GUITAR (Fr. guitarre, Ger. Guitarre, Ital. cjiitarra), a mu sical instrument strung with gut strings twanged by the fingers, having a body with a flat back and graceful incurvations in com plete contrast to the members of the family of the lute (q.v.), whose back is vaulted.
The construction of the instrument is of paramount importance in assigning to the guitar its true position in the history of musical instruments, midway between the cithara (q.v.) and the violin. The mediaeval stringed instruments with neck fall into two classes, characterized mainly by the construction of the body : (1) those which, like their archetype the cithara, had a body composed of a flat or delicately arched back and soundboard joined by ribs; (2) those which, like the lyre, had a body consisting of a vaulted back over which was glued a flat soundboard without the inter mediary of ribs.
The latter method of construction predominates among orien tal instruments and is greatly inferior to the first. A striking proof of this inferiority is afforded by the fact that instruments with vaulted backs, such as the rebab or rebec, although ex tensively represented during the middle ages in all parts of Europe by numerous types, have shown but little or no development during the course of some 12 centuries, and have dropped out one by one from the realm of practical music, leaving only the mandolin as survivor.
The guitar must be referred to the first of these classes, having been derived from the cithara, both structurally and etymo logically.
One of the earliest representations of a guitar in Western Eu rope occurs in a Passionale from Zwifalten, A.D. I I 8o, now in the Royal Library at Stuttgart. St.
Pelagia, seated on an ass, holds a rotta, or cithara in transition, while one of the men-servants leading her ass holds her guitar. Both instruments have three strings and the characteristic guitar outline with incurvations, the rotta differing in having no neck.