A mandolin is a stringed instrument with eight strings in four pairs and a rounded wood shell. The mandolin is a type of lute that belongs to the chordophone family. Vibrating strings produce the sound of chordophone instruments. The mandolin, like its neighbors the mandola and bouzoukis, is classified as a cittern because it is plucked with a plectrum, similar to a guitar pick, rather than a bow, as a violin is.
Because their pairs of strings correspond to the four strings of the smaller instrument, mandolins are tuned similarly to violins. Strings made of wire or sinew are suspended between two end points in chordophones. The tone is determined the distance and tautness between those anchor points. Mandolin strings are tuned in unison and differ a fifth of a note from the next pair. The mandolin has several variations, including the mandola, which is tuned a fifth lower, the mandobass, which is tuned like an upright bass, and the mandocello, which is tuned an entire octave below the mandolin.
The mandolin evolved from an ancient lute to a modern American folk instrument through several stages. The Oud, which means “wood,” is a hollowed wood bowl with strings that originated in Mesopotamia. Many European countries modified this basic chordophone adding strings, frets, lengthening or shortening the strings, and altering the shape of the body. The Mandolin’s direct ancestor, the Mandola (Italian for “almond”), rose to prominence in fifteenth-century Italy.
Italians brought their beloved instrument to America in the 1830s and 1880s, respectively, during the first and second waves of immigration. When the round-backed variety first appeared on the scene, Orville Gibson, a musician and manufacturer, made significant changes to modernize the relic. Gibson remade the mandolin as an American pastime in the early twentieth century, as vaudeville and jazz became popular music forms, flattening the back, curving the neck, adding a fingerboard, and other innovations to make it easier to learn. Ordinary people gravitated toward the reinvented instrument for evening entertainment in parlors and theaters across the country. Mandolins remained popular even after vaudeville theater died out in the 1930s. Their distinctive sound is now associated with a wide range of musical genres, including jazz, country, folk, bluegrass, classical, and even electric rock.