Mandore [Mandorre].

A small, treble-ranged member of the lute family with its own distinct tuning and repertory, which was used mainly in France from the middle of the 16th century to the end of the 17th. In some examples the pear-shaped body, short neck and peg box were carved from a single piece of wood. The bodies of most, however, were constructed with separate ribs like a lute. The fingerboard was flush with the flat soundboard, to which the flat bridge was glued. It normally had four single gut strings, but five and six were also found, sometimes with the lower ones in doubled courses like a lute (hence the contemporary term: Mandore luthée). The French were quite consistent in their use of the term ‘mandore’, but writers from the 19th century onwards have often mistakenly used the term ‘mandora’ to mean not only the instrument under discussion but the Italian mandolino and other lute-like instruments as well. (See Mandolin, §1 and Mandora; the latter term is properly reserved for the large 18th-century German type of bass lute). Praetorius identifies the instrument using the German terms: Mandürichen, Bandürichen, Mandoër, Mandurinichen, Mandüraen and, uniquely, Pandurina.

The tuning employed was a combination of 4ths and 5ths with alternatives for the first string: c'–g'–c''–g''. The first could be tuned down a tone to f'' (à chorde avallée; see Cordes avallées), or a minor third to e'' (accord en tierce). These tunings are given by Mersenne (Harmonicorum libri, 1635), but Praetorius, (Syntagma musicum, ii, 1618, 2/1619/R) gives two five-course tunings: c–g–c'–g'–c'', and c–f–c'–f'–c'', and another four-course one: g–d'–g'–d'', all of which imply the existence of a somewhat larger but still treble instrument. While the characteristic 5th–4th tunings are found in all mandore music sources, an exception is found in the Scottish manuscript of John Skene, in which one group of pieces calls for ‘the old tune of the lutt’: c'–f'–a'–d''–g''. The pitch is unspecified in Skene, but the tuning was documented by James Talbot, whose manuscript (c1685–1701, GB-Och) shows that it was the same as the standard tuning of the first five courses of a Renaissance lute at the upper octave.

Contemporary descriptions and the music sources reveal that a variety of right-hand plucking techniques were employed: thumb, index and middle finger in lute fashion; index finger alone, with a small quill plectrum fastened to it; a plectrum held between the thumb and index finger, used exclusively or in conjunction with the middle or third finger. Left-hand technique involved fingering similar to that of the violin, or any other small instrument with a short open string length.

The origin of the mandore clearly derives from the small, late-medieval lute known as the Gittern, which is seen in iconographic sources from all over Europe and England. In Germany it was known as the Quinterne, as illustrated by Virdung (Musica getutscht, 1511) and Agricola (Musica instrumentalis, 1529). We know nothing about the tuning of the gittern in this period. In later Spanish sources, such as Bermudo (Declaración de instrumentos, 1555) and Covarrubias (Tesoro de la lingua castellana, 1611), we learn that the term Bandurria was used for this type of instrument and that its three to five strings were tuned in 5ths and 4ths, though no specific pitches are given (see Tyler, 1981, p.23). The earliest surviving technical information from France is a tablature tuning chart for the ‘mandore’ in François Merlin and Jacques Cellier's manuscript (Recherches de plusiers singularités, c1583–7, F-Pn fr. 9152), which shows the later four-course instrument tuned in 5ths and 4ths, but gives no specific pitches.

The first known music for the instrument was Brunet's Tablature de Mandorre (1578) and Le Roy's L'instruction pour la mandorre (1585), both published in Paris, and both unfortunately lost. The earliest surviving music, dating from about 1626, is found in the manuscripts belonging to Anton Schermar. These sources contain a predominantly French repertory of airs and dances associated with the court of Louis XIII, as well as instructions for intabulating music for the mandore and lute. Indeed, all known sources specifically for mandore are in tablature. The beautiful print of Chancy's Tablature de mandore (1629), dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, contains seven suites containing unmeasured preludes (‘recherche’), courants, sarabands and branles. The Skene Manuscript (c1625–35) is the only surviving source to contain a significant number of items not of French provenance: many of the pieces are well-known Elizabethan and Jacobean items along with Scottish popular songs and dances, in addition to French and Italian items, all arranged for the mandore.

By the end of the 17th century the small mandore, with its distinctive tuning and playing technique, apparently was obsolete. The larger instruments mentioned in Talbot's manuscript, with lute-like tuning intervals more like Praetorius's ‘Kleine Octavlaut’ or the Spanish vandola, are described under the names ‘mandore’ and ‘arch mandore’ (although, confusingly, the overall classification is labelled ‘mandole’). Talbot also gives a tuning of c'c''–f'f''–a'a'–d''–g'' (without the measurements of a corresponding instrument), which is close to that of the small Italian mandolino of the period. Furetiere's Essai d'un Dictionnaire (1685) has no entry for mandore, just a sentence at the end of the entry for ‘luth’ which mentions the instrument in reference to the term ‘luthée’. His Dictionnaire universel (1690) does include mandore, but the discussion mainly concerns classical etymology.

In the 18th century, Walther's Musicalisches Lexicon (1732) merely repeats information from Praetorius and Furetiere under the entry ‘Mandola’ and gives no indication that the instrument was in current use. This entry, apparently, was the first to equate the term ‘Mandora’ with mandore, even though Walther's German contemporaries were using the term mandora to mean a large bass lute. Most subsequent dictionary writers have copied Walther, hence the confusion which still hinders the study of these instruments to this day.

Joseph Carpentier's 1er Recueil de Menuets (c1765) for the wire-strung ‘guitthare Allemande’ (see English guitar) indicates that the music can also be played on the Spanish guitar and the ‘Mandore’. While not enough research has been done to identify the precise nature of Carpentier's mandore, it is clear that it had no relation to the classic French mandore of the 16th and 17th centuries.

SOURCES OF MANDORE MUSIC

printed

manuscripts

music in French tablature and for five-course mandore unless otherwise stated

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Koczirz: ‘Zur Geschichte der Mandorlaute’, Die Gitarre, ii (1920–21), 21–36

A. Koczirz: ‘Eine Gitarren- und Lautenhandschrift aus der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, AMw, viii (1926), 433–40

M. Prynne: ‘James Talbot's Manuscript, IV: Plucked Strings – the Lute Family’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 52–68

E. Pohlmann: Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone (Bremen, 1968, enlarged 5/1982)

D. Gill: ‘The de Gallot guitar books’, EMc, vi (1978), 79–87

W. Boetticher: ‘Zur inhaltlichen Bestimmung des für Laute intavolierten Handschriftenbestands’, AcM, li (1979), 193–203

D. Gill: ‘Mandore and Calachon’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.19 (1980), 61–3

J. Tyler: The Early Guitar: a History and Handbook (London, 1980)

D. Gill: ‘Mandores and Colachons’, GSJ, xxxiv (1981), 130–41

J. Tyler: ‘The Mandore in the 16th and 17th Centuries’, EMc, ix (1981), 22–31

D. Gill: ‘Alternative Lutes: the Identity of 18th-Century Mandores and Gallichones’, The Lute, xxvi (1986), 51–62

D. Gill: ‘The Skene Mandore Manuscript’, The Lute, xxviii (1988), 19–33

J. Tyler and P. Sparks: The Early Mandolin: the Mandolino and the Neapolitan Mandoline (Oxford, 1989)

D. Gill: ‘Intabulating for the Mandore: Some Notes on a 17th-Century Workbook’, The Lute, xxxiv (1994), 28–36

JAMES TYLER