I still think that an 18th C Mandola would be the ticket. I don't know if anyone makes them, but there are a lot of roundback short scale Italian made Mandocellos that are pretty close. The french piper Jean Pierre Rasle living in the UK used to have one in his ceilidh group, the Cock & Bull Band.He did a Cd of entirely very traditional French music for babpipes called Cornemeuses and the tracks using mandocello accompaniement were my faves. Very woody sounding. low pitch. Not an axpensive isntrument, but a good sound. Brad
Frank Nordberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Doc Rossi wrote: > Yes, that would be perfect, but did it survive into the 18th century? > Could you point me to some evidence? Doc, I think I already gave you this link but just in case: http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/zist_pandora.htm There are several references to the panodora (it was usually written with a p rather than b in German) during the 18th century there. Especially intersting in here is perhaps this paragraph: "Am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts befand sich die Pandora unter den Continuoinstrumenten des Hamburger Opernorchesters (Kleefeld 1899/1900, S. 233ff.), und noch in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts gehörten zur fürstlichen Hofkapelle in Weißenfels zwei "Kammer-Pandoristen": Pantaleon Hebestreit und Joseph Doberozinsky (Werner 1911, S. 68 und 71)." Rough translation: At the end of the 17th Century there was a Pandora among the continuo instruments of the Hamburg Opera Orchestra (1899/1900 Kleefeld, p. 233ff.), and as late as the first half of the 18th Century the Court Orchestra at Weißenfels had two "Chamber Pandorists:" Pantaleon Hebestreit and Joseph Doberozinsky (Werner 1911, p. 68 and 71). One page I overlooked at Michel's site was this: http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/zist_pandor_quellen.htm It's a chronological list of bandora references in Germany. Lots of 18th C. references there - there's even a quote from Mattheson. And there's a 1737 continuo tutorial (David Kellner) that specifically lists bandora as one of the continuo instruments. One of the references is to an actual bandora from c. 1750: http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/ZISTER/freiberg_0171.htm (Digression: note that this has a floating bridge and a 460 mm scale. Does that remind anybody of any other 18th century instruments?) Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com http://stores.ebay.com/Nordbergs-Music-Store?refid=store To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. --
