Those who have visited Bloody Nib Manor have probably noticed that there are a number of musical instruments laying around the shack. Some are played and some just showed up in the middle of the night, the piano being the main example of an instrument that has become a form of furniture and a place to put dust collectors. There are three guitars (one inherited from the late Baroness Masako, mother of Lady Nib, one belonging to Lady Nib, and one, the cheapest, belonging to this writer), a couple of ukuleles, a half dozen harmonicas, a quiver of tin whistles, and, most important for this article, three mandolins. One of the mandolins is of the old Neapolitan bowl back style, one is of the old Army-Navy skillet style, and the third is a cheap reproduction of the Lloyd Loar Gibson A model.
Of all these instruments the most important and most pleasing for your faithful correspondent are the mandolins. The mandolin was this writer's first musical instrument. He took lessons, at the age of about thirteen from an old Italian man who was primarily a violinist who also was the conductor of the Palos Verdes Symphony back in the 1960s. At this time the guitar, especially the electric guitar was in the ascendant and the mandolin was considered an ethnic instrument outside of areas of the South, where it was considered a bluegrass/hillbilly instrument. This writer, was, in a sense, out of time and out of place. But who knows what makes people like certain instruments and certain types of music?
To get to the point, let's look at a bit of history of the mandolin, its music and how it is under-appreciated.
The mandolin as we know it came to it's final form in the 1720s. The mandolin is really not much more than a violin that is plucked instead of bowed. A mandolin can play music written for the violin and a violin can play music written for the mandolin. The mandolin family has several members: the mandolin, the mandola (a plucked version of the viola), the mando-cello (the plucked version of a cello) and the mando-bass (the plucked version of the bass violin). There is also the piccolo mandolin, which is rarely heard because it's really a freak. The thing called an Irish Bouzuki is really a form of mandola.
The original shape was the bowl back or Neapolitan (or "tater bug") mandolin. The sound of those instruments, while loud, is also mellow. The later developments of the instrument resulted in "flat back" mandolins that were cheaper to make while being louder. The most popular models in the U.S. are now the Loar A model (a flatback with a teardrop shaped body) and the Loar F model (a flatback with a scroll shape on the right side that is often used in bluegrass music).
Vivaldi wrote pieces especially for the mandolin, and many Bach pieces translate well to playing by the mandolin:
Prelude from Partita No.3 BWV1006 - J.S. Bach - Mandolin - YouTube
For much of the 18th and 19th centuries the mandolin was considered the normal plucked instrument in Western Europe and the United States. The Spanish guitar was still in development and the English guitar (also known as the lute) was considered as old fashioned as the sackbut. The default stringed instrument at the time was the violin, but the mandolin came in a close second and was played by those who could not master the bowing technique or because who wanted to play an instrument that had a livelier sound than the fiddle. The mandolin, because of it's loud voice, was especially suited to small bands. It was also more portable than the violin (no bow and rosin required) and it was popular among sailors during the age of sail and among cowboys (that bit with Gene Autry or Roy Rodgers playing a guitar as an old West cowboy is inaccurate. A mandolin could be much more easily be carried on horseback than a guitar. Also, the guitar at that time, in the U.S., meant the parlour guitar, which was considered a instrument suited for women). The mandolin got to the U.S. before the great Italian migration to the U.S. in the 1880s/1890s, but the infusion of Italians brought a different dimension to mandolin playing in the U.S. The old joke in New York was that if one wanted to learn the mandolin all one would have to do was go to a barber shop because all barbers were Italian and all Italians played the mandolin.
From about 1890 to 1920 was the golden age for the mandolin in the U.S. There were amateur and professional mandolin bands and orchestras all across the U.S. The mandolin was used in recordings instead of the guitar because of it's ability to play loudly for mechanical recordings. The mandolin had become a mainstream instrument, but things went south for our little friend with the advent of electric recording and the idea that a guitar had more nuances than the mando. And the poor thing was banished to the ethnic hinterlands of Italian and bluegrass and old time music:
The Godfather Theme
Eskimo Waltz
Hawkins Rag
Never On Sunday
Actually, the last of the above is Greek and was originally written for bouzouki, but it plays as well on mandolin.
Later in the 20th century some Irishman decided that he wanted to play a mandola but didn't want to call his instrument a mandola (too Italian) and decided for some unknown reason to call it an Irish Bouzouki (flatback, unlike a real Greek bouzouki), and a form of mandolin took off again. Earlier Bill Monroe gave the mando a kickstart with his bluegrass music. But it's been a long time since a real mandolin master like the late Dave Appolon was on the popular music scene. Evan Marshall and Dave Grishman come close, but neither of them have the subtlety in style to make the mandolin sound anything other than nervous. The Italians and Portuguese and Japanese continue to develop the mandolin in ways that the Americans don't. They see it, as we all should, as an all round instrument with as much variety of styles and nuance as the guitar or piano. It's all in the training and technique. A mandolin is as capable, in the hands of a master, of caressing the listener as it is barking; it can cry as well as a violin and make one want to dance as much as a fiddle.
The mandolin is a great little instrument that has long been neglected for anything but folk and ethnic music, and the world is worse off for the neglect. This writer is not one of those boneheads who thinks that music will save the world, but he does believe that music will make the trip down to anarchy or dictatorship a lot more comfortable. And the mandolin is the best little wooden friend one can have during a rough time.
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