The Lute

Think of the lute, and you probably picture a medieval or Tudor minstrel: an instrument for graceful and courtly entertainment, played by people wearing ruffs. But historians have traced its ancestry as far back as 3000 BCE, and from Moorish Spain it spread throughout medieval Europe. Sweet-sounding, eloquent and capable of picking out melodies as well as creating its own harmonies, by the end of the Renaissance it had developed into the instrument that we know today. A lute has a deep rounded body, a neck marked with frets to guide the fingers and up to 14 pairs of strings, plucked or strummed with a plectrum. During its 16th- and 17th-century golden age, the lute evolved from an accompaniment for songs (such as those of John Dowland) to a solo instrument in its own right, while its massive, multi-stringed cousins the archlute and theorbo took their place in Baroque opera orchestras. By the mid-18th century, it had been eclipsed by the harpsichord. But the 20th century rediscovery of “early music” has seen it revived with modern lutenists such as Julian Bream and Thomas Dunford giving it a profile and a public unmatched since the 17th century.