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Telling the story of the guitar

At the Rouge Gallery on Tuesday night, Alan Rinehart (left) plays an ornate lute built by Clive Titmuss (right), who himself is playing a lute, which he also built. The vihuela is a close replica of the 16th century Spanish instrumens that was an important step in the evolution towards the modern guitar. Only three original vihuelas survive, none in good condition.
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At the Rouge Gallery on Tuesday night

At the Rouge Gallery on Tuesday night, Alan Rinehart (left) plays an ornate lute built by Clive Titmuss (right), who himself is playing a lute, which he also built. The vihuela is a close replica of the 16th century Spanish instrumens that was an important step in the evolution towards the modern guitar. Only three original vihuelas survive, none in good condition.

At this period of history, the “true” guitar was a four-string instrument, a “poor cousin” to the vihuela with only a meagre printed repertoire compared to nine books printed for the vihuela at enormous expense over a half-century of the instrument’s peak popularity.

The vihuela has exactly the same tuning as a lute, and both instruments have 12 doubled strings on six notes (like a mandolin has eight strings covering four notes.) To illustrate, they played this vihuela-lute duet.

The second half of Rinehart and Titmuss’s concert featured replicas of an 18th century Spanish guitar, completing the links from early to modern guitars. The evening’s music told the story, as Rinehart said, “of how the ‘classical’ got put into the guitar during a fertile and productive period of its artistic growth.”