Lute

The lute is a plucked string instrument with a fretted neck and a deep round back. It evolved from an instrument originally developed in the Middle East, which was also the ancestor of the superficially similar oud. The words 'lute' and 'oud' are both derived from Arabic al‘ud, "the wood". The player of a lute is called a lutenist, and a maker of lutes (or guitars) is called a luthier.

Description of the instrument

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.")

Related Topics:
Classical guitar - Below - Baroque - Historical harpists

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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