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Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The top (front of the instrument) is a thin flat slice of resonant wood as in a classical guitar, except oval or teardrop-shaped. In all but the oldest or most exotic lutes the top has a single 'hole' under the strings, called the rose; rare instruments may have several roses instead. The hole is not open as on a guitar, but rather covered with a grille in the form of a twining vine or knot, carved directly out of the wood of the top (see image at right). The back is assembled from thin strips of wood called ribs, shaped like the strips of a banana peel and joined edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. There are struts inside to give the instrument strength; see the photo among the external links below. The neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of harder wood to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most stringed instruments, the fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The tuning head for lutes before the Baroque era was turned back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut. The tuning pegs are simple pegs of wood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes through the peg box. (There are no gears or other aides for tuning the instrument, which fact — along with the large number of strings — makes lutes tedious if not difficult to tune. Thus lutenists share a joke with historical harpists, "We spend half our time tuning and the other half playing out of tune.")
The nut and bridge were historically made of ivory or bone, now more commonly of plastic. The frets are made of loops of gut tied completely around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced frequently. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string (see image). Strings were historically made of gut (or extremely rarely of metal), and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings as on a classical guitar.
The lute's strings are arranged in courses, usually of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the chantrelle (French for "singer"). The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from the highest pitched, so that the chantrelle is the first course, the next pair of strings is the second course, etc. Thus an 8-course lute will usually have 15 strings.
The double-string courses are tuned in unison for high or intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher. (The course at which this split starts changed over the history of the lute.) The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string, but in extremely rare cases a piece calls for the two strings of a course to be stopped and/or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a somewhat complicated issue, and is described in a separate section of its own, below.
The result of this design is an instrument extremely light for its size. Pegs for a shoulder strap are a modern innovation; historical images show the instrument being played with no support other than the arms. (Some modern players use a simple loop of yarn from the tuning head around the player's neck and back.)
The lute first appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages, either due to the traffic between Europe and the Middle East resulting from the Crusades or else transferred across the Muslim-Christian cultural divide in Spain. Medieval lutes were small 4- or 5-course instuments plucked using a quill for a plectrum.
With the advent of Renaissance polyphony the quill was discarded in favor of plucking the instrument with the soft pads of the fingers and thumb (not with the nails, as is the modern practice for classical guitar), and the number of courses grew to six and beyond. Renaissance lutes were made in a variety of sizes for consort use: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the era, and was also used to accompany a single singer in a very popular form of art music called the lute song.
By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14. These instruments, with up to 28 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute and similar theorbo had a long jib attached to the main tuning head in order to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings no longer even ran above the fretboard.
Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the role of the continuo, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments, after which it fell out of use. (The evolution of the lute-harpsichord and harpsichordA harpsichord is the general term for a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument nowadays called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals the muselar virginals and the spinet . All these instruments generate sound by pl, which pluck their strings rather than hammering them like a pianoPiano is a common abbreviation for pianoforte a large musical instrument with a keyboard (see keyboard instrument). Its sound is produced by strings stretched on a rigid frame. These vibrate when struck by felt-covered hammers, which are activated by the, can be seen as technological innovations to extend the 14-course lute beyond its human limitations.) Works for lute continued to be produced at least as late as Joseph HaydnPortrait by Thomas Hardy, 1792 Franz) Joseph Haydn (in German, Josef he never used the Franz) ( March 31, 1732 May 31, 1809) was a leading composer of the classical period. He was the brother of Michael Haydn, a composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a te, but the instrument completely disappeared from common use around that time.
The Spanish vihuelaString instruments The vihuela is a Spanish Renaissance string instrument that appears to be a cross between a lute and a Renaissance guitar. It usually was tuned like a 6-course lute, fourth fourth major third fourth fourth, though the smaller versions s is apparently related to the lute, though it has a body shaped like a miniature guitar, and never grew beyond six courses. The relation between the lute and guitar, if any, is unknown.
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