This is the final installment in a discussion about the banjo mandolin (aka mandolin banjo depending on the musical context). It is anchored in two independent US patents, from 1882 and 1885. The latter was issued to John Farris, who named his invention a banjolin. Both patents are detailed in the first part of this series along with the instrument’s initial commercial manifestations.
It entered into the realm of Irish traditional dance music early on, and the second part examines how its use there ultimately abated. The present text deals with a 4-string variant of the instrument, briefly noted previously, including a tutorial manual specifically for it. That book does not directly address Irish-style performance, but provides a relevant description of the instrument’s technical capabilities, including practical details about its setup.
By the end of the 19th century, banjo mandolins were available from several manufacturers. It was “to all intents and purposes a mandolin, being strung and fretted to the exact mandolin scale” but with the body of a small banjo. Farris’s design fits that description, with eight strings arranged in unison pairs. His patent was issued on 7 April 1885 (US315135) and he advertised the new instrument shortly thereafter in The Hartford County Directory for 1885–86.
The drawing in this ad can easily have been cloned from the patent but there is no indication of the design details of the alto banjolin, tenor banjolin, or bandolin cello. The 1888 yearbook of Yale University in the neighboring Connecticut county of New Haven, The Yale Banner, includes a comparable advertisement. The bandolin differs from the one in the 1885 ad by the sole but significant detail of now having four single strings.
The use of the 4-string banjolin at that date is corroborated by the 1888 yearbook of a college in Hartford, The Trinity Ivy, where it is part of an image heading the entry for the Upsilon Banjo Club (scan 116 of the linked facsimile; providing this post’s banner image), whose members played banjo, bandolin, and guitar. Farris ran an ad for two of those instruments in the 1895 edition of The Trinity Ivy (scan 230).
The earlier tenor banjolin has been replaced by a baritone, and the cello and bass are separate instruments. Whatever design variation there may have been among the various members of the banjolin family, it is reasonable to conclude that all had become 4-string instruments by 1888. This notion is supported by the 1895 sales offering of ordinary 8-string mandolins, which had become regular members of the widespread collegiate banjo, mandolin, and guitar clubs that had been established in the interim.
The 1895 ad also clarifies the banjay introduced tersely in 1888. Except for the wide bridge, the drawing of it appears to be identical to that of the banjeaurine — a 5-string banjo tuned a fourth higher than the ordinary 5-string banjo. Its range was equivalent to the mandolin’s and intended to provide a soprano voice to the banjo orchestra. Samuel S. Stewart is credited with having devised it, and its first appearance is normally dated to 1885.
Farris linked his banjay to the banjolin patent, raising a question about why the smallest banjay was the tenor. One possibility is that he deliberately left the soprano niche to the banjeaurine. In any case, a Farris “E&F Tenor Banjay” is seen in the following photo.
It is unclear if this is shown with its original bridge but the 1895 ad notes that banjays were supplied with two bridges. The ends of the wide one in the drawing rested on the instrument’s rim rather than its head. This was claimed in the patent as a means for offsetting the increase in downward pressure resulting from the use of steel strings, rather than the gut that was still customary on ordinary banjos.
The patent allowed for both materials but Farris preferred metal. The combined behavior of the bridge and head was further modulated by a “short post pressing against opposite sides of the membrane.” Its position was adjustable and the device could be removed from the instrument, entirely.
The second bridge provided with a banjay was of ordinary banjo design — “the longer giving a refined and delicate tone, the shorter a loud tone suitable for club use.” This option was not offered for the banjolin, which still featured “the patent sounding post [that] increases and diminishes the tone.” But that post was removable and there is no reason why someone wishing to put a banjolin to club use could not simply do so, replacing the wide bridge with a narrow one at the same time.
“Diamond” was the brand name Farris used for his line up of banjos. The price list under the separately headed Diamond Banjolin in the 1888 ad, indicates that it was available in several sizes. It is not clear, though, if there was any difference between it and the preceding banjolins branded only with Farris’s name.
In any case, the Diamond Banjolin being “used nightly in the leading music halls of London, England” means that he had established an export market. Its appearance on those stages suggests a particularly powerful sound, perhaps provided by a narrow bridge and no damping device. A banjolin could have been set up in that manner as easily as a banjay.
Lillie Western, named as one of that type of banjolin’s greatest exponents, was a renowned variety performer and an established multi-instrumentalist by the end of the 1870s. An article about her from 1881 lists the familiar banjo as part of her lineup, but not the newly popularized mandolin. It is easy to imagine her having taken note of the instrument melding the two, not long thereafter.
The 1923 catalog of the Vega Banjo Company illustrates 4-string and 8-string banjo mandolins, with narrow bridges and no damping device.
The eight string instrument is used more by Mandolin players. Although it has more volume of tone it does not cut through so much as the single string in a dance orchestra.
The Paramount Banjo catalog from 1924 offers “banjo-mandolins…made to order only” corresponding to each of seven tenor banjo models. It also presents a 4-string derivate called a Melody Banjo (scan 25), which retains the GDAE tuning of the regular banjo mandolin but extends the length of its strings. This presages the Irish tenor banjo, which is an ordinary such instrument retuned downward to GDAE.
A few years earlier, Salvator Léonardi published a trilingual Method for the Banjoline or Mandoline-Banjo (dated 1921 in the text). The choice of English, French, and Spanish indicates how the instrument had spread after its arrival in London. Léonardi corroborates that city being a nexus for the instrument’s European dissemination but appears to have been unaware of its earlier history in the US.
The open-back instrument to the left is the Farris design, which Léonardi calls a banjoline. He uses the term mandoline-banjo to designate the one with the integral resonator, on the right. This is a 4-string implementation of the design in the 1882 patent for a “Banjo” issued to Benjamin Bradbury (US262564). Léonardi notes:
The Mandoline which for various reasons, lost for a time the great popularity it once enjoyed, has now come to the front again, but in the shape of a Banjo, and is named Banjoline and Mandoline-Banjo. …
There is a slight difference in the make of these instruments. The Banjoline is with open back, like the American banjo, and the Mandoline-Banjo, with closed back like the English Zither-banjo. The Mandoline-Banjo sounds louder than the Banjoline, but its sound is tinny and metallic.
The most popular pattern is without a doubt the open back instrument. … This instrument with single strings, has a nice clear sound, and…is more simple to tune and much easier to finger. All leading amateur and professional players prefer it to the double strung instrument. …
I dedicate this tutor to the above named instrument [but it] can be used to teach or learn the ordinary italian mandoline.
The illustrations of both designs show the four-string forms but Léonardi allows for their being double strung.
The peculiar tone of the banjoline is caused by strings, which are supported by a bridge, on a very tightly stretched skin or vellum which forms a sounding board. When double strings are used as on a Mandoline-Banjo, ordinary Mandoline strings can be adapted. But for an instrument with single strings, they should be a shade stouter. I recommend that the first string (E) be of steel 2½ or 3, and the second (A) of steel 5.
The basic playing techniques Léonardi described are shared by players of all forms of banjo mandolin and ordinary mandolin, regardless of the type of music they are applied to. Here is one of his more virtuosic study pieces played on a double-strung closed-backed instrument.
The tutorial section starting on the page following it is headed “How to play in ‘Jazz’ style” and begins:
“Jazz” music as applied to the Banjoline is the manner of varying the rhythm of the whole or a part of the piece as to give it a skipping or syncopated effect.”
Subsequent exercises illustrate what is now termed “swing.” This is a rhythmic inequality in the performance of music written with notes of equal duration, and fundamental to several genres. The manifestation of swing varies among them in actual performance, but written instructions have largely the same appearance for all.
The following one of Léonardi’s exercises for swinging eighth-notes approximates the way it is done in jazz about as closely as in the traditional performance of Irish dance tunes. The final triplet in each measure is also played with the down-up-down picking pattern emphasized in instructions for Irish-style mandolin.
One approach to Irish cuts appears among the ornaments that Léonardi describes as “the grace notes most frequently used in modern music.”
That array includes what can similarly be seen as rolls. The varying rhythmic executions of this ornament in both classical and Irish contexts are discussed along with its earlier history, in a pair of posts here and here.
Léonardi does not provide procedural instructions for any of these ornaments. He distills that ever-so-nuanced matter into a single observation, again appropriate to traditional Irish practice.
The use of grace notes requires dexterity of the fingers and the pupil will acquire it gradually after very careful practice.
A concluding video allows the comparison of an 8-string open-back banjolin with the alternate form in the preceding video. It also loops back to the discussion of their use on early recordings in the first post of the series now wrapping up. Additionally, it illustrates how Léonardi’s exercise for swinging eighth notes and triplets can be related to Irish-style performance.