The words quoted are from "Treat of orchestration " by Hector Berlioz who expressed his opinion about this instrument of very ancient Saracen origin, marked through many centuries by a very hard life.
Popular and quite common in baroque age, the mandolin roused the interest and the ispiration of great composer like Vivaldi, who first gave it a concert role, then Paisiello, Haendel, Mozart, Hummel, Beethoven, as well as Verdi, Mhaler, Shonberg, Stravinskj,Petrassi, Chailly and so on.
Afterwords, unfortunately, it was quite repudiated by the classical world, charged with being too popular and unworthy to perform in concert halls.
In the first sixties, thanks also to the rediscovery and revalutation carried on by Maestro Giuseppe Anedda, the instrument started to be well esteemed again so that the first chair of mandolin in Italian history, was istituited in Padova, Conservatorio " Pollini ".
Nowdays the mandolin is living a happy time, having conquered the right esteem either in Italy or a broad, expecially in Japan or Germany. All that is the dimostration of how wrong and untrue is to apostrophe the Italaians as mandolinists in a depreciatory way, when we constantly receive signals of the passion and love for the mandolin coming from countries well known as advanced in the musical field.
The Ensemble Mereuer, by performig a wide repertory often enriched with original and reelaborated compositions, points out the potentialities and resources of mandolin which, together with mandola,guitar and double-bass,
achieves its ideal position.