The Baroque guitar replaced the Renaissance lute as the most common instrument found when one was at home.^[2][3] The earliest attestation of a five-stringed guitar comes from the mid-sixteenth-century Spanish book Declaracion de Instrumentos Musicales by Juan Bermudo, published in 1555.^[4] The first treatise published for the Baroque guitar was Guitarra Española de cinco ordenes (The Five-course Spanish Guitar), c. 1590, by Juan Carlos Amat.^[5][6]

The baroque guitar in contemporary ensembles took on the role of a basso continuo instrument and players would be expected to improvise a chordal accompaniment. Several scholars have assumed that the guitar was used together with another basso continuo instrument playing the bass line.^[7] However, there are good reasons to suppose that the guitar was used as an independent instrument for accompaniment in many situations.^[8] Intimately tied to the development of the Baroque guitar is the alfabeto system of notation.