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The classical guitar repertoire in practical terms includes not only music written specifically for the classical guitar, but also music written for the guitar’s predecessors and related instruments. These include the vihuela, popular in sixteenth-century Spain, and the lute used everywhere else in Europe in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Music written specifically for the classical guitar dates from the addition of the sixth string (the baroque guitar normally had five pairs of strings) in the late 18th century.

A guitar recital often includes not only music written originally for the lute or vihuela by composers such as John Dowland and Luys de Narvaez, but also music written for the harpsichord by Domenico Scarlatti, for the baroque lute by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, for the baroque guitar by Robert de Visee or even Spanish-flavored music written for the piano by Isaac Albeniz and Enrique Granados. The most important composer who did not write for the guitar but whose music is often played on guitar is Johann Sebastian Bach whose works for solo violin and solo cello as well as those written for baroque lute have proved to be highly adaptable for the guitar. Indeed, they have become core repertoire for guitarists.

Of the music written originally for guitar the earliest important composers are from the classical period and include Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani both of whom wrote in a style strongly influenced by Viennese classicism. In the nineteenth century guitar composers such as Johann Kaspar Mertz were strongly influenced by the dominance of the piano. It is not until the end of the century that the guitar began to emerge with its own unique atmosphere. Francisco Tarrega was central to this incorporating flamenco, which has Moorish influences, into his romantic miniatures. Flamenco rhythmic patterns, the Phrygian mode and flamenco techniques such as rasgueado all emerge in his music. This was part of the phenomenon of musical nationalism that was part of the wider European mainstream in the late nineteenth century. The aforementioned piano composers Albeniz and Granados were central to this movement and their evocation of the guitar was so successful that guitarists have largely appropriated their music for piano to the guitar.

With the twentieth century and the wide-ranging performances of artists such as Andrés Segovia and Agustin Barrios-Mangore the guitar began to regain some of the popularity it had lost to the harpsichord and piano in the eighteenth century. It again became a popular instrument, but not always in its classical version. The steel-string and electric guitars, integral to the rise of rock and roll in the post-WWII era, became more widely played in North America and the English speaking world. The classical guitar also became widely popular again. Barrios composed many excellent works and brought into the mainstream the characteristics of Latin American music, as did the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Andrés Segovia commissioned many works from Spanish composers such as Federico Moreno Torroba and Joaquin Rodrigo, Italians such as Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Latin American composers such as Manuel M. Ponce of Mexico. Julian Bream of Great Britain managed to get nearly every British composer from William Walton to Benjamin Britten to Peter Maxwell Davies to write significant works for guitar. Bream’s collaborations with tenor Peter Pears also resulted in song-cycles by Britten, Lennon Berkeley and others. There are also significant works by composers such as Hans Werner Henze of Germany.