[1] This incident supplied Alexandre Dumas _pere_ with the subject of
his _Henri III et sa cour_ (1829).
[2] Philippe-Emmanuel of Lorraine, duke of Mercoeur, a cadet of
Lorraine and brother of Louise de Vaudemont, Henry III.'s queen. His
wife, Mary of Luxemburg, descended from the dukes of Brittany, and he
was made governor of the province in 1582. He aspired to separate
sovereignty, and called his son prince and duke of Brittany.
GUITAR (Fr. _guitarre_, Ger. _Guitarre_, Ital. _chitarra_, Span.
_guitarra_), a musical instrument strung with gut strings twanged by the
fingers, having a body with a flat back and graceful incurvations in
complete contrast to the members of the family of lute (i.e.), 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 (i.e.) and the
violin. The medieval 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 intermediary of ribs; this
method of construction predominates among Oriental 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 extensively 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 twelve centuries, and have dropped
out one by one from the realm of practical music without leaving a
single survivor. The guitar must be referred to the first of these
classes.
[Illustration: Notation.]
[Illustration: Real Sounds.]
The back and ribs of the guitar are of maple, ash or cherry-wood,
frequently inlaid with rose-wood, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, &c.,
while the soundboard is of pine and has one large ornamental rose sound
hole. The bridge, to which the strings are fastened, is of ebony with an
ivory nut which determines the one end of the vibrating strings, while
the nut at the end of the fingerboard determines the other. The neck and
fingerboard are made of hard wood, such as ebony, beech or pear. The
head, bent back from the neck at an obtuse angle contains two parallel
barrels or long holes through which the pegs or metal screws pass, three
on each side of the head. The correct positions for stopping the
intervals are marked on the fingerboard by little metal ridges called
frets. The modern guitar has six strings, three of gut and three of silk
covered with silver wire, tuned as shown. To the thumb are assigned the
three deepest strings, while the first, second and third fingers are
used to twang the highest strings. It is generally stated that the sixth
or lowest string was added in 1790 by Jacob August Otto of Jena, who was
the first in Germany to take up the construction of guitars after their
introduction from Italy in 1788 by the duchess Amalie of Weimar. Otto[1]
states that it was Capellmeister Naumann of Dresden who requested him to
make him a guitar with six strings by adding the low E, a spun wire
string. The original guitar brought from Italy by the duchess Amalie had
five strings,[2] the lowest A being the only one covered with wire. Otto
also covered the D in order to increase the fulness of the tone. In
Spain six-stringed guitars and vihuelas were known in the 16th century;
they are described by Juan Bermudo[3] and others.[4] The lowest string
was tuned to G. Other Spanish guitars of the same period had four, five
or seven strings or courses of strings in pairs of unisons. They were
always twanged by the fingers.
[Illustration: From Juan Bermudo.