The baroque guitar in France is  a wide-ranging  subject, and  although  theses  and dissertations  have already been written about it, much still remains to be said. The following is merely a synthesis of  what seems to have been the course of the instrument in France, from the 1600s to the end of the eighteenth century.
 The four-course "Renaissance guitar" was quite well developed in France in the mid-sixteenth century, where it had reached a very high musical level, often requiring quite a skilled playing technique. But, astonishingly enough, there does not seem to be a link, in France, between this four­course guitar and the five-course instrument, the so called  "baroque  guitar". In  fact  the  latter  does  not appear  to ...