Mandolin

The mandolin is a plucked string instrument created shortly before the end of the 17th century. It is a refinement of the mandola, an instrument going back to the Middle Ages, whose name is recorded as early as 1210; very few instruments today can claim such an old origin. In 17th-century northern Italy a smaller mandola with fewer strings began to be made, and this new instrument was called 'mandolino', which simply means 'little mandola'. The historian of the instrument Konrad Wölki corrected a common misunderstanding: it was the Milanese mandolin that developed directly from the mandola, while the Neapolitan mandolin only borrowed its name.

A little later, as a whole family of instruments grew up around the Neapolitan mandolin, including larger, deeper-sounding mandolins, the name 'mandola' was used again, now for an alto mandolin. In this sense it was simply a large mandolin and had nothing to do with the older 'mandola'.

Various other types of mandolin appeared and, as was the custom, were named after the town where they were first made. So within a few years, besides the Milanese, Florentine and Neapolitan mandolins, there were the Genoese (5–6 strings), the Paduan (5 strings), the Roman (4 strings), the Sienese (4–5 courses) and the Sicilian (with double or triple courses). The Ionian Islands mandolin has 4 courses (E–A–D–G).