Portuguese guitar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portuguese guitar, played here by the Portuguese composer and guitarist António Chainho , born in 1938 .

The Portuguese guitar ( Portuguese Guitarra Portuguesa ) is a cister , a stringed instrument and plucked instrument from the box-neck lute family. It is about a third smaller than a classical guitar , has a pear-shaped body made of wood and 12 strings made of steel. The Portuguese guitar is more of an urban musical instrument, is mainly found in the capital Lisbon and the university city of Coimbra and is mainly used in Fado as an accompanying instrument, but also as a soloist.

history

The origin of the Portuguese guitar can still not be proven with complete certainty. Originally the instrument was called cítara . In the 19th century, the Portuguese guitar developed in its current form. At that time it found its place in the salons of the bourgeoisie as well as in small, simple urban taverns.

Types

There are two different types of the modern Portuguese guitar, one from Coimbra and one from Lisbon. The model from Coimbra is slightly larger and usually has a scale length of 470 mm compared to 440 mm for the one from Lisbon. The type of decoration as well as the design of the head and vertebrae are different.

Mood

The 12 strings are arranged in 6 pairs of 2 strings each. There are two different tunings of the instrument: the Lisbon tuning is (d'-d) - (a'-a) - (h'-h) - (e'-e ') - (a'-a') - (h'-h '), the Coimbra tuning is one note lower, (c'-c) - (g'-g) - (a'-a) - (d'-d') - (g'- g ') - (a'-a').

Playing technique

For a long time the Portuguese guitar was played with fingernails, but nowadays mostly artificial fingernails ( finger picks ) are used, called unhas in Portuguese . There are two different plucking techniques , which are called dedilho and figueta in Portuguese . With the dedilho technique, the strings are only torn with the fingernail of the index finger, with the figueta technique the thumb and index finger are used alternately.

Instrumentalists

The most famous composers and virtuosos of the Portuguese guitar include António Chainho , Gonçalo Paredes , Flávio Rodrigues , Artur Paredes and his son Carlos Paredes . Carlos Paredes wrote many compositions for the Portuguese guitar and made the instrument known beyond the country's borders. There is also Pedro Caldeira Cabral , who has also brought out some interesting publications on the Portuguese guitar, and Custódio Castelo as a virtuoso and composer of a young generation of musicians who have devoted themselves to a new interpretation of Fado .

Web links

Commons : Portuguese Guitar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files