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Mandolin
Have you ever noticed how you feel when you hear or play a particular instrument, what it does to you? Just talking about or looking at a mandolin can engender a wonderful, edifying feeling of the joy of music and life.
It is not only easy to learn how to play it, it’s also easily understood, for, when it sings, its voice fills the air with the evocative power of a nightingale. Occasionally, at certain times, it can even seem as if the notes are rolling from the instrument like tears from the cheek of a woman; but then – look! – the next moment, it is already smiling again. If only one had the time to devote oneself as often as one would like to the mandolin!
How lucky you are, you mandolin players!
 
 
   
 
The mandolyra

A dream fulfilled
Do you know the gentleman over there with the mandolyra? Yes, it’s Klaus Wuckelt, the master student of Takashi Ochi.

Klaus Wuckelt approached me and asked me to realize a dream of his, the construction of a plucked instrument that would resemble a lyre. Despite his success, he always had the feeling that the mandolin wasn’t his only instrument and that something else was in the offing. All I had to do was measure the stops of his fine Cremona mandolin so that the feel of the instrument would be familiar to him; otherwise, he wanted me to allow my feeling alone to guide me in the choice of form, wood and manner of construction.
 And so, after many hours of musing and drawing, an instrument came into being that had never before existed and which, nevertheless, gave me the warm feeling that I was in the presence of something familiar – the mandolyra or "king’s lyre" was born.
When I presented him with the instrument, Klaus Wuckelt was very concerned about how long it would take him to adjust to the new instrument. He, too, couldn’t emphasize enough his astonishment at how familiar the mandolyra seemed, how pleasant it felt against his body and in his hands.
It was also Klaus Wuckelt who later encouraged me to build round-bellied mandolins, something I had never intended to do.
So I measured the stops of the mandolin he was used to and enthusiastically built for him my first "bellied" mandolin from 3000-year-old moor oak and made the secret wish that this time it would be my dream that came true. On the edge of the oak shell of the instrument, I carved the inscription, "To the glory of God and the edification of others, out of pure joy and gratitude for one’s being."
On receiving the instrument he said, "This is why I became a musician!"
Both of us regard the sonority and tonal beauty of these new instruments (which I would probably never have built without him) as gifts of inestimable worth. They confirm that we have chosen the right profession and teach us how we can fill what we do with meaning.