Alemanda - niccoló ceccherini for mandolino by alex timmerman

'Alemanda' by Niccoló Ceccherini (active ca. 1700) performed by Alex Timmerman on the Mandolino, the oldest scion of in the Mandolin family. This music for Mandolino by Ceccherini is found in a manuscript dated 1703 compiled by a certain Signor Matteo Caccini with the title 'Libro per la Mandola'. The manuscript is now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Rés. Vmb.ms.9) in Paris, France. A modern type setting of this music is found in the wonderful book ‘The early Mandolin’ written by James Tyler and Paul Sparks published in England by Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989). The Mandolino with its double trings of lamb gut is of Italian origin. The first time the name ‘Mandolino’ (as a diminutive of the ‘Mandol[l]a’, its somewhat bigger sister instrument, comes from written sources of the last quarter of the 17th Century. It is therefore the first mandolin kind to be named as such and that gives weight to the idea that it can be seen as the ancestor of all mandolins. The Mandolino at this early time had four double strings of gut that were tuned in fourths, like: e’e’ – a’a’ – d”d” – g”g”. Often survived instruments show that the peg head of the Mandolino carried, instead of 8, only 7 tuning pegs. Something that implies that the top-string, or ‘chanterelle’, was, because of its vulnerability, single strung. Around 1700 a fifth string pair was added to the lowest string side of the instrument and again some 20 years later, a sixth pair was common. Now the Mandolino and its tuning had reached its completion: gg – bb – e’e’ – a’a’ – d”d” – g”g”. In the 2nd quarter of the 18th Century musical instrument makers of Genua, Rome and Neaples developed metal strung mandolin variants that were tuned and played differently (with a quill of a birds feather) when compared with the older gut-strung Mandolino that was - as was the custom till then - primarily played with the fingers. The photos used for the introduction and end of this video show a detail of the painting titled the ‘Florentine musicians’ with a Mandola/Mandolino player playing his instrument finger style as was common at that time. The painting is one of many on which mandolinists are depicted playing the Mandolino with the fingers of the right hand. The ‘Florentine musicians’ was made around 1685 by Antonio Domenico Gabbiani (1652-1726) and shows seven musicians who, as is believed today, served at the Court of the Granprincipe Ferdinando de’ Medici in Florence. Today it is preserved at the Galleria Palatina in Florence, Italy. Text by Alex Timmerman. Video by HET CONSORT ©, Zwolle, Netherlands, April 2008.