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STRING THEORY
Th e mandolin and violin share some interesting intersections.
From the cave paintings at Three
Brothers Cave in France came evidence
of the proto-proto-mandolin, a crude
lute-like instrument with one string.
Or perhaps this cave drawing, which depicts
a hunting bow converted to a musical
instrument, represents the great-great-greatgreat
great-great-grandmother of what we
know as the violin.
These two seemingly different instruments
share the same tuning – G, D, A, E – so a violin
player could switch to mandolin and crank out
the same Bach sonatas. Likewise, a mandolin
player could heft a violin under her chin and
spool out “Rickett’s Reel,” transmuting said
instrument from violin to fi ddle.
As humans traveled, pillaged and collided
culturally, their instruments ended up in new
hands to be played around new fi res with new
types of fermented beverages. Thus, common
roots stem from Middle Eastern instruments
infl uencing European instrument makers, as
both the mandolin and violin chart back to
6 CENTERBILL • NOVEMBER 2017
Arabic origins. (The mandolin traces
to the “oud” and the violin to the
“rabab.”)
The two share a notable historic turn
in Italy albeit 100 years apart. In the
1500s in northern Italy, an instrument
evolved from the design of the viola
di braccio, and an instrument maker
named Andrea Amati of Cremora
landed on record as the fi rst known
creator of the modern violin in 1555.
The oldest surviving violin dates to
1560 and belongs to Amati. The
most well-known Italian violin maker,
Antonio Stradivari, apprenticed with
Amati’s grandson. Stradivari set the
standard for the violin in the late
1600s and early 1700s, at the time
when the Latin mandora, part of the
lute family, entered the stream of
Italian life.
The Italians invented a smaller
version of the mandora, called it
the mandolina, and by the 1800s,
the mandolin enjoyed a happy,
abundant life in Italian music. During
the great immigration of the late
1800s to America, Italians packed
their mandolins and introduced this
delightful little instrument to the New
World.
In 1898, an American luthier named
Orville Gibson won a patent for an
arch-top design on the traditional
bowl-backed Italian mandolin.
The American mandolin was born.
Gibson instruments became a
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