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This article is about the musical instrument. For the cooking tool, see Mandoline.
Mandolin mf.jpg
An American A-style mandolin, with F-holes
String instrument

String instrument

Plucked string instrument
Hornbostel–Sachs classification 321.321-6
(Composite chordophone sounded by a plectrum)
Developed Mid 18th century from the mandolino
Playing range
Range mandolin.PNG
(a regularly tuned mandolin with 14 frets to body)
Related instruments

A mandolin (Italian: mandolino) is a musical instrument in the lute family (plucked, or strummed). It usually has four courses of doubled strings. The (usually) two strings in each course are tuned in unison. The courses are tuned in a succession of perfect fifths, and plucked with a plectrum (pick). It is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello, and mandobass. It descends from the mandore.

There are many styles of mandolin, but three are common, the Neapolitan (bowl-backed) mandolin, the carved-top mandolin and the flat-top mandolin. The carved-top or arch-top mandolin has a much shallower, arched back, and an arched top—both carved out of wood. The flat-top mandolin is similar to a guitar, using thin sheets of wood for the body, braced on the inside for strength. Each style of instrument has its own sound quality and is associated with particular forms of music. Neapolitan mandolins feature prominently in European classical music and traditional music. Carved-top instruments are common in American folk music and bluegrass music. Flat-top instruments are less specific to a music genre but are commonly used in Irish and British folk music.

Other mandolin varieties differ primarily in the strings, and include Milanese, Lombard, Brescian, and other six-course types, as well as four-string models (one string per course), and the Sicilian twelve-string (three strings per course) model. There have also been made instruments with sixteen-strings (four strings per course).



Schematic drawing of a bowlback mandolin

A mandolin typically has a hollow wooden body with a tailpiece that holds one end of the strings, a floating bridge, a neck with a flat (or slight radius) fretted fingerboard, a nut, and mechanical tuning machines to accommodate metal strings.

Like any plucked instrument, mandolin notes decay to silence rather than sound out continuously as with a bowed note on a violin. Its small size and higher pitch make mandolin notes decay faster than larger stringed instruments like guitar. This encourages the use of tremolo (rapid picking of one or more pairs of strings) to create sustained notes or chords. The mandolin's paired strings facilitate this technique: the plectrum (pick) strikes each of a pair of strings alternately, providing a more full and continuous sound than a single string would.

Various[which?] design variations and amplification techniques have been used to make mandolins comparable in volume with louder instruments and orchestras. Hybridization with the louder banjo creates the mandolin-banjo, and resonators have been used, most notably by Dobro and the National String Instrument Corporation. Some musicians[who?] play electric mandolins through amplifiers.



1920s Mandola built in Rome by Luigi Embergher
Carved and Neapolitan (round-backed) mandolins—back and front

Mandolins come in several forms. The Neapolitan style, known as a round-back or bowl-back, has a vaulted back made of a number of strips of wood in a bowl formation, similar to a lute, and usually a canted, two-plane, uncarved top.[3]

Bowlback mandolins are more common in classical and baroque genres of mandolin playing, but less common in modern genres such as bluegrass.



These styles generally have either two f-shaped soundholes like a violin (F-5 and A-5), or an oval sound hole (F-4 and A-4 and lower models) directly under the strings. Much variation exists between makers working from these archetypes, and other variants have become increasingly common. Generally, in the United States, Gibson F-hole F-5 mandolins and mandolins influenced by that design are strongly associated with bluegrass, while the A-style is associated other types of music, although it too is most often used for and associated with bluegrass. The F-5's more complicated woodwork also translates into a more expensive instrument. In Ireland and Britain, flat top and back instruments are often used.

Internal bracing to support the top in the F-style mandolins is usually achieved with parallel tone bars, similar to the bass bar on a violin. Some makers instead employ "x-bracing," which is two tone bars mortised together to form an X. Some luthiers now using a "modified x-bracing" that incorporates both a tone bar and x-bracing.

Numerous modern mandolin makers build instruments that largely replicate the Gibson F-5 Artist models built in the early 1920s under the supervision of Gibson acoustician Lloyd Loar. Original Loar-signed instruments are sought after and extremely valuable. Other makers from the Loar period and earlier include Lyon and Healy, Vega, and Larson Brothers. Some notable modern American carved mandolin manufacturers include, in addition to Gibson, Weber, Monteleone, and Collings. Mandolins from other countries include The Loar (China), Michael Kelly (Korea), Eastman (China), Kentucky (China), Heiden (Canada), Gilchrist (Australia) and Morgan Monroe (China).



The mandolin was given a banjo body in an 1882 patent by Benjamin Bradbury of Brooklyn and given the name banjolin by John Farris in 1885.[4] Today banjolin describes an instrument with four strings, while the version with the four courses of double strings is called a mandolin-banjo.

As with almost every other contemporary string instrument, another modern variant is the electric mandolin. These mandolins can have four or five individual or double courses of strings.

Mandolin family[edit]

1930 National Triolian resonator mandolin & 1926 Paramount Style A Banjo Mandolin


Other members of the mandolin family are:

  • The mandola (US and Canada), termed the tenor mandola in Britain and Ireland and liola or alto mandolin in continental Europe, which is tuned to a fifth below the mandolin, in the same relationship as that of the viola to the violin. Some also call this instrument the "alto mandola." Its scale length is typically about 16.5 inches (420 mm). It is normally tuned like a viola: C-G-D-A.
  • The octave mandolin (US and Canada), termed the octave mandola in Britain and Ireland and mandola in continental Europe, which is tuned an octave below the mandolin. Its scale length is typically about 20 inches (500 mm), although instruments with scales as short as 17 inches (430 mm) or as long as 21 inches (530 mm) are not unknown.
  • The mandolone was a Baroque member of the mandolin family in the bass range that was surpassed by the mandocello. Built as part of the Neapolitan mandolin family.
  • The Greek laouto is essentially a mandocello, ordinarily tuned C-G-D-A, with half of each pair of the lower two courses being tuned an octave high on a lighter gauge string. The body is a staved bowl, the saddle-less bridge glued to the flat face like most ouds and lutes, with mechanical tuners, steel strings, and tied gut frets. Modern laoutos, as played on Crete, have the entire lower course tuned in octaves as well as being tuned a reentrant octave above the expected low C. Its scale length is typically about 28 inches (712 mm).
  • The mando-bass has 4 single strings, rather than double courses, and is tuned like a double bass or an acoustic bass guitar. These were made by the Gibson company in the early twentieth century, but appear to have never been very common. Reportedly, most mandolin orchestras preferred to use the ordinary double bass, rather than a specialised mandolin family instrument. Calace and other Italian makers predating Gibson also made mandolin-basses.

Use of the mandolin also spread into Afghanistan and the mandolin is often used in Afghan popular music.


A variety of different tunings are used. Usually, courses of 2 adjacent strings are tuned in unison. The most common tuning by far, GDAE, is the same as violin tuning:

  • fourth (lowest tone) course: G3 (196.00 Hz)
  • third course: D4 (293.66 Hz)
  • second course: A4 (440.00 Hz; A above middle C)
  • first (highest tone) course: E5 (659.25 Hz)

Note that the numbers of Hz shown above assume a 440 Hz A, standard in most parts of the United States. Some players use A's up to 10 Hz above or below a 440, mainly in other parts of the world.

Mandolin fretboard.png

Other tunings exist, including "cross-tunings," in which the usually doubled string runs are tuned to different pitches. Additionally, guitarists may sometimes tune a mandolin to mimic a portion of the intervals on a standard guitar tuning to achieve familiar fretting patterns.


1787 depiction of Luigi Bassi in the role of Don Giovanni serenading with a mandolin in Mozart's opera.

Mandolins evolved from the lute family in Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the deep bowled mandolin, produced particularly in Naples, became common in the nineteenth century. The original instrument was the mandore, which evolved in the fourteenth century from the lute. Over time and as the instrument spread around Europe, it took on many names and various structural characteristics. The instrument is also very popular in Goa, India (a former Portuguese colony).



Over subsequent centuries, the strings were doubled to courses, and eventually (in Europe) frets were added, leading to the first lute appearing in the thirteenth century. The history of the lute and the mandolin are intertwined from this point. The lute gained a fifth course by the fifteenth century, a sixth a century later, and up to thirteen courses in its heyday. As early as the fourteenth century a miniature lute or mandore appeared and used throughout Western Europe. Like the mandola, it had counterparts in Assyria (pandura), the Arab countries (dambura), and Ukraine (kobza-bandura).

Development in Italy[edit]

The mandore was not a final form, and the design was tinkered with wherever it was built. The Italians redesigned it and produced the mandolino (a small catgut-strung mandola with six strings tuned g b e' a' d g sometimes called the Baroque mandolin or cat-banjo and played with a quill, wooden plectrum or finger-style). The mandolino was sometimes called a mandolin in the early eighteenth century (around 1735) Naples. At this point, all such instruments were strung with gut strings.

The first evidence of modern steel-strung mandolins is from literature regarding popular Italian players who travelled through Europe teaching and giving concerts. Notable are Signor Leone and G. B. Gervasio, who travelled widely between 1750 and 1810.[2] This, with the records gleaned from the Italian Vinaccia family of luthiers in Naples, Italy, led some musicologists to believe that the modern steel-strung mandolin was developed in Naples by the Vinaccia family. Gennaro Vinaccia was active c. 1710 to c. 1788, and Antonio Vinaccia was active c. 1734 to c. 1796.[5] An early extant example of a mandolin is one built by Antonio Vinaccia in 1772, which resides at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Another is by Giuseppe Vinaccia, built in 1763, residing at the Kenneth G. Fiske Museum of Musical Instruments in Claremont, California.[6] The earliest extant mandolin was built in 1744 by Gaetano Vinaccia. It resides in the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels, Belgium.[7]

These mandolins, like their modern descendants, are called Neapolitan mandolins because they originate in Naples, Italy. They are distinguished by an almond-shaped body with a bowled back constructed from curved strips of wood along its length. The sound table is bent just behind the bridge, the bending achieved with a heated bending iron. This "canted" table helps the body support a greater string tension. A hardwood fingerboard is flush with the soundtable. Ten metal or ivory frets are spaced along the neck in half-steps, with additional frets glued upon the soundtable. The strings are brass except for the lowest string course, which are gut or metal wound onto gut. The bridge is a movable length of hardwood or ivory placed in front of ivory pins that hold the strings. Wooden tuning pegs are inserted through the back of a flat pegboard. The mandolins have a tortoise-shell pickguard below the soundhole under the strings. A quill or shaped piece of tortoise-shell is used as a plectrum.[7][8]

Other luthiers who built mandolins included Raffaele Calace (1863 onwards) in Naples, [[Luigi Embergher[9]]] (1856–1943) in Rome and Arpino, the Ferrari family (1716 onwards, also originally mandolino makers) in Rome, and De Santi (1834–1916) in Rome. The Neapolitan style of mandolin construction was adopted and developed by others, notably in Rome, giving two distinct but similar types of mandolin – Neapolitan and Roman.[10]


Many classical composers composed works specifically for the Mandolin. Beethoven composed mandolin music[11] and enjoyed playing the mandolin.[12] The opera Don Giovanni by Mozart includes mandolin parts, including the accompaniment to the famous aria Deh vieni alla finestra. Also very well known are the mandolin concerti by Vivaldi. Gustav Mahler used the mandolin in his Symphony No. 7, Symphony No. 8 and Das Lied von der Erde. Some 20th-century classical composers also used the mandolin as their instrument of choice (amongst these are: Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky).

Decline and rise[edit]

Following the invention of the "Neapolitian" mandolin around 1744, the mandolin grew increasingly popular over the next 60 years. After the Napoleonic Wars of 1815, however, its popularity began to fall. The 19th century produced some prominent players, including Bartolomeo Bortolazzi of Venice and Pietro Vimercati. However, professional virtuosity was in decline, and the mandolin music changed as the mandolin became a folk instrument; "the large repertoire of notated instrumental music for the mandolino and the mandoline was completely forgotten". The export market for mandolins from Italy dried up around 1815. Salvador Léonardi mentioned this decline in his 1921 book, Méthode pour Banjoline ou Mandoline-Banjo, saying that the mandolin had been declining in popularity from previous times, but was finally recovering. In the early 20th Century, the mandolin recovered its popularity and blossomed into new forms.[13][14]

Twentieth Century and beyond[edit]

The mandolin spread from Italy to the rest of the world. Starting in the 1880s, and especially in the early 20th Century, the instrument was remade in other countries including the United States. Luthiers created new of forms of the instrument: the resonator mandolin, the flatback mandolin, the carved-top or arched-top mandolin, the mandolin-banjo and the electric mandolin. The spread of the instruments was reflected in music as the twentieth century saw the mandolin used in Celtic, bluegrass, jazz, and classical and Rock-n-Roll styles. In the early 20th Century there was a "mandolin craze," similar to the earlier banjo craze that spread knowledge of that instrument.

The Mandolin "Estudiantina" of Mayenne, France around 1900 when Mandolin orchestras were at the height of their popularity.

Mandolin orchestras[edit]

Main article: Mandolin orchestra

During the mandolin craze of the early 20th century, mandolin orchestras, using all the members of the mandolin family (and sometimes other plucked strings such as guitars or double bass), became popular throughout the world. Today they remain especially popular in Japan and Germany, but exist throughout the US, Europe, and in the rest of the world. Playing classical music, they often perform works composed for mandolin family instruments, or re-orchestrations of traditional pieces. They tend to consist of first and second mandolins, mandolas (either octave mandolas, tuned an octave below the mandolin, or tenor mandolas, tuned like the viola), and mandocellos (tuned like the cello). These are also may be used as quartets composed of two mandolins, tenor mandola, and mandocello.

Mandolin traditions in Italy and worldwide[edit]

Italian mandolin virtuoso and child prodigy Giuseppe Pettine (here pictured in 1898) brought the Italian playing style to America where he settled, as a mandolin teacher and composer. Pettine is credited with promoting a style where "one player plays both the rhythmic chords and the lyric melodic line at once, combining single strokes and tremolo."[15]

The international repertoire of music for mandolin is almost unlimited, and musicians use it to play various types of music. This is especially true of violin music, since the mandolin has the same tuning of the violin. Following its invention and early development in Italy the mandolin spread throughout the European continent. The instrument was primarily used in a classical tradition with Mandolin orchestras, so called Estudiantinas or in Germany Zupforchestern appearing in many cities. Following this continental popularity of the mandolin family local traditions appeared outside of Europe in the Americas and in Japan. Traveling mandolin virtuosi like Giuseppe Pettine, Raffaele Calace and Silvio Ranieri contributed to the mandolin becoming a "fad" instrument in the early 20th century.[15] This "mandolin craze" was fading by the 1930s, but just as this practice was falling into disuse, the mandolin found a new niche in American country, old-time music, bluegrass, and folk music. More recently, the Baroque and Classical mandolin repertory and styles have benefited from the raised awareness of and interest in Early music, with media attention to classical players such as Israeli Avi Avital.

Latin American Jazz musician playing a mandolin.


See Australian mandolinists

The earliest references to the mandolin in Australia come from Phil Skinner (1903–1991). In his article "Recollections"[16] he mentions a Walter Stent, who was “active in the early part of the century and organised possibly the first Mandolin Orchestra in Sydney.”

Phil Skinner played a key role in 20th century development of the mandolin movement in Australia, and was awarded an MBE in 1979 for services to music and the community. He was born Harry Skinner in Sydney in 1903 and started learning music at age 10 when his uncle tutored him on the banjo. Skinner began teaching part-time at age 18, until the Great Depression forced him to begin teaching full-time and learn a broader range of instruments. Skinner founded the Sydney Mandolin Orchestra, the oldest surviving mandolin orchestra in Australia.[17]

The Sydney Mandolins (Artistic Director: Adrian Hooper) have contributed greatly to the repertoire through commissioning over 200 works by Australian and International composers. Most of these works have been released on Compact Disks and can regularly be heard on radio stations on the ABC and MBS networks. One of their members, mandolin virtuoso Paul Hooper, has had a number of Concertos written for him by composers such as Eric Gross. He has performed and recorded these works with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. As well, Paul Hooper has had many solo works dedicated to him by Australian composers e.g., Caroline Szeto, Ian Shanahan, Larry Sitsky and Michael Smetanin.






See Brazilian mandolinists
Brazilian Mandolin virtuoso Hamilton de Holanda playing a ten-string bandolim

The mandolin has a long and rich tradition in Brazilian folk music where it is called bandolim, especially in the style called choro. The composer and mandolin virtuoso Jacob do Bandolim did much to popularize the instrument through many recordings, and his influence continues to the present day. Some contemporary mandolin players in Brazil include Jacob's disciple Déo Rian, and Hamilton de Holanda (the former, a traditional choro-style player, the latter an eclectic innovator).



Czech and Slovak republics[edit]

See Czech mandolinists, Czech bluegrass
A woman playing a bowlback mandolin in Germany in 1952.







See Indian mandolinists



See Italian mandolinists


Antonio Vivaldi composed a mandolin concerto (Concerto in C major Op.3 6) and two concertos for two mandolins and orchestra. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart placed it in his 1787 work Don Giovanni and Beethoven created four variations of it. Antonio Maria Bononcini composed La conquista delle Spagne di Scipione Africano il giovane in 1707 and George Frideric Handel composed Alexander Balus in 1748. Others include Giovani Battista Gervasio (Sonata in D major for Mandolin and Basso Continuo), Giuseppe Giuliano (Sonata in D major for Mandolin and Basso Continuo), Emanuele Barbella (Sonata in D major for Mandolin and Basso Continuo), Domenico Scarlatti (Sonata n.54 (K.89) in D minor for Mandolin and Basso Continuo), and Addiego Guerra (Sonata in G major for Mandolin and Basso Continuo).[13][19]



See Irish mandolinists








New Zealand[edit]






See Romanian mandolinists

United Kingdom[edit]

See British mandolinists

The mandolin has been used extensively in the traditional music of England and Scotland for generations. Simon Mayor is a prominent British player who has produced six solo albums, instructional books and DVDs, as well as recordings with his mandolin quartet The Mandolinquents. The instrument has also found its way into British rock music. The mandolin was played by Mike Oldfield (and introduced by Vivian Stanshall) on Oldfield's album Tubular Bells, as well as on a number of his subsequent albums (particularly prominently on Hergest Ridge (1974) and Ommadawn (1975)). It was used extensively by the British folk-rock band Lindisfarne, who featured two members on the instrument, Ray Jackson and Simon Cowe, and whose "Fog on the Tyne" was the biggest selling UK album of 1971-1972. The instrument was also used extensively in the UK folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s with bands such as Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span taking it on as the lead instrument in many of their songs. Maggie May by Rod Stewart, which hit No. 1 on both the British charts and the Billboard Hot 100, also featured Jackson's playing. It has also been used by other British rock musicians. Led Zeppelin's bassist John Paul Jones is an accomplished mandolin player and has recorded numerous songs on mandolin including Going to California and That's the Way; the mandolin part on The Battle of Evermore is played by Jimmy Page, who composed the song. Other Led Zeppelin songs featuring mandolin are Hey Hey What Can I Do, and Black Country Woman. Pete Townshend of The Who played mandolin on the track Mike Post Theme, along with many other tracks on Endless Wire. McGuinness Flint, for whom Graham Lyle played the mandolin on their most successful single, When I'm Dead And Gone, is another example. Lyle was also briefly a member of Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance, and played mandolin on their hit How Come. One of the more prominent early mandolin players in popular music was Robin Williamson in The Incredible String Band. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is a highly accomplished mandolin player (beautiful track Pussy Willow), as is his guitarist Martin Barre. The popular song Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths featured a mandolin solo played by Johnny Marr. More recently, the Glasgow-based band Sons and Daughters featured the mandolin, played by Ailidh Lennon, on tracks such as Fight, Start to End, and Medicine. British folk-punk icons the Levellers also regularly use the mandolin in their songs. Current bands are also beginning to use the Mandolin and its unique sound - such as South London's Indigo Moss who use it throughout their recordings and live gigs. The mandolin has also featured in the playing of Matthew Bellamy in the rock band Muse. It also forms the basis of Paul McCartney's 2007 hit "Dance Tonight." That was not the first time a Beatle played a mandolin, however; that distinction goes to George Harrison on "Gone Troppo," the title cut from the 1982 album of the same name. The mandolin is taught in Lanarkshire by the Lanarkshire Guitar and Mandolin Association to over 100 people. Also more recently hard rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures have been playing a song based primarily using a mandolin. This song was left off their recent debut album, and features former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.[citation needed]


United States[edit]

Native American girls' mandolin orchestra, 1905
The F-model Mandolin invented by Gibson is characterized by the curled scroll on the upper side of the instrument. This F-4 Gibson was built in 1916. The F-4 has an oval soundhole whereas the F-5 model has two f-shaped soundhole like those of a violin.

Mandolin orchestras[edit]


Mandolins were a fad instrument from the turn of the 20th century to the mid-1920s. Instruments were marketed by teacher-dealers, much as the title character in the popular musical The Music Man. Often, these teacher-dealers conducted mandolin orchestras: groups of 4-50 musicians who played various mandolin family instruments. One musician and director who made his start with a mandolin orchestra was pioneer African-American composer James Reese Europe. The instrument was primarily used in an ensemble setting well into the 1930s, although the fad died out at the beginning of the 1930s; the famous Lloyd Loar Master Model from Gibson (1923) was designed to boost the flagging interest in mandolin ensembles, with little success. The "Loar" did not become the defining instrument of bluegrass music until Bill Monroe purchased F-5 S/N 73987[20] in a Florida barbershop in 1943 and popularized it as his main instrument.



Bluegrass, Blues, and the jug-band[edit]



American mandolin player Chris Thile



Rock and Celtic[edit]





See also[edit]


  3. ^ Tyler, James and Sparks, Paul (1996) "The Mandolin: Its Structure and Performance (Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries)," Performance Practice Review: Vol. 9: No. 2, Article 5. Available at:
  4. ^ The Irish Tenor Banjo by Don Meade
  5. ^ "Embergher History". Retrieved 2012-10-12. 
  7. ^ a b The Early Mandolin by James Tyler and Paul Sparks (1989)
  8. ^ The Classical Mandolin by Paul Sparks (1995)
  10. ^ Sparks, Paul (2005). The Classical Mandolin. Oxford University Press. 
  11. ^ [1][dead link]
  12. ^ "DawgTab". Retrieved 2012-06-10. 
  13. ^ a b c Ian Pommerenke, The Mandolin in the early to mid 19th Century, Lanarkshire Guitar and Mandolin Association Newsletter, Spring 2007.
  14. ^ Salvador Léonardi, Méthode pour Banjoline ou Mandoline-Banjo, Paris, 1921
  15. ^ a b c Jean Dickson, University at Buffalo (SUNY), Mandolin Mania in Buffalo’s Italian Community, 1895 to 1918, published in Journal of World Anthropology: Occasional Papers: Volume II, Number 2.
  17. ^
  18. ^ Ian Pommerenke, The Mandolin the early 18th Century, Lanarkshire Guitar and Mandolin Association Newsletter, November 2006.
  19. ^ Frances Taylor, mandolinist, Italian Mandolin Sonatas, Claudio Records.
  22. ^ Billboard Hot 100

Further reading[edit]

Chord dictionaries

  • Johnson, Chad (2003). Hal Leonard Mandolin Chord Finder. United States: Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-634-05422-8.  A comprehensive chord dictionary.
  • Major, James (2002). Mandolin Chord Book. United States: Music Sales Ltd. ISBN 978-0-8256-2296-0.  A case-style chord dictionary.
  • Richards, Tobe A. (2007). The Mandolin Chord Bible: 2,736 Chords. United Kingdom: Cabot Books. ISBN 978-1-906207-01-4.  A very comprehensive chord dictionary.

Method and instructional guides

  • Bay, Mel (1987). Complete Mandolin Method. United States: Mel Bay. ISBN 978-0-87166-763-2.  Instructional guide.

External links[edit]