The History of the Capo: Part 1, Ancient History
Today, wherever you see a guitar, a capo is lurking near by. Capos have been trusted friends to guitar players for many years. But for how long? We have done a bit of digging, and found that the history of the capo is both fascinating and complicated. We have also found there is very little written on this history. We are putting together this seven part series to lay out the history of the capo.
The capo is an artifact of human culture. People have been creating these little devices to assist the the playing of stringed instruments like the guitar for hundreds of years. While each and every capo is basically doing the same function there have many different designs. The history of the capo is a history of creation and experimentation driven by wider cultural forces. In the end the simplest designs have often been the most successful. In each article we will try to situation the development in the capos within wider history. In this article we cover the early history, which is roughly the period between 1700 and 1800. We will discuss two candidates for the earlier capo ever!
The word “capo” is a shortened version of the Italian “Capo tasto.” “Capo” means head or top, “tasto” means to tied down or to press down. The term in fact originally applied to the nut of an stringed instrument, but eventually was used to refer to a device that holds down the strings at another fret. Understanding this Italian heritage, we should probably name this devise the “tasto” as it does still tie the strings down, but is not located at the head of the guitar anymore. No matter!
Before we talk about capos, a word is necessary about the wider context of both music and guitars. Technically, the guitar is a part of a family of instruments called chordophones, which is any instruments that has strings and you hit or strike them to make a sound. This family of instrustments dates as far back as the Ancient Babylonian lute. After the Renaissance we see periods of music that are called the Baroque period (think Handel and Bach) and the Classical period (think Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven). Now, we can go on a loooong tanget here but we just want to connect the guitar to this history. Various forms of the guitar developed in as early as 1500, but many of these guitars are not like the six stringed instruments of today. There is one important thing to understand from the guitar’s point of view. Today, you can walk into any old guitar shop and you will see a lot of guitars, and they will be basically the same instrument. Six strings, standards sized frets etc. In the era we are talking about musical instruments were very difficult to make. Artisans, that is really skilled woodcarvers had to hand make each individual instrument. So, each ‘violin’ might be slightly different — being longer, or shorter or whatever. Each of these different instruments were part of larger movements of classical music. You can watch an excellent video demonstrating various stages of the guitar’s history .
Between 1500 and 1850 there are so many different instruments that were invented in this chordophone family, as well as many other instruments. In the 1500’s a four course guitar was the most popular form of guitar. A “course” is a pair of strings, like a modern mandolin or twelve-string guitar has. When we say it was popular, this means there were many such guitars made, people who composed music for them as well as styles in how to play them. In the 1600’s a five course guitar gained popularity, which was usually tuned ADGBE, that is similar to our modern six stringed guitar. Many of the Luthier’s of this period made very ornate and beautiful guitars with pearl inlays and other extravagant looks. If you want to do a deep dive, you can check the wikipedia articles on chordophones, , , and for starters. The point is that guitars weren’t the standardized instrument that they are today. The first six stringed guitar as we know it appeared around in 1770. This form of guitar quickly gained popularity and within fifty years this guitar had become the most popular form of guitar.
The guitar and other chordophones were part of the many instruments used in classical music. We have music books written for the four course guitar as early as 1550. This guitar might be used for solo performances, or with other instruments.
We are simplifying a fascinating period of innovation to make this point: the capo emerged during this period where the guitar was not one instrument. There were many stringed chordophones and somewhere in the mid 1700’s someone got the idea of putting a bar across the frets to change the key. The history of the capo is about the ingenuity and creative of people. We don’t know who first came up with the idea of a capo, but there has been little change in the purpose of capos; they press down on the strings. There are some capos that to a little different things, like partial capos or the Spider Capo, but in the main the purpose remains unchanged. What has changed is how capos are made and how they are designed. In this era we see the beginning of tackling this challenge. We have enjoyed seeing the many ways people have come up with making a capo. In this article we will cover three of the very first attempts.
The Brass C-Clamp: The First Capo?
There is a dearth of good history on capos. The best website we can find is Sterner’s Capo site which has an exellecent collection of capos on display, and we commend you check out his site. He that the the first capo ever made was probably brass “C” clamp style. This would have been made by an artisan for a particular instrument, so each would have different dimensions. The device would be flat and springy, and would have been slid onto the guitar (or cittern or whatever) from the side to hold down the strings. It very well may have held down five “courses” on an eighteenth century guitar.
This capo is a good candidate for the earliest possible capo. However, outside of Sterner’s site we have found no detailed reference of the emergence of these capos. We have found no book that has referred to them nor we have seen no pictures or paintings, nor have we seen any of these from a museum. Trying googling it yourself. We have concluded that this capo may have existed, but we would like to see more proof to establish its veracity as well as to learn more about it!
This capo has not stood the test of time, because as other models came out this one stopped being made. There are few or none available to be seen on the internet. There are several websites that have short histories of the capo that reference Sterner’s capo, which claim that this capo would have damaged instruments. This sounds like an ignorant assertion to us. When you examine the skill of the Luthiers of the 1800s it is astounding. They made guitar way more ornate and beautiful than most guitars made today. There have certainly been advances in guitar construction, for example the fan-style sound posts were introduced in the nineteenth century, but to suggest that Luthiers would make this and guitars would throw these damaging devise on willy-nilly is nonsense. All capos have three essential requirements: a flat bar to hold down the strings; some way to hold the bar on tightly; protection so the guitar isn’t damaged. It would have been very easy to attach or cover the brass clamp with leather or felt or silk or something else.
The Screw-down T-Bone: Another Contender?
Our research has led us to question Sterner’s assertion that the C-clamp is the O.G. of capos. Another style of capo that is more fully documented than this mysterious C-clamp is the T-Bone style. With these capos, the fretboard of the instrument is first drilled with permanent holes at various frets. This hole goes right through the neck. The capo has a screw that goes through this hole and some form of bolt that screws onto the back of the capo. Pictured below is the from Sterner’s excellent collection. He says this capo is probably mid 1800’s. The top of the capo is made from bone and the screw is some kind of metal. There is a picture of a fret board that has been drilled through and you can see there are the holes where the capo could go. Getting this thing on and off might take a bit of time, but it would definitely hold tight. If you look carefully at the bone piece, you can see there are groves, either worn or cut, where the strings go.
There is much more evidence for this type of capo than the C-clamp, even dating to the eighteenth century. There are are some citterns in museums that also have these holes through the fretboards that date to this era. For example, the Royal College of Music Museum has many such citterns with one dating at least as far back last 1767. While we do not have the capos themselves, these citterns with holes point to the fact that this T-Bone style is very old and may be the most ancient type of capo. Below are a few eighteen century citterns with the holes in the neck, as well as one with a capo attached.
A cittern with an ivory capo attached at the third fret
The Tied Fret: A capo precursor.
The above painting is Francisco Zurbarán’s “Tempations of St. Jerome.” The skinny dude on the left is St. Jerome, the guy who translated most of the Vulgate, the Latin bible. Apparently music was a great temptation to sin, and the Spanish guitar was particularly bad the lady with the Spanish guitar is most prominent. This painting is from 1638–1639 and is making a social comment, partly on the influence music can have.
In The Art and Times of the Guitar Frederic V. Grunfeld points out that the Spanish guitar has what he calls “movable frets that were tired around the neck as specified by García Hidlago” (108). If you look carefully you can see that the frets look like they are on the back of the neck. In this era the frets were actually strings tied permanently around the neck.
García Hidalgo was a Spanish painter and writer who wrote a book about all kinds of art, including guitar, called Principios Para Studios el nobilisimo y Real Arte de la Pintura in 1693. This book includes pictures of hand positions of chords for a five course guitar. In this book he describes how to attached the strings to make frets and the mathematics to use to calculate the position of the strings. Remember, not all guitars were the same size, so not all guitar necks were the same size. Also, there are different ways to calculate the intonation for fret. The Luthier would need to be a good mathematician on top of all their other skills.
The idea of attaching strings at spots on the neck is the precursor to permanent frets, but it also foreshadows the idea of a capo. If I can press down somewhere permanently, then maybe I can invent something that can do it temporarily.
To summarize so far, we have two plausible candidates for the earliest form of capo, one of which we feel certain really existed. We have great evidence that the T-bone style was used with citterns, as early as the 1760’s, and it have been used earlier. There was also the brass C-clamp capo, which we have not seen evidence of. This capo is very plausible. It would have been easy to make and easy to use, so it may have existed in the eighteen century.
In we will discuss two early forms of the capo that each gained popularity.
Originally published at https://www.thecaposite.com on February 25, 2022.