Instruments
Mandolin
The mandolin is a small plucked stringed instrument with a characteristic body shape that might be likened to a half pear, sliced vertically; it typically has eight strings, although in the mandolin's original heyday during classical music's Renaissance era, there were often six. Usually the body is made up of many small ribs, although it may be carved from a single piece of wood. The mandolin was one of a group of similar stringed instruments that arose in the late sixteenth century, all variously known by the names of mandora, mandola, bandora, bandurria, and others; "mandolin" is a diminutive. The four-string (or four-pair-string) instrument evolved in Naples, Italy, in the eighteenth century, and since then has carried overtones of Italian serenade singing. Popular in many countries, it flourished in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as groups of amateur players joined themselves together in huge mandolin orchestras. The inclusion of the mandolin in some country string bands, and its later rise to prominence as the virtuoso instrument par excellence of bluegrass music, may have been due to the influence of these orchestras.