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This space is dedicated to MANDOLIN BANDOLIM. Sounds, players, types, history, photos, lovers... If you have a story, a photo, a sound or any correction to make, please do share it with us. Use "comments".
Júlio Pereira
Esta espaço é dedicado ao BANDOLIM. Som, tocadores, tipos, historial, fotos, amantes... Se tens algum elemento partilha-o connosco. Usa os "comments".

Napolitan Mandolin

The Mandolin Bandolim or mandoline is mostly known as a Neapolitan stringed instrument of the lute family, but with a more pear-shaped back and metal instead of traditional gut strings, set in pairs and played with a plectrum whose fast thrumming produces a tinkling tremolo effect. As a soloist instrument, mandolin is usually played "pontiado" being the soprano’s voice in a larger group of instruments in which may be included the mandoleta (alto), the mandola (tenor), the mandocello (bass) or the "mandolineta" (high sopran).
The European actual mandolin made its way from Italy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, being adopted in different countries creating several "mixed" forms with local and traditional elements.

Napolitan Mandolin

Origin
Most of the authors agree about an Arabian origin linked to the rabât along with the medieval and the renascence’s mandora. Therefore, many of them consider an original existence of two main types of mandolin, each one with its own design, tuning, playing technique and musical history.
The earlier one is the milanese mandolino, gut-strung, looking like a small lute and played predominantly with the fingers as the lute, from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century when it too adopted the plectrum-style. The mandolino’s tune were in fourths, with the sixth one a major third below the fifth course. Having a small pear shaped outline with a rounded back, its four to six lines of double strings were made of gut. Mainly, it had the pegs laterally inserted but sometimes a flat pegboard - like the one of a guitar, with the pegs inserted from the rear - is found. Rarely seen as a mandolin by modern writers, its collections surviving examples adopted several names as soprano lute, pandurina or mandora, with a repertory wrongfully assigned to the second type of mandolin.
The second instrument is called mandoline since despite its Italian roots its own repertory was specially well known in France. Developed in the mid-eighteenth century, it has a much deeper round-backed body with a distinctive new design feature formed by a bent or canted soundboard. It usually has an open sound hole and its bridge is a movable bar over which the four courses of strings - commonly doubled and mostly in metal - pass from the tuning pegs to the base. The mandoline is played in a plectrum style and its courses are tuned in fifths, exactly like the violin.

Around the world

Naples
Living a golden age, Naples developed a particular music style with the cultural influence resulting from the military entry of Charles Bourbon in 1734. Creating an international taste, the city has had an historical link with a great number of popular plectrum instruments since the fifteenth century, when Arabians divulged his wire-strung long lutes type, later mixed with Italian characteristics and enriched with the introduction of the canted table. This new feature became a specific Neapolitan trait, particularly on the recently developed mandolin.
Unlike the precedent inmost period, during the seventeenth century the musical performances underlined an ever crescent number of hall and opera houses concerts. In order to serve larger surroundings, Neapolitan luthiers increased the string tension and the size of its instruments which are now developed with public performances in mind. According to several travellers to Naples, the mandolin seemed to be familiar at every society level but in spite of this, the instrument was still seen as a traditionally "popular", rather than "serious", one.
 

USA model F Mandolin

In 1769 Giovanni Gualdo, an Italian wine merchant and music-dealer in Philadelphia plays in America ‘a solo upon the Mandolino’ with an Italian instrument. On 1774, a concert was given there ‘where Mr. Vidal (...) a musician of the Chambers of the Portuguese Kingdom will play (...) a duetto on the mandolino accompanied with the violin’.
 

Electric Mandolin

Europe
Through Europe, mandolin’s popularity in Prague was never as significant as it gained to be in Vienna, the artistic centre of the Habsburg empire where it achieved an important repertory. Both Mozart ("Deh, veni alla finestra" - Don Giovanni’s mandolin aria) and Beethoven (Sonatina in C, Variations in D, Adagio in Eb, Sonatina in C Minor) composed for mandolin, along with later J.N. Hummel’s Mandolin Concerto.
In the nineteenth century a crescent use in operatic repertory contributed to its general spread (Verdi in Otello and Falstaff).
Along the twelveth century, mandolins were integrated in the orchestral ensemble by Mahler (Seventh and Eighth Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde), Schönberg (Serenade Op.24, Orchestral Variations Op.31), Webern (Five Orchestral Pieces), Henze (König Hirsch) and Stravinsky (Agon).

Anormal FORMAT

Travelling along the continents mandolin adopted and was adopted by new styles as the north-American Blue Grass; Hispanic and south-American forms as the Brazilian Choros, Valsas , Sambas and Frevos; Caribbean black-American and new urban music of Zaire, Cabo Verde Islands and South Africa.
In Europe along the 1960’s a revival movement reintegrated the mandolin in Irish, Briton and Italian music.

Portuguese Mandolin

Portugal
Mandolin was the most prefered chamber instrument within the Portuguese bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century, but its increasing spread led it to public places joining other club instruments. Nowadays, delivered from strict playing techniques, it is increasingly performed by young people integrating several student urban musical groups or accompanying some merry clusters on their way to popular festivals, "chulatas" and other popular mixed groups usually seen by profan celebrations.

BraZilian Mandolin

Ressonator Mandolin