting, and that "musical bows were not associated with hunters' beliefs and ceremonies".[9]

Sachs considered the musical bows important, however. He pointed out that the name for the Greek lute, pandûra was likely derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian word meaning "small bow".[10] He considered this evidence in support of the theory that the musical bow was ancestral to the pierced lute.[10]

The bows used for music required a resonator, a hollowed object like a bowl, a gourd or a musician's mouth, in order to produce audible sound.[9] Although the musical bow could be manipulated to produce more than one tone instruments were developed from it that used one note per string.[9][8] Since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes for instrument families such as bow harps, harps and lyres.[8] In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords.[8] Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute.[11]

This picture of musical bow to harp bow is theory and has been contested. In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not currently known.[12] He felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the 4th-century BC civilization that took the primitive technology and created "technically and artistically well-made harps, lyres, citharas and lutes".[12]

A tradition of singing and dancing girls, wine, women and song

Egyptian lute , 18th Dynasty, 1390–1295 B.C.

Three musicians, Tomb of Nakht, Thebes, 18th Dynasty, 1422–1411 B.C. The lute-player's lute has two strings (indicated by tassels) and lines where frets are on modern instruments.

Musician tuning her lute, pulling the string upward from below while the hand at the top secures the tension. Tomb of Rekhmire, 18th Dynasty.

From China to Central Asia and India to Egypt, artwork shows girls, partying with men and entertaining with music and alcohol.

Egypt— The Egyptians acquired the lute with singing and dancing girls, as tribute from conquered territories, shown in a 1422 B.C. painting.[21] The tradition of exchanging female performers between countries was long lived.

China— In China, more than 11000 slaves specializing in entertainment—music dance and instrumentals—had their own section in the capital, Changan, during the Tang Dynasty (618–960 A.D.)[22]

Arabia, Persia and Islamic Countries— The commerce in slaves between the countries of the Near East, accompanied by their instruments, gave music an "international, interoriental character", which blended as Islam spread from the Malayan Archipelago in Asia to Spain.[23] Under both the Umayyads and Abbasids they were "highly accomplished, not only in music, but in other departments of culture" and trained in schools by virtuosi.[24] In the "Days of Idolatry" among the Arabs, singing girls were common, into the era of Muhammad (570–632 A.D.)[25] They were part of "the household of every Arab of social standing", and "attached to the taverns for the entertainment of the visitors".[25] In the 430s A.D., Persian king Bahram Ghur visited the court of the Ghassanids, where he listened to girls from the Byzantine Empire and from Al-Hira sing music from their homes, accompanied by the barbat, a Central Asian instrument.[23] The instruments accompanying the singers "lost their regional character" by the 7th century A.D.[23] It should be pointed out that not all the women singing and playing lutes were slaves. The harem was not part of the Bedouin culture in the days before Muhammed, and free women women "joined in the music of the family or tribal festivities with their instruments".[25] It was a time of the "badawī Arab". A secular people then, for them "love, wine, gambling, hunting, the pleasure of song and romance ... wit and wisdom" were all important.[25]

Sumerians, Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks all ruled the Mesopotamian area between Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the earliest examples of lutes have survived in clay and stone artwork.[26] Sachs described the Mesopotamian lutes as having "very small bodies, long necks with many frets, two strings attached without pegs and were played with a plectron".[27] The long lute entered Egypt after its conquest of Southwest Asia, when it began receiving tribute in the form of "singing and dancing-girls with their instruments", illustrated in paintings at Tell El-Amarna.[21]

The paintings of the Egyptian lutes are detailed enough to provide a better understanding of ancient long lutes. Furthermore, original lutes survived in tombs, some still with strings attached. The Egyptian pierced-lutes had a carved wooden bowl for the instrument's body, "usually oval", covered with rawhide. A stick which acted as the instrument's neck pierced the instrument's body. The stick was threaded through cuts in the top of the rawhide to the end of the bowl. It was attached to the strings through a "triangular opening cut in the skin" at the bottom of the bowl. Besides being woven through the skin-soundboard, the stick was supported underneath by "wooden crosspieces" that ran crosswise underneath the stick, to the edges of the bowl on either side.[28] The strings were "wound around the top of the handle" and tied with thongs, the tassels visible in some surviving artwork.

Nora E. Scott gave more details about the Egyptian lute's construction, saying that the lute had two bridges, the triangular bridge at the bottom, attached to the stick and protruding through the skin, and another on the neck.[29] The string passed over the second bridge and was tied down to the neck with linen cord to keep its tension.[29] The player tuned the lute by pulling the string tight over the second bridge and tightening the linen cord to hold.[29] The second bridge corresponds in function to the nut on a guitar or mandolin. The soundboard skin could have as many as six soundholes.[29]

Sachs points out one significant difference between the Egyptian lutes and other pierced lutes of the ancient world. The non-Egyptian lutes had a stick handle piercing the bowl on both ends (spike lutes), rather than having one end resting inside the bowl (tang lutes).[28] He also gave consideration to African skin-topped instruments that survived into the 20th century, noting that those in Morocco and Senegambia, such as the gunbri, might be descendants.[28] He said the instruments "degenerated" from the Egyptian instruments, but then were developed after the Arab conquest of North Africa.[28] Other differences he noted include different body shapes, attaching strings to "lateral pegs" (rather than tying strings directly to the neck) and reducing the instrument's size.[28]

Africa today retains the largest variety of skin-topped pierced lutes, in which the neck is a stick that penetrates the body of the instrument. In some, the neck pokes out the bottom and strings are attached there. Others have the neck end within the instrument's body, edge of the neck's end poking up through the skin, securing the strings. These are not merely instruments brought in from outside and copied across generations, but include instruments that originate from local designs. Ultimately the banjo was one of these.

• 
  Morocco, pre-1981, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl, Amazigh, Amazighen, Berber cultures. Called "Lothar". Labeled "Gimbrī" in Koptishe Lauten (Ricardo Eichmann, 1994, page 101)
• 
  West Africa, pre-1887, skin-topped lute, calabash bowl, has sound holes
• 
  Egypt, pre-1930, skin-topped lute, river-turtle shell bowl, has sound holes, size and shape similar to Byzantine pandura
• 
  Mali, pre-1970, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl, Fellani, Foulah, Ful, Fulani, Fulbe, Peul, Toucouleur cultures, called "Hoddu"
• 
  Africa, pre-1953, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl
• 
  Libya, pre-1959, skin topped lute, calabash bowl, has sound holes, Touareg, Tuareg cultures
• 
  Rhodesia-Zambia, skin topped lute or banjo, metal can for body, Kaonde culture

• 
  Alacahöyük 1399–1301 B.C., Hittite lute with in-curved sides, and frets on neck. Built like the Egyptian (skin top, stick woven through skin, sound holes parallel to stick-neck, one tassel to tie each string.). Unlike Egyptian lutes, stick pokes out at both ends).
• 
  Parthian Empire, long-necked lute or tanbur, c. 3 B.C. – 3 A.D. Neck ends within body.

Pandura at Mantineia, c. 330–320 B.C.

Pandura at Tanagra, Greece, c. 3rd Century B.C.

Roman guitar-type instrument depicted on a Roman sarcophagus dated 3rd century AD.[30]

Roman pandura, 2nd century A.D., found at Mérida, Spain

The long-necked lute traveled west as well as east. In the 5th century B.C. the Egyptian lute made it into Greek sculpture, recognizable as a pierced lute, stick running into an oval body, with triangular bridge at base of instrument and two lines of soundholes parallel to the stick, on either side of it.[31] A century later at Mantineia, the pierced lute would be changed, with a broader neck, somewhat shorter than the earlier Egyptian style lute, but still a long-necked instrument, with the neck longer than the soundbox.[32] A second version at Tanagra in 200 B.C. was carved from a single piece of wood, neck and soundbox, pear-shaped much as the short-lutes that later arrived from Central Asia.[33] Still another form of the pandura would have a one-piece carved triangular body with skin stretched across it.[34]

Sachs describes the pandura as having three strings, tied still to the neck as there were no pegs, and a small body.[10] The Greeks called the lute by multiple names, including trichordon (3-stringed) and pandura.[10] He looks as the latter name as evidence that the instrument was foreign to Greece, introduced from the East; the name was derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian name meaning small bow.[10] Sachs said that the instrument could be called "alternatively an Assyrian, a Cappadocian and an Egyptian instrument".[10]

While examples exist across 1100 years, the pandura was rarely covered in Greek and Roman art, compared to the cithara, harp and lyre. One possible reason had to do with cultural values. In the Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the lute had been associated with dancing girls and with entertainment. Sumerian pottery and clay statues show that the lute players were often naked performers, with sexuality a part of the performance. The Egyptian girls are similarly scantily clad, dancing for their lords and ladies.

A millennium later at Rome in the 5th century A.D., the pandura was a low-class instrument with a "disreputable association with frivolity and low merry-making".[35] A story about St Theodoulos the Stylite says that he was tested by God, forced to associate with Cornelius the pandouros (pandura player). According to the story, "Theodoulos is horrified at being associated with a man from the theatre" and more horrified to find "Cornelius at the Hippodrome, holding his instrument with one hand, and with the other, a bareheaded prostitute".[36]

Lack of artwork does not necessarily mean absence of the lute in Roman and Greek society. What images have survived of Greek and Roman pandura players are from high-class art. In the statuary, plaques and a mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace, players are dignified and clothed. The art, made for the wealthy upper classes doesn't show the lower-class places where Theodoulos was shocked.

• 
  Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian long-necked lute, 4th century A.D., Qasr Libya (the Byzantine city of Theodoureas)
• 
  Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 A.D.
• 
  Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 A.D.
• 
  Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 A.D., neck is hollow like rubab neck
• 
  Byzantine pandura, 6th century A.D.
• 
  Unknown lute-family instrument, 623–643 A.D. Azraq. Byzantine/Islamic culture was mixing at time of painting.
• 
  Unknown lute-family instrument, possible rubab or Coptic Lute. C 1140 A.D., Capella Palatina, Sicily.

Tanburs have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BC.[37]

Three figurines have been found in Susa that belong to 1500 BC, and in hands of one of them is a tanbur-like instrument.[38] Also an image on the rocks near Mosul that belong to about 1000 B.C. shows tanbur players.[38]

Playing the tanbur was common at least by the late Parthian era and Sassanid period,[39] and the word 'tanbur' is found in middle Persian and Parthian language texts, for instance in Drakht-i Asurig, Bundahishn, Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, and Khosrow and Ridag.[note 1][38]

In the tenth century AD Al-Farabi described two types of tanburs found in Persia, a Baghdad tunbūr, distributed south and west of Baghdad, and a Khorasan tunbūr.[37][38] This distinction may be the source of modern differentiation between Arabic instruments, derived from the Baghdad tunbūr, and those found in northern Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sindh and Turkey, from the Khorasan tunbūr.[37]

The Persian name spread widely, eventually taking in long-necked string instruments used in Central Asian music such as the Dombura and the classical Turkish tambur as well as the Kurdish tembûr.[37][40] Until the early twentieth century, the names chambar and jumbush were applied to instruments in northern Iraq.[37] In India the name was applied to the tanpura (tambura), a fretless drone lute.[37] Tanbur traveled through Al-Hirah to the Arabian Peninsula and in the early Islam period went to the European countries. Tanbur was called 'tunbur' or 'tunbureh/tunbura' in Al-Hirah, and in Greek it was named tambouras, then went to albania as tampura, in Russia it was named domra, in Siberia and Mongolia as dombra, and in Byzantine Empire was named pandura/bandura. It travelled through Byzantine Empire to other European countries and was called pandura, mandura, bandura, etc.[38]

Later the Iranian (Kurdish) tanbur became associated with the music of the Ahl-e Haqq, a primarily Kurdish ghulat religious movement similar to a Sufi order, in Kurdish areas and in the Lorestān and Sistan va Baluchestan provinces of Iran, where it is called the 'tembûr'.[41]

Persians have another naming system for differentiating different styles of the instrument, using the word tar with a number for the number of strings or courses of strings.[42] Instruments named this way include the dutar (2 strings/courses), setar (three strings/courses), cartar (4 strings/courses) and panctar (five strings/courses).[42] A course is multiple strings played together, so that a setar can have 6 strings altogether, but the strings are divided in three rows or courses.

The pegs on the long-lutes are different than on short lutes (such as the oud) where a pegbox has pegs accessed from the sides.[42] On long lutes, some are inserted from the front, some from the side.[42] Sachs felt that the pegs were an indication of mixed origins for tanbur. Front and side elements came from Arabo/Persian instruments, rear pegs from Turkish.[42]

Iranian women playing the Ney, Tanbur and Santur Image is cropped from a larger work by Ibrahim Jabbar-Beik.

.

The tanbur family includes

• bağlama (Saz)
• bouzouki related to tanburs but also of European lute tradition
• çifteli
• cura
• dombra Dombura shares some of its characteristics with the Central Asian komuz and dutar.
  • Dombura in Turkish ,
  • Dombıra, in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,
  • Dambura or Danbura in northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan,[1]
  • Hazara Dambura or Hazaragi Dambura The Dambura which is played by Hazara people mostly in Afghanistan.[2]
  • Dumbura in Bashkir and Tatar,
  • Dombor in Mongolia,
  • Dombyra in Kazakhstan,
  • Dombira or 冬不拉 (Dongbula) in Xinjiang, China
  • domra Russian instrument, recreated in the 1800s, modern version is shorter necked like mandolin
  • balalaika Russian instrument. Related to domra.
• dutar
• komuz (not same as kobyz), Kyrgyz instrument. Placement of this instrument in tanbur family not certain. A skin-topped version has existed.
• pandura
• sato (bowed)
• setar looks very similar to tanbur. Has three courses of strings (normally four strings total, but as many as six)
  • Chitrali sitar
• setor
• sitar
• tambura, played in Balkan peninsula, possibly identical to tamburica
• tamboori an Indian melodic instrument similar to a Tanpura
• tambouras played in Greece
• tamburica any member of a family of long-necked lutes popular in Eastern and Central Europe
• tanbur, tanbur, tanbūr, Tambur a long-necked, string instrument originating in the Southern or Central Asia (Mesopotamia and Persia/Iran). Three strings total (not courses).
• Iranian tanbur (Kurdish tanbur), used in Yarsan rituals
• Turkish tambur, instrument played in Turkey
• Yaylı tambur, also played in Turkey
• tanpura, a drone instrument played in India
• tar
• tembor
• tzouras

Instruments not included on this list provide a chance to think about the instruments' evolution. Early Mesopotamian long-necked lutes would have had skin tops and sound-bowls that were either carved from wood or made from a turtle shell. There was a divergence; modern tanburs have wood tops, while rubabs have skin tops. One instrument straddled the line, the Byzantine or Coptic lute. These appear to have been successors of the middle east long-lute tradition, in which Egypt participated. They have a wooden soundboard (a tanbur trait), however, the neck is hollow (a rubab trait). Also the Byzantine lute from Qasr Libya, in Libya, has barbs on its top, a rubab trait. The Coptic lute also overlaps with an instrument that Curt Sachs called a pandura, the instrument illustrated in the mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace in Constantinople.

The other long lutes not included here are because of their rubab orientation are the dotara, dramyin, rawap and pamiri rubab. They have soundboards of skin and may also have hollow necks.

• 
  bağlama or Azerbaijani saz (left)
• 
  bağlama or saz
• 
  Greek bouzouki
• 
  Gheg Albanian çifteli
• 
  bağlama (right) and cura
• 
  Dombra or dambura
• 
  Uzbek dutar. Also Tajik
• 
  Kirgiz komuz
• 
  Iranian setar, musician Hossein Alizadeh
• 
  Indian sitar
• 
  Greek tambouras
• 
  Southern/Central European tamburica
• 
  Central Asian tanbur/tambur, 1865–1872
• 
  Iranian/Kurdish tanbur
• 
  Ottoman tambur, also known as Turkish tambur, 1880
• 
  Yayli tambur a variation of Turkish tambur, metal and uses a bow
• 
  Indian tanpura resembles a sitar but has no frets

A sanxian

It has been suggested that the sanxian, a form of spike lute, may have its origin in the Middle East, and older forms of spike lute were also found in ancient Egypt.[43] Similar instruments may have been present in China as early as the Qin dynasty as qin pipa (pipa was used as a generic term in ancient China for many other forms of plucked chordophones) or xiantao (弦鼗).[43][44] Some thought that the instrument may have been re-introduced into China together with other instruments such as huqin by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368),[43][45] however, an image of a sanxian-like instrument was found in a stone sculpture dating from the Southern Song period (1217–79). The first record of the name "sanxian" may be found in a Ming dynasty text.[46][45]

The instrument was transmitted to other East Asian countries, for example to Japan as shamisen.[47][48]

Central Asian music in China

Tang dynasty art. Musicians on a camel, including one playing the lute. A similar artwork shows a group of bearded foreign musicians similarly together on camelback.[56] Tang Dynasty (618-907) Excavated from a Tang Dynasty tomb, Zhongbu village, western suburb of Xi'an City. Kept at Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an

Buddhist painting from the Mogao Caves, 762–827 A.D. A dancer spins while the orchestra plays. Three kinds of lutes are present: large pipa with dancer, smaller pipa on far right side lower. Above that is a long-necked sanxian or possibly tanbur-relation. Dancer with lifted leg, a posture that may have been the Sogdian Whirl; it has been recreated in China today, called Pipa dance 反弹琵琶 (Fǎntán pípá).

Dancer in the Sogian Whirl posture, lute held behind his head, c. 8th century A.D. Wine jug from Tadzhikistan, "in Sogdian style with Sasanian influence". 1996 photograph by Ulrich von Schroeder at the Jokhang temple, PRC, printed in his book Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Vol. Two: Tibet and China; pp. 792–795, pls. 190A–D. (Visual Dharma Publications, 2001).

Engraving from Tang Dynasty era pipa, gift from the Chinese emperor to the Japanese emperor. Along with the oldest known pipa, the Japanese court also preserved a version of the Central Asian dances from Kucha into the modern era.

Central Asian traders bridged Byzantium and the Middle East with China and India, with their caravan's of traders. The Sogdians (their main city was Samarkland) were especially famous as traders. Because of them, the Chinese Emperor could drink wine from Roman glasses with his wife and do the "Sogdian Whirl".[57] In 384 A.D., the Chinese conquered Kucha, which was famous for its music and dance. It is in the area of the Kizil Caves, whose paintings make it clear that a variety of lutes were being invented and played in the region. The Kuchean dances were popular in the Chinese court, and are still preserved today in the Japanese imperial court, where a trader with lute can be seen on the 5-string-pipa from Central Asia, a gift of one emperor to another.[57]

It has been argued that Central Asia, a crossroads of multiple civilizations, the Middle East, Europe, China and India, could itself constitute a center of world civilization.[58] It was described by the Greek geographer, Strabo, as "a land of 1000 cities."[59] The peoples there could be loosely called Iranians, the historic tribes, not only citizens of the modern country. Over a period of centuries Central Asia was conquered by people from different cultures including the Greeks, Kushans, various Turkic tribes, Persians (themselves an Iranian tribe), and Arabs. The result was a blending of the cultures, and Central Asian grew prosperous in spite of the invasions.

When the Arabs conquered Central Asia, they were conquering a culture that specialized in taking things, evaluating them for their potential value and improving on them. Their habit of evaluating applied to products to sell and to ideas.[60][61] Central Asia was pluralistic and diverse and had some of the biggest cities on the planet, with books being "numerous and widespread", and a high rate of literacy, in which even women could read and write.[62] The culture of literacy and evaluation continued after the Arabs burned the Central Asian libraries (an attempt to do away with competing ideas). Arabic became a lingua-franca, joining Central Asia with the wider Muslim academic world. When the Greek classics were translated into Arabic, Central Asian polymaths worked with the translated Greek science and philosophy, making scientific discoveries that wouldn't be duplicated until the European Renaissance.

Among the products manufactured and exported to China were "lutes, harps, transverse flutes, both plucked and bowed stringed instruments, and even Central Asian dances."[63][64] One of the peoples, the Sogdians were successful merchants for centuries and traveled to Europe, China and India.[65] They took their music and dances with them, and the Sogdian Whirl, became popular in China. Another group from Central Asia was the people of Kucha, whose music and dances were popular in the Imperial Court, and which have survived in the Japanese Imperial Court into the modern era.[57]

The pear-shaped pipa is likely to have been introduced to China from Central Asia, Gandhara, and/or India.[67] Pear-shaped lutes have been depicted in Kusana sculptures from the 1st century AD.[68][69]

The pear-shaped pipa may have been introduced during the Han Dynasty and was referred to as Han pipa. However, depictions of the pear-shaped pipas in China only appeared after the Han Dynasty during the Jin Dynasty in the late 4th to early 5th century.[70]

A small pipa was found in murals of tombs in Liaoning (遼寧) province in northeastern China. The date of these tombs is about late Eastern Han (東漢) or Wei (魏) period (220–265 AD). However, the pear-shaped pipa was not brought to China from Dunhuang (敦煌, now in northwestern China) until the Northern Wei period (386–524 AD) when ancient China traded with the western countries through the Silk Road (絲綢之路). Evidence was shown on the Dunhuang Caves frescoes that the frescoes contain a large number of pipa, and they date to 4th to 5th century.[71]

Pipa acquired a number of Chinese symbolisms during the Han Dynasty - the instrument length of three feet five inches represents the three realms (heaven, earth, and man) and the five elements, while the four strings represent the four seasons.[72]

Depictions of the pear-shaped pipas appeared in abundance from the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 to 589) onwards, and pipas from this time to the Tang Dynasty were given various names, such as Hu pipa (胡琵琶), bent-neck pipa (曲項琵琶, quxiang pipa), some of these terms, however, may refer to the same pipa. Apart from the four-stringed pipa, other pear-shaped instruments introduced include the five-stringed, straight-necked, wuxian pipa (五弦琵琶, also known as Kuchean pipa (龜茲琵琶)),[73] a six-stringed version, as well as the two-stringed hulei (忽雷). From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang Dynasty, the pear-shaped pipas became increasingly popular in China. By the Song Dynasty the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument.

Early moon lutes

Apsara with sitar or yueqin, found at Luoyang; Longmen Caves. Northern Wei period (385–534 A.D.)

Xishan, Nanjing, tomb of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, second half of the fifth century. Artwork: "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi", shows Rong Qiqi (left) and Ruan Xian (playing a ruan or yueqin).

A lute resembling a yueqin moon lute, from the Western Wei Dynasty 535–557, 285th Cave of Mogao Caves. Lutes like this have some resemblance to Southeast Asian moon lutes such as the chapey and the đàn nguyệt.

Unidentified 5-string lute from Mogao caves, cave 220, Tang Dynasty 618–907. Some resemblance to qinqin, ruan (4 individual strings) or yueqin moon lute (2 courses of strings).

The moon lutes have become widespread. Versions of them can be found throughout China as the ruan family and also as the yueqin family. Moon lutes have spread south of the border where, in Southeast Asia, they have their own versions. The Southern China version of the yueqin, which may be related to the Southeast Asian moon lutes, has a longer neck than the northern version. The long-necked yueqin is being revived in Taiwan.[74]

Another type of lute in China is the yueqin, a round-bodied instrument with flat top and back. According to tradition, the instrument was invented in China during the 3rd to 5th century A.D. Jin Dynasty.[75] The ruan, another Chinese instrument, is the ancestor of the yueqin.[75] The period overlaps with the period of immigration of ancient non-Han Chinese peoples and invasions, by groups such as the Five Barbarians.

The yueqin is a type of ruan, what may be China's oldest lute. Ruans may have a history of over 2,000 years, the earliest form may be the qin pipa (秦琵琶), which was then developed into ruanxian (named after Ruan Xian, 阮咸), shortened to ruan (阮).[1][2] In old Chinese texts from the Han to the Tang dynasty, the term pipa was used as a generic term for a number plucked chordophones, including ruan, therefore does not necessarily mean the same as the modern usage of pipa which refers only to the pear-shaped instrument. According to the Pipa Annals 《琵琶赋》 by Fu Xuan (傅玄) of the Western Jin Dynasty, the pipa was designed after revision of other Chinese plucked string instruments of the day such as the Chinese zither, zheng (筝) and zhu (筑), or konghou (箜篌), the Chinese harp.[3] However, it is believed that ruan may have been descended from an instrument called xiantao (弦鼗) which was constructed by labourers on the Great Wall of China during the late Qin Dynasty (hence the name Qin pipa) using strings stretched over a pellet drum.[4]

The antecedent of ruan in the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), i.e. the Qin pipa, had a long, straight neck with a round sound box in contrast to the pear-shape of pipa of later dynasties. The name of "pipa" is associated with "tantiao" (彈挑), a right hand techniques of playing a plucked string instrument. "Pi" (琵), which means "tan" (彈), is the downward movement of plucking the string. "Pa" (琶), which means "tiao" (挑), is the upward movement of plucking the string.[5]

The present name of the Qin pipa, which is "ruan", was not given until the Tang Dynasty (8th century). During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天) (about 684–704 AD), a copper instrument that looked like the Qin pipa was discovered in an ancient tomb in Sichuan (四川).[76] It had 13 frets and a round sound box. It was believed that it was the instrument which the Eastern Jin (東晉) musician Ruan Xian (阮咸) loved to play.[77]

Nowadays, although the ruan was never as popular as the pipa, the ruan has been divided into several smaller and better-known instruments within the recent few centuries, such as yueqin ("moon" lute, 月琴) and qinqin (Qin [Dynasty] lute, 秦琴) . The short-necked yueqin, with no sound holes, is now used primarily in Beijing opera accompaniment. The long-necked qinqin is a member of both Cantonese (廣東) and Chaozhou (潮州) ensembles.[78]

Musical instruments came into China from Central Asia, such as the pipa, or may have been invented locally such as the Qin-Pipa or sanxian. China became a source of instruments for (or shares instruments in common with) other cultures, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Three ways to categorized these are:

• short-necked pipas (such as the pipa, liuqin, bipa, and Tỳ bà)
• short and long-necked moon lutes (such as the yueqin, ruan, gekkin, đàn tứ, đàn đáy, zhongruan, qinqin, đàn sến, đàn nguyệt)
• long-necked lutes ( such as the sanxian, shamisen, đàn tam, and đàn tính).

• 
  China, pipa, 2008.
• 
  Japan, biwa
• 
  China, liuqin, smaller than pipa
• 
  Korea, bipa
• 
  Vietnam, đàn tỳ bà
• 
  China, (left to right) sanxian, pipa, two huqin type fiddles, c. 1907, Fuzhou.
• 
  China, huqin type fiddle (left) and a yueqin (moon lute) or ruan, c. 1874.
• 
  Japan, gekkin, 1886.
• 
  Vietnam, đàn tứ, tứ meaning "four" for 4 strings. Also called đàn đoản (đoản meaning "short", referring to the instrument's neck). Related to Chinese yueqin, although 4 individual strings makes it closer to the ruan.
• 
  China, southern yueqin or possibly a zhongruan (中阮, lit. "medium ruan"), 1960. Southern yueqins had long necks, unlike the northern. This instrument lacks the large soundholes that are a trait of the ruan. These are being revived in Taiwan.[74]
• 
  Vietnam, đàn nguyệt literally means "moon string-instrument" (đàn is the generic term for "string instrument" and nguyệt means "moon"). Image taken in Australia, 2017
• 
  Cambodia, Chapei dong veng (ចាប៉ីដងវែង) and Thailand grajabpi (กระจับปี่), c. 1880. Origin uncertain: China (ruan or yueqin), Islamic (rubab or tanbir), India ("chapei derives from the Sanskrit kacchap(î)" turtle shell, used for sound bowl).[79]
• 
  Vietnam đàn đáy. Possibly related to Chapei dong veng as both are heptatonic.[79]
• 
  China, qinqin (秦琴) or plum blossom qin (梅花琴)
• 
  Vietnam, đàn sến. Vietnamese version of qingin
• 
  Vietnam đàn nguyệt or đàn sến
• 
  Larger ruans in an orchestra
• 
  China, ruan-family instrument, either a bass daruan (大阮) or contrabass diyinruan (低音阮)
• 
  China, sanxian, 1780.
• 
  Japanese style shamisen, 2006 played by a man in Australia. Related to sanxian
• 
  Đàn tam, tam means three (for three strings). Related to sanxian.
• 
  Vietnam, đàn tính, or tính tẩu. Gourd lute. A musical instrument of some ethnic groups in Northern mountainous region in Vietnam
• 
  Thailand sueng
• 
  Thailand and Laos, phin

8th–13th centuries A.D

Syrian lute c. 730 A.D.

Sicily, c. 1140 A.D.

Sicily, c. 1140 A.D.

Lute from Al-Andalus copied manuscript, History of Bayâd and Riyâd. Copy from 13th century A.D. Vatican Apostolic Library (MS Ar. 368)

(Left) Oud found in Syria, has two features common to Tang-Dynasty pipa, the extra tip at the end of the peghead and the shape of the soundhole. (Center-two images) Oud-family instruments painted in the Cappella Palatina in Sicily, 12th century. Roger II of Sicily employed Muslim musicians in his court, and paintings show them playing a mixture of lute-like instruments, strung with 3, 4 and five courses of strings. (Right) 13th century A.D. image of an oud, from a 13th century copy of Bayâd and Riyâd, a larger instrument than those in images at the Cappella Palatina.

Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651), the last empire of the Persians. Under the Sasanians, a short almond shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's oud or ud.[80] The lute was brought from Al-Hira in Persia to Mecca by Nadr ibn al-Harith, probably prior to 602 A.D. and was adopted by the Quraish, a mercantile Arab tribe.[81] He taught the instrument and the song (ghina) that accompanied it to his people, where the instrument and song "were adopted by singing girls".[81] Early Arab musicians to use the lute include Sā'ib Khāthir (died 683 A.D.), who brought the lute to Medina and Ibn Suraij in Mecca, said to have been the first to sing Arab songs on a lute "built in the Persian style" in 684 A.D.[81][82]

When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.

During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia.[83] Among them was Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi‘ (789–857),[84][85] a prominent musician who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud[80] and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.[86]

By the 11th century, Muslim sections of Spain, or Al-Andalus, had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music as well, undergoing a range of transformations.[87]

Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians.[88] There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo’s royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140.[88] His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians.[89] By the fourteenth century, lutes had disseminated throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands.

Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called Komuz to the Balkans.

Additionally, the Byzantine Empire bordered on both Europe and Persia. The Central Asian lute, now middle Eastern, can be seen in Byzantine artwork from the 9th or 10th century.[90]

Instruments from approximately the 12th and 13th centuries in Spain and Sicily, areas conquered by Muslims and then European Christians. Instrument identities are educated guesses, even by experts, as none of these were labeled and historical descriptions of different types are vague. Places where cultures interact is a breeding ground of new ideas, where experimentation creates new instruments, the same process that blends different types of music to create new music by fusion. A similar process happened in Central Asia, over centuries of repeated trade by different cultures and conquests by different tribes.

Even after the Muslims were conquered in Spain or driven out, the process of experimentation continued, leading to a number of European instruments, including the guitar. A similar process occurred in Italy. Both Spain and Italy experimented with the viol or vihuela which led to bowed viols, violas vielles, and guitars. Other experiments led to the citole and cittern or Portuguese guitar, the gittern and vandola (mandore, mandola) which also led to the guitar, but also to the mandolin family. Spanish instruments that survived in Spanish colonies include the tiple.

Portuguese experiments led to the Portuguese guitar, and other instruments seen today in places that Portuguese ships landed, including the cavaquinho and ukulele.

• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Musicians playing lute-family instruments. These have been called guitarra latina, guitarra morisca and tambura
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing lute family instruments, possibly (left) citoles or guitarra latina and (right) guitarra morisca
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing viola de arco
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Europeans holding lutes with W sound holes (a Muslim instrument feature) and the drilled dots (found on the Gambus and on Eastern European lutes into the early 20th century A.D.
• 
  Palmero, Sicily, c. 1140 A.D., oud from the Capella Palatina.
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing (left) viola de arco and (right) citoles or plucked fiddles or guitarra latina
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, large instrument has been called barbat, oud and lute. Smaller instrument is a type of rubab or rebab.
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Andalusian or Magreb rebab
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Right Image:Vielle or viola de arco and citole or guitarra latina. Left image Vielle
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, unknown fiddles
• 
  Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, fiddle and plucked fiddle.
• 
  two vielles and a citole
• 
  Sicily, c. 1140 A.D. Lute family instrument or rubab. Not clear whether wood or leather top; both rubab and lute style soundholes.
• 
  Sicily, 12th Century image from the Cefalù Cathedral. Skin topped lute, possibly guitarra morisca or rubab
• 
  León and Galicia, c. 1283. European image of Muslim Spain, showing a European woman, playing lute or oud for Moorish women.

Rababs or rebabs in Europe, c. 1260

Rebab player. Soundboard is cut in half. Sachs said of another example that this was probably wood and skin.[91]

Three-string rebabs with wooden soundboards. These have also been called gitterns an instrument ancestral to the guitar and according to Sachs the mandore/mandola.

Rebabs of the same style that Sachs labels rabâb.[92] Wood and skin soundboards. Examples were still being made in Morocco in 1991.

Sachs said these instruments entered Europe through Spain.[91] He felt that they were the likely candidate for the Moorish guitar, "with shrill and harsh notes", and ultimately related to the mandore or mandola.[91] The Cantigas de Santa Maria, c. 1260, captured some of the musical instruments introduced from Muslim dominated Andalusia to Southern Europe. The plucked and bowed versions existed alongside each other.[91] The bowed instruments became the rebec and the plucked instruments became the gittern. Curt Sachs linked this instrument with the mandola, the kopuz and the gambus, and named the bowed version rabâb.[91] When the Muslims were driven out of Spain, Andalusian music and instruments survived in North Africa, in the Maghreb.

In The History of Musical Instruments, Sachs talked about a second kind of short lute found in the "Islamic Near East", carved from a single piece of wood, no distinct neck and a pegbox that was sickle shaped.[91] There was also a kind with "an inferior stringholder".[91]

The instruments that would become the gambus with sickle shaped pegbox traveled east "as far as the Celebes in Southeast Asia and southwards to Madagascar off the east coast of Africa".[91] Another scholar thinks they traveled across the Indian ocean as well on Yemeni ships, as the Yemeni quanbus The gambus is among the last of the family of skin-topped lutes. Sachs names the instruments gambus, kabosa and qūpūz.[91]

The gambus is plucked, but many of the variants are bowed. By the time the instrument became bowed, it was named rabâb, a name that has been used for long-necked skin topped instruments as well.[91] The Cantigas de Santa Maria in Southern Spain had examples of both bowed and unbowed instruments.

The early instruments traveled west to enter Europe through Andalusia and Eastern Europe where they gained wooden tops and became lyras. In Yemen, the instrument was known as the quanbus. It traveled to Southeast Asia with Yemeni sailors. Over time, some of these became intertwine with spike fiddles. Variations of these instruments can be found in China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe.

Variations include the rebabs that spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe, and the Far East.[93] The Medieval European Rebec, Croatian Lijerica, Cretan Cretan lyra, Bulgarian Gadulka and Russian Gudok, the Gusle used in Serbia, Romania, Albania and Bulgaria, the Eastern Mediterranean Kemenche and Persian Kamancheh, the Kazakh Kobyz, Bangladeshi Ektara are variations.

These can blur the line between long-necked instruments and short necked. The soundbox is, in some cases, so long that it effectively adds to the instrument's scale-length, like a long neck.

• 
  gambus or qanbūs
• 
  qanbūs, 1899, Syria
• 
  Pakistani Rubab with upper sound chamber exposed
• 
  short Iranian robab, upper sound chamber covered with wood, top has frets
• 
  Afghani rubab, top has frets
• 
  Indian sarod, descended from Afghani rubab, has no frets
• 
  Iran, rubab or tar, (possibly showing wooden upper top, skin lower top), c. Late 16th century A.D.
• 
  Pamiri rubab, longer necked type of rubab, sound holes up neck show it is hollow
• 
  Iranian style rubab c. 1590, longer neck, painted by Muhammad Jaffar
• 
  Iranian or Persian rubab, late-12th to early 13th century A.D., Iran
• 
  Dramyin or dranyen, 2005, Tibet
• 
  Bottom Takik rubab (or rawap), middle tar, top dutar. The sound chamber on the rawap does not extend beyond the round bowl.
• 
  Rabab Andalusiyyah (Andalusian Rabab), 1991, Morocco
• 
  Iranian tar, being double sound chambered with a skin top, has features of a rubab

• 
  rabâb saharaoui, 1879
• 
  Chagane, 2010, Azerbaijan
• 
  kemenche, 1844
• 
  kemenche, Greece, late 19th or early 20th century
• 
  Rebab, Sicily, c 1140 A.D. Painting from the Cappella Palatina. Same sound holes found on Al Andalusia lutes
• 
  gudok, Russia
• 
  Calabrian lira
• 
  kamancha, a Long-necked Stringed Instrument, c. 1865-1872, Turkestan
• 
  kamancheh, 2016, Egypt
• 
  kamancheh, 1669, Iran
• 
  kokyū, Japan, 19th century
• 
  morin khuur, Mongolia 2005
• 
  ravanahatha, 2017, India
• 
  huqin-family instruments, China
• 
  Thailand, coconut shell saw u ซออู้, the lowest pitch instrument in its family, which also includes the hardwood or ivory saw duang (ซอด้วง) and three-stringed Saw sam sai (ซอสามสาย).
• 
  Cambodia, Tro (ទ្រ). This family of instruments includes coconut-shell tro u (ទ្រអ៊ូ), small hardwood tro sau toch (ទ្រសោតូច), bigger hardwood tro sau thom (ទ្រសោធំ), and the tro che. Also a three-stringed tro Khmer (ទ្រខ្មែរ).
• 
  Cambodia, c. 1880, tro Khmer (ទ្រខ្មែរ)
• 
  Korea, haegeum 2 strings
• 
  North Korea, sohaegeum, 4 strings
• 
  India, sarinda

Nicholas Lanier, 1613

David Hoyer, an artist from Leipzig, painted by Jan Kupetzky, ca. 1711.

Theorbo-lute hybrid. From the 1648 painting A Lady Playing a Lute by Jan Mijtens.

Portraits of Early modern or Renaissance people, posing with lutes.

The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance.[94] During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the basso continuo accompaniment parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes") a chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tabulature ("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound.

Medieval lutes were 4- or 5-course instruments, plucked using a quill as a plectrum. There were several sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance, seven different sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from the era before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.

In the last few decades of the fifteenth century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingertips. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the sixteenth century, but continued to accompany singers as well.

In about the year 1500 many Iberian lutenists adopted vihuela de mano, a viol-shaped instrument tuned like the lute, but both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.

By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 26–35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played open, i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand.

Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine.

Spain had bowed instruments as early as the 10th and 11th centuries A.D., when they were included in Spanish manuscripts, such as the Commentary on the Apocalypse Beatus of Liébana Emilianense Codex.[95][96]

The Byzantines had a bowed lute called a "kamānģa rūmī" in the east, also known as the Byzantine lira in "Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia".[95] The instrument still has a presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Southern Italy as the Calabrian lira, in Bulgaria as the gadulka, in Greece, Iran, Turkey, Armenia, and regions adjacent to the Black Sea the kemenche, in Dalmatia as the lijerica.

Sachs said that the Byzantine lyra would become the main bowed instrument in Europe, eventually becoming the "fiddle, vièle, [and] viola".[95] The rebec also had a presence in Europe, but was not derived from the lyra but from the rabâb.[95]

The word cythara was used generically for a wide variety stringed instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe, including not only the lyre and harp but also necked, string instruments.[97] In fact, unless a medieval document gives an indication that it meant a necked instrument, then it likely was referring to a lyre. It was also spelled cithara or kithara and was Latin for the Greek lyre.[97] However, lacking names for some stringed instruments from the medieval period, these have been referred to as fiddles and citharas/cytharas, both by medieval people and by modern researchers. The instruments are important as being ancestors to or influential in the development of a wide variety of European instruments, including fiddles, vielles, violas, citoles, guitars. Although not proven to be completely separate from the line of lute-family instruments that dominated Europe (lute, oud, gittern, mandore), arguments have been made that they represent a European-based tradition of instrument building, which was for a time separate from the lute-family instruments.

Images that have been labeled "cythara" in the medieval documents that they came from. Their lineage is not clearly understood. The Rylands Beatus instruments come from Spain, and may link to the Arabian/Muslim traditions of instrument making there, or be a form of plucked-fiddle, similar to those seen in Central Asia (an area that the Persians and Arabs conquered and picked up musical traditions from.)

The traditions of other cytharas are less understood and may represent a time of European experimentation, in which the cithara-lyre was transformed into the cythara-lute.

• 
  Stuttgart Psalter, 820–830 A.D., cythara
• 
  Stuttgart Psalter, 820–830 A.D., cythara
• 
  Beatus of Liébana, Ms. Vitr. 14.2, 1047 A.D., angels holding cytharas
• 
  Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara
• 
  Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara
• 
  Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara
• 
  Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara (held), cithara and organ (on ground)
• 
  Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara and harp
• 
  Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara and lyre
• 
  Utrecht Psalter, c. 850 cythara. Quoted text illustrated: "Confitebor tibi in cithara Deus Deus meus" (To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the cithara)
• 
  Bible of Charles the Bald, 9th century, cythara as lute or lyre combined, from the Bible of Charles the Bald, 9th century

Juan Oliver's c.1330 painting at Pamplona Cathedral, showing a musician playing a gittern.

The gittern was a relatively small gut strung round-backed instrument that first appears in literature and pictorial representation during the 13th century in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula, Italy, France, England). It is usually depicted played with a quill plectrum,[98] as we can see clearly beginning in manuscript illuminations from the thirteenth century. It was also called the guitarra in Spain, guiterne or guiterre in France, the chitarra in Italy and quintern in Germany.[99] A popular instrument with court musicians, minstrels, and amateurs, the gittern is considered ancestral to the modern guitar and possibly to other instruments like the mandore and gallichon.[100]

From the early 16th century, a vihuela shaped (flat-backed) guitarra began to appear in Spain, and later in France, existing alongside the gittern. Although the round-backed instrument appears to have lost ground to the new from which gradually developed into the guitar familiar today, the influence of the earlier style continued. Examples of lutes converted into guitars exist in several museums, while purpose-built instruments like the gallichon utilised the tuning and single string configuration of the modern guitar. A tradition of building round-backed guitars in Germany continued to the 20th century with names like gittar-laute and Wandervogellaute.

The mandore (or mandola in Italian) is a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings[101] and pitched in the treble range.[102] It was considered a new instrument in French music books from the 1580s,[103] but is descended from and very similar to the gittern.[100] It is considered ancestral to the modern mandolin. Other earlier instruments include the medieval European citole[104] and the Greek and Byzantine pandura.

The history of modern mandolins, mandolas and guitars are all intertwined.[105] The instruments shared common ancestor instruments.[106] Some instruments became fashionable widely, and others locally. Experts argue as to the differences; because many of the instruments are so similar but not identical, classifying them has proven difficult

The Cantigas de Santa Maria shows 13th century instruments similar to lutes, mandores, mandolas and guitars, being played by European and Islamic players. The instruments moved from Spain northward to France[107] and eastward towards Italy by way of Provence.

Like the earlier gittern, the mandore's back and neck were in earlier forms carved out of a block of wood.[108] This "hollowed out construction" did still exist in the 16th century, according to James Tyler, but was becoming rare.[108] The method was being replaced by gluing curved staves together to form back, and adding a neck and peg box.[108]

Unlabeled photo from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Castile/Spain, c. 1300–1340. The left instrument has been called both Guitarra latina and citole (left). The other instrument has been called guitarra morisca.

Modern guitars, acoustic (left), resonator guitar (right).

The modern acoustic guitar comes from a long evolution of stringed musical instruments. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the medieval instrument vihuela as evolution of ancient lute.

Although the word guitar today indicates a specific musical instrument family, centered around the acoustic guitar, in the past it has been used in English about members of the cittern family as well, for example the English guitar and Portuguese guitar.

Further, the ancestor instrument of the citterns, the cytole, came from Spain during the period that one of the ancestors of the guitar, the gittern, was being played. It also has been confused with the Guitarra latina from the early period of instrument development in Spain, and no clear relationship nor distinction has been formed about these guitar ancestors or cousins.

Gitterns, a small plucked guitar were the first small guitar-like instruments created during the spanish Middle Ages with a round back like that of a lute.[109] Modern guitar shaped instruments were not seen until the Renaissance era where the body and size began to take a guitar-like shape.

The earliest string instruments that related to the guitar and its structure where broadly known as the vihuelas within Spanish musical culture. Vihuelas were string instruments that were commonly seen in the 16th century during the Renaissance. Later, Spanish writers distinguished these instruments into two categories of vihuelas. The vihuela de arco was an instrument that mimicked the violin, and the vihuela de penola was played with a plectrum or by hand. When it was played by hand it was known as the vihuela de mano. Vihuela de mano shared extreme similarities with the Renaissance guitar as it used hand movement at the sound hole or sound chamber of the instrument to create music.[110]

By 1790 only six-course vihuela guitars (six unison-tuned pairs of strings) were being created and had become the main type and model of guitar used in Spain. Most of the older 5-course guitars were still in use but were also being modified to a six-coursed acoustical guitar. Fernando Ferandiere's[111] book Arte de tocar la guitarra espanola por musica (Madrid, 1799) describes the standard Spanish guitar from his time as an instrument with seventeen frets and six courses with the first two 'gut' strings tuned in unison called the terceras and the tuning named to 'G' of the two strings. The acoustic guitar at this time began to take the shape familiar in the modern acoustic guitar. The coursed pairs of strings eventually became less common in favor of single strings.[112]

Finally, circa 1850, the form and structure of the modern Guitar is credited to Spanish guitar maker Antonio Torres Jurado, who increased the size of the guitar body, altered its proportions, and invented the breakthrough fan-braced pattern. Bracing, which refers to the internal pattern of wood reinforcements used to secure the guitar's top and back and prevent the instrument from collapsing under tension, is an important factor in how the guitar sounds. Torres' design greatly improved the volume, tone, and projection of the instrument, and it has remained essentially unchanged since.

Citole and cittern

England, East Anglia. Angel playing citole in a c. 1310 illustration from the "Ormesby Psalter".

"Woman with cittern", canvas painted 1677 by Pieter van Slingelandt (ca. 1630–1691).

The citole was a string musical instrument, closely associated with the medieval fiddles (viol, vielle, gigue) and commonly used in Europe from 1200–1350.[113][114][115] The earliest representations of the instrument are in sculpture in Spain and Italy, with Spain having the most. Another link to Spain is the similarity to plucked fiddles in the Spanish Beatus Apocalypse manuscripts, such as the Ryland Beatus. Examples of these plucked fiddles trace back to Central Asian art, such as the Airtam Frieze. This artwork is too distant in time to be considered a relative, though it is very similar to many citoles.

The one surviving citole has a hollowed neck, a feature of the rubabs and Coptic lute.

Although it was largely out of use by the late 14th century, the Italians "re-introduced it in modified form" in the 16th century as the cetra (cittern in English), and it was possibly ancestral to the Spanish guitar as well.[116][117][118] Three possible descendant instrument are the English guitar, Waldzither, Portuguese guitar and the Corsican Cetera, all types of cittern.

The cittern or cithren (Fr. cistre, It. cetra, Ger. zitter, zither, Sp. cistro, cedra, cítola)[1] is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the Medieval citole (or cytole). It looks much like the modern-day flat-back mandolin and the modern Irish bouzouki. Its flat-back design was simpler and cheaper to construct than the lute. It was also easier to play, smaller, less delicate and more portable. Played by all classes, the cittern was a premier instrument of casual music-making much as is the guitar today.

Viol, Viheula

Japanese painting from 1573–1615 of a European woman with a viol. Her viol has four courses of strings. Later viols would be commonly strung with 6 single strings and played with a bow.

Italian engraving from before 1510. Depicts the poet Giovanni Filoteo Achillini playing the viola da mano or vihuela de mano.

The viola da mano was the Italian version of the vihuela de mano. The two instruments were equivalent, but with different bodies. The viol had "C-shape cuts with pointed corners" while the vihuela had a "figure-of-eight body shape".[119]

Curt Sachs pointed out that the original meaning of words associated with the fiddle were not words to draw a bow, but to "strike" the strings, pluck them.[120] A Norse fiddler was a "fiddle-striker".[120] In this context, the Italian viola and Spanish vihuela were "guitarlike instruments as well as fiddles". The viol became a bowed instrument, but it was related to the guitar, plucked.

Plucked vihuelas, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón, located in north-eastern Iberia (Spain). In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the vihuela was in common use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries. In the second half of the 15th century some vihuela players began using a bow, leading to the development of the viol.

There were several different types of vihuela (or different playing methods at least):

• Vihuela de mano: 6 or 5 courses played with the fingers
• Vihuela de penola: played with a plectrum
• Vihuela de arco: played with a bow (ancestor of the viola da gamba)

The vihuela faded away, along with the complex polyphonic music that was its repertoire, in the late 16th century. The vihuela's descendants that are still played are the violas campaniças of Portugal. Much of the vihuela's place, role, and function was taken up by the subsequent Baroque guitar (also sometimes referred to as vihuela or bigüela).

Today, instruments like the tiple are descendants of vihuelas brought to America in the 16th century.

The guitar player (c. 1672), by Johannes Vermeer

The Baroque guitar (c. 1600–1750) is a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets. The first (highest pitched) course sometimes used only a single string.[121]

The "Hispano-Italian guitar" was made fashionable in the 17th century by Italian actors, working in Paris.[122] cIt was first an instrument of aristocrats, inspired by the actors, and later it became an amateur instrument.[122]

The Baroque guitar replaced the Renaissance lute as the most common instrument found in the home.[123][124] The earliest attestation of a five-stringed guitar comes from the mid-sixteenth-century Spanish book Declaracion de Instrumentos Musicales by Juan Bermudo, published in 1555.[125] The first treatise published for the Baroque guitar was Guitarra Española de cinco ordenes (The Five-course Spanish Guitar), c. 1590, by Juan Carlos Amat.[126][127] The baroque guitar in contemporary ensembles took on the role of a basso continuo instrument and players would be expected to improvise a chordal accompaniment. Several scholars have assumed that the guitar was used together with another basso continuo instrument playing the bass line.[128] However, there are good reasons to suppose that the guitar was used as an independent instrument for accompaniment in many situations.[129] Intimately tied to the development of the Baroque guitar is the alfabeto system of notation.

Both Spain and Portugal took their instruments with them overseas.

Even after the Muslims were conquered in Spain or driven out, the process of experimentation continued, leading to a number of European instruments, including the guitar. A similar process occurred in Italy. Both Spain and Italy experimented with the viol or vihuela which led to bowed viols, violas vielles, and guitars. Other experiments led to the citole and cittern or Portuguese guitar, the gittern and vandola (mandore, mandola) which also led to the guitar, but also to the mandolin family. Spanish instruments that survived in Spanish colonies include the tiple.

Portuguese experiments led to the Portuguese guitar, and other instruments seen today in places that Portuguese ships landed, including the cavaquinho and ukulele.

A tiple (literally treble or soprano) is a plucked-string chordophone of the guitar family. A tiple player is called a tiplista. The first mention of the tiple comes from musicologist Pablo Minguet e Irol in 1752. David Pelham says of the Colombian tiple: "The tiple is a Colombian adaptation of the Renaissance Spanish vihuela brought to the New World in the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadors. At the end of the 19th century, it evolved to its present shape. Another variant, the tiple Colombiano requinto is often simply called tiple requinto. This instrument is about 10-15% smaller than the tiple Colombiano, and the central octave strings of the larger instrument are tuned in unisions.

In Puerto Rico, the tiple is the smallest of the three string instruments of Puerto Rico that make up the orquesta jibara (i.e., the Cuatro, the Tiple and the Bordonua). According to investigations made by Jose Reyes Zamora, the tiple in Puerto Rico dates back to the 18th century. It is believed to have evolved from the Spanish guitarrillo. There was never a standard for the tiple and as a result there are many variations throughout the island of Puerto Rico. Most tiples have four or five strings and most tiple requintos have three strings. Some tiples have as many as 6 strings and as few as a single string, though these types are rare.

Another instrument from Puerto Rico is the bordonua is said to have evolved from the old 16th century Spanish Acoustic bass guitar called the Bajo de la Una. There were also special melodic Bordonuas that were used during the 1920s and 1930s as accompaniment to melody instead of the bass role. These were oddly tuned like a Tiple. This configuration is no longer used on the island. They are also related to the Spanish renaissance Vihuela, brought to the Island by conquering Spanish.

• 
  Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) timple
• 
  Columbia, tiple
• 
  Puerto Rico, tiple doliente
• 
  Puerto Rico, 19th century A.D., tiple requinto
• 
  Puerto Rico, bordonua

Western scholarship has traditionally credited the Greeks, including Pythagoras (c.  570 – c.  495 BC), with discovery of this math. However, as modern scholars have looked at cuneiform texts, it is clear that the Greeks were not the first. Recorded thinking in Mesopotamia about the mathematical ratios of strings predates the Greek thinking by at least 1500 years. Furthermore, a form of written music came out of that era, called the Hurrian songs, currently the oldest known written music, and is based on modes of music, created through string ratios. The Persian and Arab thinkers from the Umayyad and Abbssid periods (7th to 13th centuries A.D.), however, did not access this ancient mathematical thinking, but began working with the math again after they accessed Greek thinking.

Drawing of a lute by Safi al-Din from a 1333 copy of his book, Kitab al-Adwār. The oldest copy dates to 1296.

The mixing cultures of Central Asia and Arabia produced several thinkers who wrote about music, including something about the lute in their works, including Al-Kindi (c. 801 – c. 873), Ziryab (789–857), Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950), Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037), and Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (1216–1294). They wrote in Arabic, what had become the useful lingua-Franca of their time, and took part in Muslim society and culture. However they were brought up in Central Asia.

The Arabs had a musical scale, described by al-Farabi, in use by some through the 13th century A.D.[132] That tanbar scale, which divided the string into "40 equal parts" may have been a leftover from Babylon and Assyria.[132] However, the Arabs traded with and conquered the Persians, and they adopted Persian scales for their lutes, just as they adopted Persian short-necked lutes.[132]

Ziryab moved from Baghdad to al-Andalus, where he set up a school of music and was one of the first to add a fifth string or course to oud, "between 822 and 852).[133] Al-Andalus, where he settled would become a center of musical instrument development for Europe.

Al-Kindi was a polymath who wrote as many as 15 music-related treatises. He was among the first to apply Greek musical theory to Central Asian-Arabian short lutes.[133] He added semi-tones between the nut and the first string.[133] He also added a fifth string to his oud in the east, as Ziryab had done in the west.[133]

Al-Farabi "fully incorporated the works of Aristoxenus and Ptolemy into his theory of tetrachords", and wrote among books in many subjects, the Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir, the Major Book of Music, in which he detailed how to tune an oud, using mathematical ratios.[134] He gave instruction for both 10 frets and 12, telling where to place the tied (and moveable) gut-string frets on the neck.[134] His way of tuning allowed a "12-fret ‘ud tuning — which results ... 'double-octave' scale", with 22 notes in each octave.[134]