The University Museum

MANDOLIN

Mandolins have been and continue to be an important instrument in the world of folk music. A cousin of the lute, they date back to eighteenth-century Italy. Such instruments from this time period are known as Neapolitan mandolins, but also came to be called gourd, bowlback, roundback, tater bug, or chili dipper mandolins because of the shape of their bodies. Because of their rounded backs, such mandolins can be somewhat difficult to play. Orville Gibson, whose company went on to guitar fame, revolutionized the mandolin at the turn of the twentieth century by making the back of the instrument flat, and therefore easier to hold, as seen in the Lone Star model to the right.

In the early 1900s in the United States, the mandolin was used to play music such as waltzes, cakewalks, and classical and ragtime tunes. However, during the 1940s, a Kentucky musician named Bill Monroe popularized a new form of country music - bluegrass. Prominently featuring the flatback mandolin, this blues-influenced genre features a lightening-fast tempo and complex solo passages.

The University Museum holds two excellent examples of the Neapolitan-style mandolin. The bodies of both of these instruments (left and right) are intricately constructed out of many narrow strips of alternating types of wood as can be seen in the photo to the right. Additionally, the mandolin (left) has been elaborately decorated with a butterfly pick guard (the tortoise shell-type material inlaid in the instrument's top between the sound hole and the bridge)

Regardless of their body shape, all mandolins are tuned just like a violin. Mandolins, however, are strung with four sets of doubled strings instead of singles, and have frets instead of the smooth, fretless fingerboard of the violin.

Coolik, Daniel 1998. History of the Mandolin in America. http://www.mandolincafe.com/archives/article.html
Stambler, Irwin and Grelun Landon 1984. The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country & Western Music. New York: St. Martin's Press.