Mandore (instrument)
The mandore is a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings[2] and pitched in the treble range.[3] Considered a French instrument, with much of the surviving music coming from France, it was used across "Northern Europe" including Germany and Scotland. Although it went out of style, the French instrument has been revived for use in classical music. The instrument's most commonly played relatives today are members of the mandolin family and the bandurria.
The mandore arrived in France from Spain, and was considered a new instrument in French music books from the 1580s,[4] but can be seen as a development of the gittern.[5][6] In Spain the mandore was called vandola.[6][4] Musicologist James Tyler said that the Spanish bandurria with three strings was the mandore, although it had four strings when it arrived in France.[7] In its Spanish form the bandurria may have resembled the rebec.[7]
The mandore was played widely across Europe, just as the earlier gittern had been. The Italians called it the mandola and even as the instrument became obsolete elsewhere, by the mid 17th century they had developed it into "an instrument with its own distinct tuning, technique and music."[7] In Milan, Italy as the mandore or Lombardo, it remained in use into the late 19th century. That variant is known today as the Milanese or Lombardic mandolin, and retains the mandore's tuning. The Italians also called it the mandora or mandola. The latter name is still used in the mandolin family for an alto or tenor range instrument. From the mandola, the baroque mandolino was created, which in turn became the modern mandolin.[8][6][9]
The Germans continued to use quinterne, their name for the gittern. Michael Praetorius recorded the names mandürichen, bandürichen, mandoër, mandurinichen, mandörgen, and pandurina. The latter name, pandurina, was also applied in the 1700s in Italy to the Milanese mandolin.[10][11][12][3][8]
Construction[edit]
Like the earlier gittern, the mandore's back and neck were in earlier forms carved out of a block of wood.[17] This "hollowed out construction" did still exist in the 16th century, according to James Tyler, but was becoming rare.[17] The method was being replaced by gluing curved staves together to form back, and adding a neck and peg box.[17]
From Mersenne: The normal length of a mandore is 11⁄2 feet long. It is built as a lute, with "strips of fir or other wood" ... "cut and bent into melon shape" to make a rounded back.[18] The fingerboard is on the same plane as the soundboard, with a bridge glued onto the soundboard. Strings are secured in the pegboard in the neck, pass over the fingerboard and soundboard and are tied to a flat bridge, which is glued to the soundboard.[19] The instrument may have as few as four strings or as many as six. It could also have four to six courses of two strings.[19] The soundhole was covered with a rose, either carved directly into the soundboard or glued in.[20]
Methods of playing[edit]
From Marin Mersenne, 1635: A musician plays the mandore "with the finger or the tip of a feather between thumb and index finger or tied to one of the other fingers."[18] "Those who make perfect use of the mandore would move the pick so fast over the strings that they seem to form even chords as they would be if played at the same time."[21]
Another early 17th-century author, Michael Praetorius, agreed. He said, "They play either with a cittern-type quill plectrum, or with one finger - and this with the speed, clarity, and precision that we would expect from the use of three or four fingers. There are some players, however, who start to use two or more fingers once they are familiar with the instrument."[22]
Name controversy[edit]
While the mandore and mandora have been considered equivalent names for the same treble-ranged instrument, mandora has also found use as the name for a bass-ranged lute, the gallichon.[3][36]
The instrument has also been mistakenly called mandöraen instead of mandörgen by modern readers of Praetorius' book. However, the "raen" in the word is actually "rgen". The error is due to a lithographic fault in reproducing plate 16; that fault truncated the g into an a.[37] The error can be seen when comparing two different versions of the plate (compare the two versions in the file history).
