Product Code Database
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 Perfect fifth 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. Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, by Sibyl Marcuse (Corrected Edition 1975) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and others (2001)
The internal bracing also bears some similarity to the mandolin. Gibson's mandocellos were typically constructed with a single transverse brace on the top just below the oval soundhole. Modern builders also use X-bracing.
As is typical of the mandolin family, mandocellos can be found with either a single oval soundhole or a pair of "F" soundholes.
These instruments typically have between 18 and 22 ; concert bowl-back instruments may have more frets permitting virtuoso passage work in the upper register.
There are 10-string/5-course mandocellos, containing an additional course of strings above the 1st (highest) course, sometimes termed a liuto cantabile or liuto moderno, although these instruments remain technically mandocellos & many companies make them.
The first evidence of modern metal-string mandolins is from literature regarding popular Italian players who travelled through Europe teaching and giving concerts. Notable are Signor Gabriele Leone, Giovanni Battista Gervasio, Pietro Denis, who travelled widely between 1750 and 1810. This, together with the records gleaned from the Italian Vinaccia family of luthiers in Naples, Italy, has led musicologists to believe that the family of modern steel-string mandolins were developed in Naples by the Vinaccia family.
Mandolin ensembles were popular in the late Baroque period, and a number of instruments were added to the family around this time, including the Mandolone a flat-backed, bass instrument, "much larger than the liuto" with "four heavy wound strings" tuned (in fourths) to A2-D3-G3-C4. This instrument may have been the direct precursor of the mandocello.
It was during this decline in popularity that Pasquale Vinaccia (1806–1885) made his modifications to the instrument that his family made for generations, creating the Neapolitan mandolin.
The mandolin was largely forgotten outside of Italy by that point, but the stage was set for it to become known again, starting with the Paris Exposition in 1878. Vinaccia modernized several members of the mandolin family, improving resonance, increasing ranges, and adding features. In addition to creating the Neapolitan mandolin c. 1835, he reconceived the mandalone and related instruments, which had limited range, and a much quieter tone than the treble mandolins. The Neopolitan mandocello he developed had increased volume, extended range, and effectively superseded the mandolone as the bass instrument of the mandolin family.
Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1878, the mandolin's popularity began to rebound. In particular, the Spanish Estudiantina Figaro, an "association of young teachers, musicians ... created and established in Madrid forming a magnificent band of guitars, bandurrias and violins" attracted widespread attention.
This was followed by a wave of Italian mandolinists traveling in Europe in the 1880s and 1890s, and in the United States by the mid-1880s, playing and teaching their instrument. The instrument's popularity continued to increase during the 1890s and mandolin popularity was at its height in the "early years of the 20th century. Thousands were taking up the instrument as a pastime, and it became an instrument of society, taken up by young men and women. Mandolin orchestras were formed worldwide, incorporating the mandolin family of instruments—mandolins, , mandocellos, and even —as well as guitars, double basses and zithers.
Around this time, the Gibson company began building mandocellos in the style of their mandolins with arched tops and backs. Gibson is known to have produced at least four models of mandocello between 1905 and the 1920s: the K-1, K-2, K-4, and K-5. Other American instrument companies also produced mandocellos.
After the 1930s the popularity of mandolin ensembles once again began to decline, though not as completely as it had in the 19th century. Mandolins continued to be produced, but production of other members of the family decreased significantly, although—with the possible exception of the mandobass—it never died out completely. Ian Pommerenke, The Mandolin in the early to mid 19th Century, Lanarkshire Guitar and Mandolin Association Newsletter, Spring 2007.
The average range, therefore, is about three-and-a-half octaves, with the exact range depending on the number of frets on the individual instrument: from two octaves below middle C up to D#5/Eb5, in the octave above middle C, (with 18 frets), to as high as A5, with 24 frets.
On 10-string/5-course instruments an additional string-pair, placed above the first course, is tuned to E4 E4, adding an additional half-octave or so to the upper range up to E6.
The mandocello also has a role in modern folk music, such as Bluegrass music or Celtic music. In this setting the flat-back mandocello is typically used. The mandocello's lower range does not produce the bright, projecting sound of the mandolin or mandola, and its use in this setting has been generally eclipsed by mandolin artists since Bill Monroe. The amplified instrument has infrequently been used in modern rock music groups. The bowl-back mandocello (mandoloncello) is traditionally used for Italian folk music.
The most historically significant mandocellist was Raffaele Calace, who wrote the first method book specifically for liuto cantabile, and is thought to have perfected the design of the instrument following its putative introduction by the Vinaccia family. Luigi Embergher also contributed significantly to advancements in the design of the instrument during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Geoff Goodman, New York born European jazz musician and composer, features both guitar and mandocello in his compositions.
Patterson Hood, front man for Drive-By Truckers, plays a mandocello made by Scott Baxendale of Baxendale Guitars in Athens Georgia. Baxendale starts with a vintage Harmony Company guitar and converts it from six string standard tuning to the mandocello.
Bryn Haworth uses a mandocello on his album, Let The Days Go By.
John Nagy and David Grisman play mandocello on the Earth Opera album, The Great American Eagle Tragedy.
Mike Marshall played a mandocello on his collaboration album Uncommon Ritual with Edgar Meyer and Béla Fleck and plays it live occasionally (for example with Darol Anger on violin).
Rick Nielsen of the band Cheap Trick has a stringed instrument collection that includes electric mandocellos custom made by Hamer Guitars. Such an instrument was used for the title track from their LP album Heaven Tonight, while their song "Mandocello", released on the band's debut album, used a standard acoustic mandocello. This song was later covered by Concrete Blonde and released on their album Still in Hollywood.
Jaco Pastorius, bassist for Weather Report, overdubbed a mandocello on their hit "Birdland." Heavy Weather liner notes
Richie Sambora, guitarist for Bon Jovi, used a mandocello on the song "Lay Your Hands on Me" from their acoustic album This Left Feels Right.
Elliott Sharp uses the mandocello in avant-garde as well as modern rock and blues settings, on such albums as Revenge of the Stuttering Child by poet Ronny Someck; with the contemporary blues band Elliott Sharp's Terraplane on the albums Sky Road Songs, 4AM Always, and Kick It Six; in duo with accordionist William Schimmel on Blues, Hues, and Views; and on E#’s solo mandocello album Mandocello.
|
|
