Romantic guitar

Romantic guitar

Early Romantic guitar (c. 1830, Paris) by Jean-Nicolas Grobert (1794–1869)
String instrument
Classification	String instrument (plucked)
Hornbostel–Sachs classification	321.322 (Composite chordophone)
Inventor(s)	Ferdinando Gagliano (first known)[1]
Developed	18th century [1]
Attack	Fast
Related instruments
List Acoustic guitar Baroque guitar Classical guitar Gittern Lute Parlor guitar
Builders
List Johann Georg Stauffer René François Lacôte Christian Frederick Martin Antonio de Torres Jurado

The early romantic guitar, the guitar of the Classical and Romantic period, shows remarkable consistency from 1790 to 1830.^[1] Guitars had six or more single courses of strings while the Baroque guitar usually had five double courses (though the highest string might be single). The romantic guitar eventually led to Antonio de Torres Jurado's fan-braced Spanish guitars, the immediate precursors of the modern classical 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.^[2] 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,^[3] Hector Berlioz was a proficient guitarist who neither played keyboards nor received an academic education in music,^[4] the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini played guitar informally and Anton Diabelli produced a quantity of guitar compositions (see List of compositions by Anton Diabelli).