Mandolin

From small lutes to a Neapolitan voice

Every mandolin is a descendant of smaller lutes. Italian makers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries built diminutive instruments, often called mandore, mandola or mandolino, that were strung with gut and plucked with the fingers or a quill. Historians generally agree that the modern form grew out of this family, but the exact steps are hard to trace, because names were applied loosely and few instruments survive intact. Several regional types coexisted, including a Milanese mandolino with six courses and a Brescian one with four.

The form most people mean today took shape in Naples during the eighteenth century, where members of the Vinaccia family were among the best-documented makers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a richly decorated example dated 1781. Metal strings and a plectrum replaced gut and fingertips over time, giving a brighter, more carrying tone. Vivaldi wrote concertos for a mandolino, and Mozart placed a mandolin in the serenade of Don Giovanni in 1787. The instrument was then a fashionable voice for Italian song.

Ribs, bends and a tilted top

A Neapolitan mandolin is built like half a pear. Its deep, rounded back is assembled from narrow curved strips of wood, called ribs, glued edge to edge over a mould; a Welsh museum example has nineteen, though the count varies by maker. A thin spruce top closes the bowl, pierced by an oval soundhole, and a decorative plate of tortoiseshell or plastic shields the wood from the pick. The top is usually angled slightly at the bridge, which helps it respond to the strings’ pull.

American makers of the late nineteenth century simplified and reimagined the design. The flat-back mandolin dispenses with the bowl, making a teardrop-shaped box that is cheaper to build and easier to hold. Carved arch-top mandolins borrowed from violin making: a top and back shaped from solid wood, with f-shaped soundholes or an oval opening, a raised fingerboard and a floating bridge held only by string pressure. All forms share a short neck, metal frets and a string length of roughly 33 to 35 centimetres.

A note that must be kept alive

Plucked strings begin to die the instant they are struck, and on a small, high-pitched instrument the decay is quick. The mandolin’s designers solved the problem with two devices. First, each note is sounded by a pair of strings tuned in unison, so the slight differences between them add shimmer and volume. Second, players repeat a note rapidly with alternating down and up strokes of the plectrum, a technique called tremolo that blurs the separate attacks into a continuous line.

The result is a bright, penetrating, slightly metallic tone. A bowl-back tends to sound rounder and sweeter, while a carved arch-top gives a drier, more focused attack that cuts through a band. Because the strings are tuned in fifths, like a Violin, a violinist can find the notes at once, though the fretboard and the plectrum make the touch quite different. Tension across the eight steel strings is substantial, which is one reason the body must be braced carefully.

Four strings, three octaves and a bit

The open courses sound G3 (the G below middle C), D4, A4 and E5. Fretting each course along the neck yields chromatic semitones, so the practical range starts at G3 and climbs past E6 on instruments with long fingerboards. Some scores go a few notes higher. Since the pitches match those of the violin, most music written for violin can be read directly on the mandolin, which is why transcriptions of violin tunes and sonatas come easily.

Timbre shifts across that span. The lowest notes are dark and somewhat short, the middle of the instrument is full and ringing, and the top is thin, glassy and quickly fading. Players choose where to play a phrase partly for colour. Near the bridge the sound is sharper and nasal; over the end of the fingerboard it softens. Harmonics, produced by touching a string lightly at a node and plucking, add a bell-like effect, used sparingly in both classical and folk settings.

Pick, wrist and the chop

Mandolinists hold a small triangular plectrum between thumb and index finger and strike the paired strings together. Nearly everything depends on the right wrist, which can produce slow single notes, swift tremolo or a percussive strum. The left hand fingers notes on the fretboard, and because the tuning is in fifths, scale patterns lie in a compact shape that repeats across adjacent strings. Fast runs often use alternate picking, alternating down and up strokes without pause.

Bluegrass players developed a technique known as the chop: a short, muted strum on the off-beats that makes the mandolin behave like a snare drum inside the band, marking rhythm while melodies pass among fiddle and banjo. Celtic players, by contrast, use light ornaments and cuts around reel and jig melodies. Classical players favour sustained tremolo and careful dynamic shading. In Brazil the instrument, called bandolim, leads choro ensembles with agile, conversational melody.

A family built outward from the violin tuning

The mandolin belongs to a consort of related instruments that mirror the violin family. The mandola is tuned a fifth lower, at C3–G3–D4–A4. The octave mandolin sounds an octave below the mandolin, at G2–D3–A3–E4, and the larger mandocello is tuned like a cello, C2–G2–D3–A3. Larger bass forms such as the mandolone also existed. These sizes let a mandolin orchestra cover several registers, as the violin family does in an orchestra.

Body shape divides the mandolin itself into three broad types: the Neapolitan bowl-back, the flat-back and the carved arch-top, sometimes called the A-style (pear-shaped) and F-style (with a scroll and points). Earlier regional types include the six-course Milanese mandolino. Electric mandolins with solid or hollow bodies and pickups exist for amplified music. All belong to one lineage, despite differences in tuning, strings and playing tradition.

Orchestras, string bands and choro circles

In the early twentieth century, mandolin orchestras and Banjo–mandolin–guitar clubs flourished in American towns, and American companies produced instruments by the thousands. That boom faded with the Depression and the Second World War, but the instrument had already settled into country, old-time and eventually bluegrass music, where it became essential to the sound of the string band. Italian immigrant communities likewise kept the Neapolitan tradition alive.

Elsewhere the mandolin took local shapes. In Italy it remains part of Neapolitan and regional song, including serenades accompanied by guitar. In Ireland and Scotland it is used for dance tunes, in parts of Greece and Portugal for regional folk music, and in Brazil for choro. Composers from Vivaldi and Beethoven to Mahler and Schoenberg have added it to concert scores for a particular colour, and contemporary players work in classical, jazz and popular music alike.

Looking after a high-tension box

Wooden mandolins respond to their surroundings. Dry air can crack a thin spruce top and loosen joints, while damp can swell the body and lift the bridge. Most collections and players keep instruments in a stable range of humidity and temperature, in a fitted case, away from radiators, windows and cars. Sudden changes are riskier than steady conditions, and some owners ease string tension during long periods of storage.

Routine care is simple. Wipe the strings after playing, since sweat corrodes steel and dulls tone. Change strings when they sound dull or fail to hold pitch, preferably one at a time so the bridge and neck stay under even tension. Floating bridges on arch-top models can slide, so their position is marked before changing strings. Bowl-backs, with their rib-and-glue construction and often delicate inlays, are best handled with care and serviced by a repairer experienced with them.

Small facts about a small instrument

• Because the courses are tuned in unison, the instrument sounds eight strings while a player fingers only four positions at a time.
• A 1930s Neapolitan-style mandolin in the collections of Museum Wales has nineteen ribs, four paired courses and seventeen frets, and was played in Cardiff.
• Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787) includes a serenade in which the title character sings over mandolin accompaniment.
• Beethoven left a few small pieces for mandolin and keyboard, composed in the 1790s.
• The same instrument that accompanies Neapolitan love songs also provides the rhythmic backbone of a bluegrass band.

Terms used in this entry

arch-top

A carved top, and usually back, that curves outward like a violin’s rather than lying flat.

bowl-back

A body with a deep, rounded back made of narrow curved wooden strips, typical of the Neapolitan mandolin.

chop

A short, muted strum on the off-beat, used as a percussive rhythm technique in bluegrass.

course

A set of strings played as one, here two strings tuned to the same pitch and plucked together.

floating bridge

A bridge held in place only by string pressure, not glued to the top.

mandola

A larger relative of the mandolin, usually tuned a fifth lower.

plectrum

A small flat pick, held between thumb and finger, used to sound the strings.

rib

One of the narrow curved wooden strips that, glued edge to edge, form a bowl-shaped back.

tremolo

A rapid repetition of a single note with quick alternating pick strokes, used to sustain sound on a plucked instrument.

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References

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mandolin, Antonius Vinaccia, 1781. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/504543
2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mandolin, American, ca. 1925. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/505794
3. Grinnell College Libraries. flat-back mandolin · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/2958
4. Museum Wales. Mandolin - Collections Online. museum.wales/collections/online/object/1d6f6387-2b80-3890-9180-a72ea5c92854
5. Rosenberg Library Museum. Neapolitan Mandolin from Galveston Mandolin Orchestra. rosenberg-library-museum.org/treasures/neapolitan-mandolin-from-galveston-mandolin-orchestra

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.