LUTE (Arabic al‘ūd, “the wood”; Fr. luth; Ital. liuto; Span. laud; Ger. Laute; Dut. luit), an ancient stringed musical instrument, derived in form as well as name from the Arabs. The complete family consisted of the pandura, tanbur or mandoline as treble, the lute as alto or tenor, the barbiton or theorbo as bass, and the chitarrone as double bass. The Arab instrument, with convex sound-body, pointing to the resonance board or membrane having been originally placed upon a gourd, was strung with silk and played with a plectrum of shell or quill. It was adopted by the Arabs from Persia. Instruments with vaulted backs are all undoubtedly of Eastern origin; the distinct type, resembling the longitudinal section of a pear, is more specially traced in ancient India, Persia and the countries influenced by their civilization. This type of instrument includes many families which became known during the middle ages of western Europe, being introduced into southern Europe and Spain by the Moors, into southern Russia by the Persians of the Sassanian period, into Greece from the confines of the Byzantine Empire. As long as the strings were plucked by fingers or plectrum the large pear-shaped instrument may be identified as the archetype of the lute. When the bow, obtained from Persia, was applied to the instrument by the Arabs, a fresh family was formed, which was afterwards known in Europe as rebab and later rebec. The largest member of the ancient lute family—the bass lute or theorbo—has been identified with the barbiton.
| Fig. 1.—Post-Mycenaean terra-cotta figure, with ancient lute (1000 B.C.) from the cemetery at Goshen. |
Until recently the existence of these ancient stringed instruments was presumed on the evidence of the early medieval European instruments and of the meagre writings extant, such as those of Fārābī.[1] But a chain of plastic evidence can now be offered, beginning with the Greek post-Mycenaean age (c. 1000 B.C.). A statuette of a female musician playing upon a large lute with only an embryonic neck, on which nevertheless the left hand is stopping strings, was unearthed in Egypt in a tomb of the XXth Dynasty in the cemetery of Goshen by the members of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt,[2] under the direction of Professor Flinders Petrie, to whose courtesy we owe the photograph (fig. 1) here reproduced. It is difficult to form a conclusive opinion as to the number of strings the artist intended to represent, owing to the decorative figures following the direction of the strings, but, judging from the position of the right hand plucking a string, there may have been seven. Among a number of terra-cotta figures of musicians, brought to light during the excavations in a Tell at Suza and dating from the 8th century B.C.,[3] although there is no instrument that might be identified with the alto lute, the treble lute or tanbur is represented with a long, curved neck and a head bent back to increase the tension, and there is also an instrument having a smaller and more elongated body than the lute. On one of the friezes from Afghanistan presented to the British Museum by Major-General Cunningham, which formed the risers of steps leading to the tope at Jumal Garhi, dating from the 1st century A.D. are represented scenes of music and dancing. Here the archetype of the lute appears several times; it had four strings, and the head was bent back at right angles to the neck. In the 6th century A.D. illustrations of this early lute are no longer rare, more especially on Persian silver-work of the Sassanian period[4] and in the paintings of the Buddhist cave-temples of Ajanta.[5] Several representations of the barbiton are extant from the classical Roman period.
The modern Egyptian ‘ūd is the direct descendant of the Arabic lute, and, according to Lane, is strung with seven pairs of catgut strings played by a plectrum. A specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, given by the khedive, has four pairs only, which appears to have been the old stringing of the instrument. When frets (cross-lines dividing the neck or finger-board to show the fingering) are employed they are of catgut disposed according to the Arabic scale of seventeen intervals in the octave, consisting of twelve limmas, an interval rather less than our equal semitone, and five commas, which are very small but quite recognizable differences of pitch.
The lute family is separated from the guitars, also of Eastern origin, by the formation of the sound body, which is in all lutes pear-shaped, without the sides or ribs necessary to the structure of the flat-backed guitar and cither. Observing this distinction, we include with the lute the little Neapolitan mandoline of 2 ft. long and the large double-necked Roman chitarrone, not infrequently 6 ft. long. Mandolines are partly strung with wire, and are played with a plectrum, indispensable for metal or short strings. Perhaps the earliest lutes were so played, but the large lutes and theorbos strung with catgut have been invariably touched by the fingers only, the length permitting this more sympathetic means of producing the tone.
| Fig. 2.—Lute, by Venere of Padua. |
Praetorius,[6] writing when the lute was in universal favour, mentions seven varieties distinguished by size and tuning. The smallest would be larger than a mandoline, and the melody string, the “chanterelle,” often a single string, lower in pitch. Praetorius calls this an octave lute, with the chanterelle C or D. The two discant lutes have respectively B and A, the alto G, the tenor E, the bass D, and the great octave bass G, an octave below the alto lute which may be taken as the model lute cultivated by the amateurs of the time. The bass lutes were theorbos, that is, double-necked lutes, as described below. The accordance of an alto lute was
