At 08:14 AM 9/17/2004, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Monica, > >Is the mandora/mandola the same instrument also called >mandore/mandolino...a tiny lute-like instrument tuned in fourths and >fifths? (the instrument of the Skene MS etc) > >I seem to remember - maybe Donald Gill or maybe James Tyler - saying that >the early instruments were hollowed out. > >Wouldn't a mandora/mandola (very different from the later, bigger >things)be a lot smaller than even a small four-course guitar? The tunings >would be different and the shape and construction is different. How did >someone establish that references to 'chitarra', in fact, referrred to mandora?
The backs and necks of medieval ancestors (e.g. gittern) were formed from a single, hollowed block, but that was pretty passe by the time discussed here. Some past authors had used mandore/mandora interchangeably with mandola/mandolino as a term of convenience to distinguish early forms from modern mandolin (e.g., Baines), but I would argue that these terms should be conceptualized as separate entities with different standard tunings and distinct repertoire (i.e. mandore is not mandolino). References to mandola/mandolino arose right around 1600 in Italy. It typically had a sickle-shaped pegbox terminating in a partial scroll and finial, courses of paired strings in unison, and initially was tuned entirely in fourths e'-a'-d"-g" (low b and g courses were added subsequently). It persisted into the 1790s and its single-strung descendants made it all the way into the 20th c. in northern Italy. This is the instrument for which Vivaldi wrote. I suspect that various sized members of this family were the instruments that Monica asserts Tyler & Sparks confused with proper guitars in Italian sources. Am I correct? The mandore was the instrument of the Skene book and famous Baugin painting. It was often single strung and tuning varied, but typically was an odd assemblage of fourths and fifths that would be described as "open" by modern players. I know there were some pieces in the Skene book to specify the old "lutt" tuning, but, not playing mandore, I'm not certain what that specifies. Although once synonyms, mandore usually is now used to refer to the soprano instrument popular in the late renaissance (a la Skene) and mandora (or gallichon) as the guitar-sized, relatively few-course lute of the late baroque-rococo era (a la Albrechtsberger). There is still a whole lot of overlap in the names of these things. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
