Mandora - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A mandora is a type of lute

Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

. The terms referred to different instruments at different periods in history.

Treble instrument

During the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, the term mandore was applied to the treble lute and in such usage it is difficult to distinguish from the mandola

Mandola

The mandola or tenor mandola is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola , a fifth lower than a mandolin...

, the simple lute that is the ancestor of the mandolin. These were small instruments, strung with 4, 5 or 6 courses of single gut strings. This is the same as the Scottish mandora. For an article on the treble-range instrument, see mandore

Mandore (instrument)

The mandore was mentioned as a new instrument in French music books from the 1580s. It was a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four, five or six courses of gut strings and pitched in the treble range. It is considered ancestral to the modern mandolin and has also been called...

Bass Instrument

James Tyler pointed out in his book The Early Mandolin that the word mandora was hardly ever encountered before the 18th century. Then, it referred to a large bass lute. The gallichone, as it was better known, was a type of 6 or 8-course bass lute

Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

(possibly a descendant of the guiterne and/or chitarra italiana) used, mainly for basso continuo, in Germany, Austria and Bohemia

Czech lands

Czech lands is an auxiliary term used mainly to describe the combination of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. Today, those three historic provinces compose the Czech Republic. The Czech lands had been settled by the Celts , then later by various Germanic tribes until the beginning of 7th...

particularly during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was also called the galizona or galichon. Tyler disputed that is was mainly used for continuo, saying it as used "both as a solo and as a continuo instrument".

Construction

The bass type, similarly to the theorbo

Theorbo

A theorbo is a plucked string instrument. As a name, theorbo signifies a number of long-necked lutes with second pegboxes, such as the liuto attiorbato, the French théorbe des pièces, the English theorbo, the archlute, the German baroque lute, the angélique or angelica. The etymology of the name...

and other baroque lutes, has a vaulted body (shell) constructed of separate ribs, a flat soundboard with either a carved rose or one which is inset into the soundhole, and a bridge (without a saddle) consisting of a wooden bar acting as a string-holder glued to the soundboard. Unique to this instrument is the neck, which is long enough to allow for ten to 12 tied gut frets. The pegbox is either straight and set at a sharp angle to the neck (much like a lute pegbox), or gently curving and set at a shallow angle, either case being fitted with laterally-inserted tuning pegs (although sometimes a flat pegboard with sagittal pegs is found). The strings were of gut (now replaced by such substitutes as nylon) and are strung either singly or, especially on Italian instruments, in double courses. However, on German-made instruments, the first course (highest in pitch) is usually single (a chanterelle) and often has its own separate raised peg rider/holder attached to the pegbox. The number of courses varies from six to eight. Open string lengths tend to be fairly long (62–72 cm) on German instruments, but shorter (55–65 cm) on late Italian ones, probably because they tended to be tuned to a higher pitch.

Luthiers who produced mandoras in the first half of the 18th century were Gregor Ferdinand Wenger in Augsburg, Jacob Goldt of Hamburg, Jacob Weiss of Salzburg, David Buchstetter of Regensburg and Mattias Greisser of Innsbruck. Italian-style instruments are represented by Martino Hell of Genoa, Enrico Ebar of Venice, David Tecchler of Rome, Antonio Scoti of Milan and, toward the end of the century, Antonio Monzino and Giuseppe Presbler of Milan.

At least 50 original instruments survive in collections around the world. Examples are found in museums in Berlin, Claremont (California), Copenhagen, Edinburgh, The Hague, Leipzig, Milan, Munich and Paris, New York and St. Petersburg. Many of these instruments are found in a more or less unaltered state, and therefore are often used as models for modern reconstructions.

Tuning

In the 18th century, mandora

Mandora

A mandora is a type of lute. The terms referred to different instruments at different periods in history.-Treble instrument:During the Renaissance, the term mandore was applied to the treble lute and in such usage it is difficult to distinguish from the mandola, the simple lute that is the ancestor...

was the name of a six-course lute instrument of about 70 cm string
length, tuned F - G - c - f - a - d' or G - A - d - g - b - e' (rarely with two or three additional bass courses). With the former tuning, the instrument was called Calichon or Galichon in Bohemia.

Around 1800, a mutual interchange between the mandora and the guitar took place. The guitar, which had so far been tuned in reentrant

Reentrant

In computing, a computer program or subroutine is called reentrant if it can be interrupted in the middle of its execution and then safely called again before its previous invocations complete executing. The interruption could be caused by an internal action such as a jump or call or by an...

tuning (e' - b - g - d' - a), took over the 6th course and the tuning of the mandora (e' - b - g - d - A - G, later also e' - b - g - d - A - E), whereas the mandora took over the stringing with single strings instead of courses, as had been introduced to the guitar. The so-called wandervogellaute has been a late heir to that development.

From another source on tuning:

Two tunings are reported: a ‘galizona’ or ‘colachon’ is tuned A'( or ) –B'( or ) –C–D–G–c–e–a, and, under a separate heading, ‘mandora’ is given as D ( or ) –E ( or ) –F–G–c–f–a–d' (i.e. the same tuning but a 4th higher) or E–A–d–g–b–e' (identical to that of the modern guitar)

The playing technique for the mandora involves the same basic right-hand finger style as for all 18th-century lutes and, because of the tuning intervals of the upper five courses, a left-hand technique that is similar to that of the 18th-century guitar.

Works

There are about 55 sources of mandora music in tablature

Tablature

Tablature is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches....

, all in manuscript (none printed) and nearly all of Germanic origin. These contain solos, duets, song accompaniments, and chamber music. Few studies have appeared and very little of the music has been transcribed and published: critical editions are especially rare. Many have no composers attributed but in recent years studies of concordances are beginning to uncover music by composers such as S.L. Weiss and Johann Anton Logy. The sources do mention some composers' names; Duke Clement of Bavaria, Placidus von Camerloher, Johann Paul Schiffelholz

Johann Paul Schiffelholz

Johann Paul Schiffelholz , was a German Baroque composer and an important composer for the variety of baroque lute called a mandora , as well as writing the usual trio sonatas, etc., for the violin family instruments...

, J.M. Zink, Andrea Mayr, Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello

Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello

Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello was an Italian Baroque composer and violinist.His name is mentioned the first time in a document from 1715 in which the Elector of Bavaria appointed him violinist in his court orchestra in Munich...

and others. Other composers include Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually...

who wrote 6 concerti for flute, gallichon and strings, J.F. Daube and Johann Albrechtsberger, whose three concertinos for ‘mandora’, ‘crembalum’ (jaw harp) and strings have been performed and recorded.

Scottish mandora

Like the mandora described above, it is in "lute" form, but it is a tenor instrument of five paired courses. The string length is variable, like all of the lute family, but generally in the range of 32 to 36 cm. Tuning patterns are unique, the intervals between courses being alternating fourths and fifths, for example d-g-d'-g'-d". There is a book of tunes in French tablature from about 1620 called The Skene Mandora Book, available on microfilm as a loan to members of the Lute Society of America, or as part of The Ancient Melodies of Scotland, available through Google Books.

A principal source of music for the Scottish variant of the instrument can be found in The Ancient Melodies of Scotland by William Dauney. This book is a history of Scottish music, and contains some information on the mandora. Dauney makes it clear that the mandora for which the tunes in the Skene Manuscript are written is the same instrument that Mersenne called the "mandore