Figurines playing the ancestor of the Guitar. Excavated in Susa, Iran Dated 2000-1500 BCE. Kept at the National Museum of Iran.

To a greater extent than most other instruments and ensembles, it is difficult to compose music for the guitar without either proficiency in the instrument or close collaboration with a guitarist. As a result, the guitar repertoire is largely made up of works by guitarists who did not compose extensively for other instruments.

In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously almost only players of the instrument had done. But music prior to the classical era was often composed for performance on various combinations of instruments, and could be adapted by the performer to keyboard instruments, the lute, or the guitar.

In an attempt to recover that tradition, the guitarists Gui Mallon, Walter Silva, Paulo Pedrassoli, among other musicians, have initiated the project TUNES4TRIO,to establish a repertoire and suggest a chamber music foundation based on the guitar, the violoncello and a solo instrument, often the flute, sax or violin. This basic trio can easily be enlarged to a quartet or quintet, with the addition of another solo instrument as the oboe, clarinet, viola, or/even percussion, etc. In the 80's and 90's Gui Mallon worked very extensevely within this trio format idea, founding groups like Gui Mallon Trio, Tunes4Trio, and the Gui Mallon Ensemble

Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient Central Asia as the Sitara. Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capitol of Susa.The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from earlier Greek word kithara. Guitar could also be derived from a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit-, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and -tar a widely attested root meaning "chord" or "string". During the Renaissance, the guitar was likely to have been used as it frequently is today, to provide strummed accompaniment for a singer or a small group.

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