lute, musical instrument that has a half-pear-shaped body, a fretted neck, and a variable number of strings, which are plucked with the fingers. The long lute, with its neck much longer than its body, seems to have been older than the short lute, existing very early in the Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultures, whence the word lute derives. The short lute was known in Spain as early as the 10th cent., having been brought there by Arabs. Its greatest development came in the 15th cent. The lute was the most popular English and European instrument of the Renaissance. During these periods it amassed a vast literature. In the 17th cent. a larger form (the archlute) was developed; it gave rise to the
theorbo theorbo , large lute of the baroque period. It had an extra set of bass strings, not stopped on a fingerboard as the regular set are but plucked as open strings. These made it more suitable for playing baroque music than was the lute.
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chitarrone, which was supplanted by the Spanish vihuela and the modern
guitar guitar, musical instrument related to the lute, modern guitars normally having six strings that are plucked with the fingers or strummed with a pick. Earlier versions had pairs of strings like the lute.
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tablature tablature , in music, a generic system of musical notation indicating actions that the player must take, rather than "representing" the music itself that will result from those actions. Tablatures have been in use in the West since the early 14th cent.
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lute
Angel playing a lute, from “Presentation in the Temple,” painted altarpiece by Vittore …
(credit: SCALA-Art Resource, New York)
Plucked
stringed instrument popular in 16th–17th-century Europe. It originated from the Arab
'ud, which reached Europe in the 13th century. Like the 'ud, the lute has a deep pear-shaped body with an ornamental soundhole, a fretted neck with a bent-back pegbox, and strings hitched to a bridge glued to the instrument's belly. In later years it acquired several unstopped bass strings. It became the preferred instrument for cultivated amateur musicians and acquired an extensive literature of song accompaniments and solo and consort music.
lute1 an ancient plucked stringed instrument, consisting of a long fingerboard with frets and gut strings, and a body shaped like a sliced pear
lute2 Dentistry a thin layer of cement used to fix a crown or inlay in place on a tooth
lute [
lüt]
(materials)
A substance, such as cement or clay, for packing a joint or coating a porous surface to produce imperviousness to gas or liquid.
lute
1. A scraper having a straight cutting edge; used to level plastic concrete.
2. A bricklayer’s straightedge used for striking off clay from a brick mold.
Lute a plucked stringed instrument.
The lute has an oval, convex body, short and wide neck with a pegbox bent back at an angle, and from six to 16 strings (sometimes as many as 24). The upper sounding board is flat and has a large sound hole. The tuning of the strings is based on a system of different sequences of intervals of a fourth and third (depending on the piece being performed).
The lute originated from the Arab-Iranian al’ud (earliest information about which dates from the third to the seventh century), which was introduced in Spain and Sicily at the end of the Middle Ages. From Spain and Sicily a somewhat modified instrument, called a lute, spread to Western European countries, and later to Eastern Europe. The art of lute-playing reached its height in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the middle of the 18th century, the lute had been supplanted by the guitar.
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