mandola

The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Ireland and UK) is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola (C3-G3-D4-A4), a fifth lower than a mandolin. The mandola, though now rarer, is an ancestor of the mandolin. (The word mandolin means little mandola.) Overview The name mandola may originate with the ancient pandura, and is also rendered as mandora, the change perhaps having been due to approximation to the Italian word for "almond". The instrument developed from the lute at an early date, being more compact and cheaper to build, but the sequence of development and nomenclature in different regions is now hard to discover. Historically related instruments include the mandore, mandole, vandola (Joan Carles Amat, 1596), bandola, bandora, bandurina, pandurina and – in 16th-century Germany – the quinterne or chiterna. However, significantly different instruments have at times and places taken on the same or similar names, and the "true" mandola has been strung in several different ways. The mandola has four double courses of metal strings, tuned in unison. The scale length is typically around 42 cm (16.5 inches). The mandola is typically played with a plectrum (pick). The double strings accommodate a sustaining technique called tremolando, a rapid alternation of the plectrum on a single course of strings.