MANDOLIN: Italian musical instrument

A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family often with 4 courses of strings, tuned in perfect 5^th and plucked with the use of a plectrum. The musical instrument is a soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass. The musical instrument descends from the mandore.

There are several styles of this musical instrument, but three are well-known, the Neopolitan mandolin, the carved-top version of the musical instrument and the flat-top version of the musical instrument. The carved-top or the arch-top version of the musical instrument has a much shallower, arched back and an arched top, but constructed out of wood. The flat-top version of the musical instrument is analogous to a guitar, using thin sheets of wood for the body of the musical instrument, braced on the inside for strength. Each version of the musical instrument has its own timbre and is linked with a specific form of music. Neapolitan version of the musical instrument features mainly in European classical music and traditional music. The carved-top version of the musical instrument is commonly used in the folk music and the Bluegrass music. The flat-top versions of the musical instrument are less specific to any kind of music.

Other versions of the musical instrument vary in the strings and include the Milanese, the Lombard, the Brescian and other 6-course versions and also the 4-string versions, and the Sicilian 12-string version.

Much development of this musical instrument revolved around the soundboard of the instrument. Pre-mandolin musical instrument were quite musical instruments, strung with like 6 course of gut strings and were plucked with the fingers of the hand or with the use of a quill. Meanwhile, the contemporary musical instruments are louder, using about four courses of metal strings that apply more pressure than the gut strings. The modern soundboard of the musical instrument is designed to withstand the pressure of the metal strings, which could break the earlier versions of the musical instrument. The soundboard of the musical instrument comes in several shapes, though commonly round-shaped or the shape of teardrop, sometimes with scroll or other projections. There is often one or more sound holes on the instrument’s soundboard, either round, oval or calligraphic F shape.

The musical instrument has a hollow wooden body with a tailpiece that holds one extreme of the strings, a floating bridge, a neck that has a flat fretted fingerboard, a nut and mechanical tuning mechanisms to hold metal strings.

Like any plucked musical instrument, the mandolin notes decay to silence instead of to sound out unceasingly as with a bowed note on a violin. The small size of the instrument and the high pitch make the musical instrument notes decay quicker than larger stringed musical instruments, such as guitar. This encourages the use of tremolo to produce sustained notes. The paired strings of the musical instrument facilitate this pattern; the plectrum strikes each of a pair of the strings alternately, giving a more continuous and full tune than a single string musical instrument can do.

Different design variations and amplification styles have been used to make the musical instrument compatible in volume with louder musical instruments and orchestras. Hrbridization with the louder version of banjo produces the mandolin-banjo and Dobro has most notably used resonators and National String Instrument Corporation.

A variety of tunings are used on this musical instrument, often courses of two adjacent strings of the instrument are tuned in unison. The mist common tuning by far GDAE is the same as the tuning of a violin.

 This musical instrument evolved from the family of lute musical instrument in Italy during the 17^th century and the 18^th century, and the deep bowled mandolin, constructed specifically in Naples, became popular in the 19^th century. The original musical instrument was the mandore that came out in the 14^th century from the lute family. Over time and as the musical instrument continued to spread around the European world, the instrument took several names and different structural characteristics. The musical instrument is also popular in Goa, India.

Further back, traced to the 15,000 BC to 8,000 BC, some single-stringed versions of the musical instrument have been seen in cave painting and murals. The instruments were struck, plucked and finally bowed. From these the families of stringed musical instrument came out. Single strings were longer and they gave the musical a single melody line. To shorten the scale length of the musical instrument’s string, other strings were added with a different tension and pitch so one string of the instrument took over where another strings dropped off.

Over subsequent centuries, the strings of the musical instrument were doubled to courses, and finally frets were added to the musical instrument, leading to the 1^st lute showing up in the 19^th century. The lute achieved a 5^th course by the 15^th century and a 6^th in the 16^th century and achieved up to 13 courses in its heyday. As early as the 14^th century, a small lute or mandore came out and was used throughout Western Europe.

The mandore was not a final version or design of the musical instrument and the design was tinkered with wherever the instrument was built. The Italian version of the musical instrument was redesigned and made to be mandolin. The mandolin was sometimes referred to as the mandolin in the early 18^th century Naples. At this point all such musical instruments were strung with the use of gut strings.

The first evidence of the contemporary steel strung versions of the musical instrument is from the literature about popular Italian players of the musical instrument who travelled via Europe teaching and giving the concert. The most popular are the Signor Leone and G. B. Gervasio that travelled widely between 1750 and 1810. An early surviving example of the musical instrument is the one constructed by Antonio Vinaccia in the year 1772 that can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Another version constructed by Giuseppe Vinaccia in the year 1763, found at the Kenneth G. Fiske Museum of musical instruments in Claremont Califonia. The earliest surviving version of the musical instrument was carved in 1744 by Gaetano Vinaccia. This musical instrument can be found in Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels in Belgium.

These mandolins like the modern descendants are known as the Neapolitan versions of the musical instrument because they originate in Naples, Italy. They are differentiated by an almond-shaped body with a bowled back carved from curved strips of wood along the length. The sound table of the musical instrument is bent just behind the bridge of the instrument, the bending gained with a heated iron. The sound table assists the body of the instrument to support a greater string tension. A hard wood fingerboard is flush with the sound table of the instrument. 10 metal ivory frets are spaced along the neck of the instrument in half-steps, with additional frets gummed upon the sound table of the musical instrument. The strings of the musical instrument are brass except the lowest string course that are cut or metal wound unto gut. The bridge of the musical instrument is a movable length of hardwood placed in the front ivory pins that are there to hold the strings of the instrument. Wooden tuning pegs are placed through the back of a flat pegboard.

Following the invention of the Neapolitan version of this musical instrument around 1744, the musical instrument grew increasingly over the following 60 years. After the Napoleonic Wars of 1815, the popularity of the musical instrument started falling. The 19^th century produced some famous players of the instrument including Bartolomeo Bortolazzi of Venice and Pietro Vimercati. The professional virtuosity of the musical instrument was falling and the music of mandolin changed as the musical instrument became a folk musical instrument. The export market of the mandolin from Italy stopped around the year1815. The musical instrument was declining in the past, but was recovering gradually. The early part of the 20^th century would see the musical instrument recover its popularity and blossom into several new forms.

The musical instrument spread from the Italian world to the rest parts of the world. Beginning in the 18802, and specifically the early part of the 20^th century, the musical instrument was remade in some other countries, including the U.S. the producers of the instrument created new of forms of the musical instrument: the resonator version of the instrument, the flatback version of the musical instrument, the carved-top version of the musical instrument, the mandolin-banjo version of the musical instrument and the electric version of the mandolin.

From Italy, the musical instrument music extended in popularity all through Europe in the early part of 20^th century, with the mandolin orchestra showing up throughout the continent.

In the 21^st century, an increased interest in bluegrass music, especially in the central European countries like the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic as inspired several new players of the musical instrument as well as the producers.