A mandolin orchestra is an orchestra consisting primarily of instruments from the mandolin family of instruments, such as the mandolin, mandola, mandocello and mandobass or mandolone. Some mandolin orchestras use guitars and double-basses instead of, or as well as, the lower mandolin-family instruments.
A mandolin orchestra is an ensemble of plucked string instruments similar in structure to the string sections of a symphony orchestra. There are first and second mandolin sections (analogous to first and second violins); a mandola section (analogous to the viola section); mandocelli (analogous to the violoncelli), classical guitars, and a bass section originally of mando-basses but nowadays more likely to be acoustic bass guitar or double bass.
The classical guitar section is very important and many orchestras are more accurately described as mandolin and guitar orchestras. Many orchestras also include a percussion section.
Most mandolin orchestras are community-based and are supported by a core of professional musicians and teachers with a passion for plucked string instruments and music. They are found in nearly all major cities in the western world, as well as Japan, Korea, and South America.
The stimulus to create mandolin groups often came from travelling mandolinists and teachers. Immigration from Europe to other parts of the world resulted in the concept spreading rapidly, with movements beginning quite early in the US, Japan and Australia. Some indication of the speed of these developments across the globe can be appreciated by the following:
On reviewing the S.S. Stewart's "Banjo and Guitar Journal", later called "Banjo, Guitar and Mandolin Journal", between 1884 and 1900 [7] one comes to a view, at least in the US and Australia, that mandolin ensemble playing evolved within the banjo movement, eventually replacing it as the better ensemble instrument.
Mandolin orchestras were popular in the early 20th century, and many cities and schools had one.[ citation needed ]
A considerable body of music was created, much of which was simple or popular marches and foxtrots that were easy and fun to play. However, some "serious" music was also created and which requires every bit as much skill to play as anything in the more well-known violin repertoire. Principal among the important composers of such music were Raffaele Calace, Arrigo Cappelletti, Giuseppe Manente and Carlo Munier, who all wrote beautiful and virtuosic music for various mandolin chamber music ensembles (mandolin and guitar, two mandolins and mandola, etc. as well as full orchestras).
After World War I, the mandolin orchestras went into a period of decline in the US. Orchestras continued to exist in Japan, and Germany where they are known as Zupforchester, and also in Italy.
In Canada, new mandolin orchestras were organized in Toronto, Winnipeg and other cities by left-wing immigrants from Eastern Europe. [8] [9] Frequently performing in labour halls, these groups were sometimes under government scrutiny, suspected of spreading socialist propaganda. [10] Children's orchestras were also formed in Ukrainian communities. [11]
The New York Mandolin Orchestra continued to perform during World War II. [12]
Interest in the mandolin was renewed as a part of the resurgent interest in folk music in the late 1950s and 1960s. As this music began to be re-discovered, orchestras began to form anew in large cities in the US.
In the modern era, many cities in the US host mandolin orchestras of many years experience; many have libraries of hundreds of compositions. Significant new music continues to be written all over the world by composers including Victor Kioulaphides, John Craton, Annette Kruisbrink, Clarice Assad, Francine Trester and Jeff Hijlkema.
| Composer | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Clarice Assad | Song for My Father (2004) | Trekel |
| Betty Beath | Lament for Kosovo | |
| Bernard van Beurden (b. 1933) | Le silence du moment (2003) | |
| Cesar Bresgen (1913-1988) | Tanzstücke (1967) | Breitkopf & Härtel |
| Turkmenische Suite (1968) | Breitkopf & Härtel | |
| John Craton | The Legend of Princess Noccalula | |
| Danseries Anciennes | ||
| Philip Dewalt | Zephyrisms (2010) | Trekel |
| Hans Gál (1890-1987) | Biedermeiertänze, op. 66 (1954) | Trekel |
| Capriccio (1948) | Trekel | |
| Sinfonietta No. 1, op. 81 (1961) | Trekel | |
| Sinfonietta No. 2, op. 86 (1966) | Trekel | |
| John Goodin (1951-2001) | Another Late Spring in Iowa (2004) | |
| Bethlehem On the Ohio (2007) | ||
| Cathedral Hill (2001) | ||
| Heavens On Earth: New Harmony, Equity, Shakertown (1994) | Trekel | |
| Last Call at Hawley-Cooke (2008) | ||
| The Louisville Suite: Up River Road, Cave Hill, Locust Grove (1990) | Trekel | |
| Smitten (2006) | ||
| The Waltz Lesson (2008) | ||
| Wedding March Set (2007) | ||
| Bruce Graybill (b. 1956) | The Walnut Valley Suite (three movements) 1999 | Mando Kinetics |
| The Wake | ||
| Ritual Dance | ||
| The Procession | ||
| Owen Hartford | Family Squabble (2000) | |
| Jeff Hijlkema (b. 1971) | Perpetua Melomania | |
| Joel R. Hobbs (b. 1963) | In Memory of Nell Wilson Pond (2012) | Hyoshi |
| Memories from the Future (2015) | Creative Commons | |
| James J. Kellaris (b. 1956) | Au Café Cardamome (2022) | |
| Emozione Chelate (2017) | ||
| Philoxenia (2016) | ||
| Persephonia II (2015) | Trekel | |
| Persephonia (2014) | ||
| Chrysopylae Reflections (2012) | ||
| Kalamazoo Suite (2010) | ||
| Kalamazoo Swag (2009) | Trekel | |
| Victor Kioulaphides (b. 1961) | Concerto per orchestra a pizzico | |
| Sinfonia a pizzico | ||
| Broadway `79 2 mandolins and mandolin orchestra | ||
| Barbara Kolb (b. 1939) | Aubade (2003) | Boosey & Hawkes |
| Annette Kruisbrink (b 1958) | Dreamtime (1997) | Vogt & Fritz |
| Gone with the Wind (1999) | Vogt & Fritz | |
| Yasuo Kuwahara (1946-2003) | Song of the Japanese Autumn | |
| Chiel Meijering (b. 1954) | Spötterdämmerung (1997) | Donemus |
| Dimitri Nicolau (1946-2008) | Dances & Melodies, op. 125 | Trekel |
| In Memoriam a S. Behrend, op. 102 | Trekel | |
| Francine Trester | Three Movements for Mandolin Orchestra (2006) |
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, in modern forms usually made of plastic, originally of animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th-century minstrel show fad, followed by mass-production and mail-order sales, including instruction method books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but 5-string and 4-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 21st century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, but was also used in some rock, pop and even hip-hop music. Among rock bands, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Some famous pickers of the banjo are Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
A folk instrument is a traditional musical instrument that has remained largely restricted to traditional folk music, and is not usually used in the classical music or other elite and formal musical genres of the culture concerned, though related intruments may be.
The mandocello is a plucked string instrument of the mandolin family. It is larger than the mandolin, and is the baritone instrument of the mandolin family. Its eight strings are in four paired courses, with the strings in each course tuned in unison. Overall tuning of the courses is in fifths like a mandolin, but beginning on bass C (C2). It can be described as being to the mandolin what the cello is to the violin.
The mandolin-banjo is a hybrid instrument, combining a banjo body with the neck and tuning of a mandolin. It is a soprano banjo. It has been independently invented in more than one country, variously being called mandolin-banjo,banjo-mandolin,banjolin and banjourine in English-speaking countries, banjoline and bandoline in France, and the Cümbüş in Turkey.
The octave mandolin or octave mandola is a fretted string instrument with four pairs of strings tuned in fifths, G−D−A−E, an octave below a mandolin. It is larger than the mandola, but smaller than the mandocello and its construction is similar to other instruments in the mandolin family. Usually the courses are all unison pairs but the lower two may sometimes be strung as octave pairs with the higher-pitched octave string on top so that it is hit before the thicker lower-pitched string. Alternate tunings of G−D−A−D and A−D−A−D are often employed by Celtic musicians.
Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate. Plucking can be done with either a finger or a plectrum.
The Mandobass is the largest member of the mandolin family, sometimes used as the bass instrument in mandolin orchestras. It is so large that players usually hold it like a double bass—upright and supported on an endpin that rests on the floor. The neck-scale length on a full-size mando-bass is similar to that of a standard orchestral double bass viol: about 43 inches (110 cm). The instrument is otherwise similar to the smaller, higher-pitched members of the mandolin family, having a fretted neck, a headstock with geared tuning machines, and a large resonating body often—but not always—shaped like other mandolins.
Giuseppe Pettine was an Italian-American concert mandolinist, teacher, and composer.
Carlo Munier (1858–1911) was an Italian musician who advocated for the mandolin's acknowledgement among as an instrument of classical music and focused on "raising and ennobling the mandolin and plectrum instruments". He wanted "great masters" to consider the instrument and raise it above the level of "dilettantes and street players" where it had been stuck for centuries. He expected that the mandolin and guitar would be taught in serious orchestral music schools and incorporated into the orchestra. A composer of more than 350 works for the mandolin, he led the mandolin orchestra Reale circolo mandolinisti Regina Margherita named for its patron Margherita of Savoy and gave the queen instruction on the mandolin. As a teacher, he wrote Scuola del mandolino: metodo completo per mandolino, published in 1895.
Giovanni Hoffmann was a composer and mandolinist who dwelled in Vienna, c. 1800, and has works preserved in the Austrian Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde archives in Vienna. Konrad Wölki said that he produced an "extensive creative output," for mandolin with other instruments, to include duets, a concerto, "quartets, divertimenti, sonatas and further works in different forms."
Matthew Warren Flinner is an American mandolinist, music transcriber, and ensemble leader. Mike Marshall has called him "one of the truly great young mandolinists of our generation."
Giovanni Vailati was an Italian mandolinist who reached the virtuosic-level of playing ability and was able to travel and perform throughout Europe. Entirely self taught on his instrument, he was described by Philip J. Bone as a "natural genius on his instrument, who by his remarkable performances, became known throughout his native land as 'Vailati the blind, the Paganini of the mandolin.'" He is important as one of the first generations of quality performers to use mandolin. He was one of a small number of mandolinists of the 19th century to play the mandolin in the concert halls of Europe after the Napoleonic War, who played with excellence in spite of indifference and diffidence toward their chosen instrument. Pietro Vimercati was another, whose concerts predated Vailati's by about 30 years. Also performing in Europe in the years following 1815 was Luigi Castellacci.
Giovanni Battista Gervasio was an Italian musician and composer. Born in Naples he was one of the first generation of virtuoso-mandolinists who left Italy and played the mandolin in Europe in the 18th century. He was a composer for the mandolin and his works can be found scattered in 18th century collections such as the Gimo music collection and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. He also wrote a mandolin method Methode facile pour apprendre a quatre cordes, instrument pour les dames, published in Paris in 1767. He performed in London 1768 and in Frankfurt-on-the-Main on December 10, 1777, and the Concert Spirituel in Paris on December 24, 1784. He advertised in 1785 that he was master of singing and mandolin to Her Royal Highess, the Princess of Prussia. A work of music addressed to her exists today in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Konrad Wölki was a German composer, mandolinist and music educator who contributed to the musically critical appreciation of the Zupforchesters. Historian Paul Sparks labeled Wölki "the founding father of modern German plucked-string music."
The mandolin has had a place in North American culture since the 1880s, when a "mandolin craze" began. The continent was a land of immigrants, including Italian immigrants, some of whom brought their mandolins with them. In spite of the mandolin having arrived in America, it was not in the cultural consciousness until after 1880 when the Spanish Students arrived on their international performing tour. Afterwards, a "mandolin craze" swept the United States, with large numbers of young people taking up the instrument and teachers such as Samuel Siegel touring the United States. The fad died out after World War I, but enough had learned the instrument that it remained. The mandolin found a new surge with the music of Bill Monroe; the Gibson F-5 mandolin he played, as well as other archtop instruments, became the American standard for mandolins. Bowlback mandolins were displaced. The instrument has been taken up in blues, bluegrass, jug-band music, country, rock, punk and other genres of music. While not as popular as the guitar, it is widespread across the country.
The mandolin is a modern member of the lute family, dating back to Italy in the 18th century. The instrument was played across Europe but then disappeared after the Napoleonic Wars. Credit for creating the modern bowlback version of the instrument goes to the Vinaccia family of Naples. The deep bowled mandolin, especially the Neapolitan form, became common in the 19th century, following the appearance of an international hit, the Spanish Students. They toured Europe and America, and their performances created a stir that helped the mandolin to become widely popular.
Following its invention and 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 Europe in the Americas and in Japan. Travelling mandolin virtuosi like Carlo Curti, Giuseppe Pettine, Raffaele Calace and Silvio Ranieri contributed to the mandolin becoming a "fad" instrument in the early 20th century. 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.
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