The line of short lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria, Gandhara, and Northwest India, and shown in sculpture from the 2nd century BC through the 4th or 5th centuries AD. The line of long lutes may have developed into the tamburs and pandura.

From the surviving images, theorists have categorized the Mesopotamian lutes, showing that they developed into a long variety and a short. 3100 BC or earlier (now in the possession of the British Museum) shows what is thought to be a woman playing a stick lute. The earliest image showing a lute-like instrument came from Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. Musicologists have put forth examples of that 4th-century BC technology, looking at engraved images that have survived. (right): Spanish stele of a girl with a pandura, 2nd century A.D. (Left): Hellenistic banquet scene from the 1st century AD, Hadda, Gandhara. He felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the 4th-century BC civilization that took the primitive technology and created 'technically and artistically well made harps, lyres, citharas and lutes.' First lutes In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not currently known. This picture of musical bow to harp bow is theory and has been contested.

Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords. From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes, creating bow harps, harps and lyres. 13,000 BC, a cave painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow, a hunting bow used as a single-stringed musical instrument. Hunting bow or musical instrument on cave wallĭating to c. Residents of Asia were playing them as far back as the 2nd century A.D. Muslims picked these instruments in Central Asia, calling them barbat and oud. These instruments developed from short-handled lutes that entered Christian Europe from Muslim Sicily and Spain. They toured Europe and America, and their performances created a stir that helped the mandolin to become widely popular.Īlthough the modern instruments date to the 18th century, ancestral instruments of similar construction and range, the mandore and gittern, were used across Europe (including Spain, Italy, England, France, Germany and Poland) centuries earlier. The deep bowled mandolin, especially the Neapolitan form, became common in the 19th century, following the appearance of an international hit, the Spanish Students. Credit for creating the modern bowlback version of the instrument goes to the Vinaccia family of Naples. The instrument was played across Europe but then disappeared after the Napoleonic Wars. The mandolin is a modern member of the lute family, dating back to Italy in the 18th century. This used to be the common picture of the mandolin, an obscure instrument of romance in the hands of a Spanish nobleman. In 1787 Luigi Bassi played the role of Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera, serenading a woman with a mandolin.

Mandola italian stringed instruments