LUTE, a musical stringed instrument with frets, one of the numerous varieties of the ancient cithars. Until towards the end of the 17th cen tarry Its practice formed an essential part of a good education, but it bas Awe bees partially guperweled by the guitar: neverthelega, the salaried ogee of balmier Is still roatinued in the Chapel Royal, tholigh the place N a sine:rum The derivation of the word i* probably to be traced to the Teutoale fat, whence, modified, it has passed into all the European Languages, whether cognate or otherwise. The German verb tauten, to sound, is derived from lease, a lute.
We do not meet with any nodes of this instrument, so named, before the time of Dante, who, ludicrously enough, enupars• the swelled figure of • persoa suffering under dropsy to the form of the lute. „The shape of the body and principal or lower neck may be seen in our wood-eagraving of the Anal-Lova. Mersenne, in his' Harmon!. (1636), describes the lute as consisting of three parts : the sable, made of fir ; the Mae or belly, of the same wood, or cedar, con 'Eructed of nine convex rib, joined; and the seek, on which was the of hard wood, having nine frets made of cat-gut. To these is to be added the head or eras, in which the pegs or screws were placed. Thomas Mace, a celebrated teacher of the lute, in a curious work entitled ' Musick's Monurneat' (1676), agrees in the descrip tion given by the learned French monk, addingagreat number of other particulars relative to the construction and use of the Instrument : to this remarkable folio we refer those who are desirous of minute information on the subject. We shall here only state, from the same
writer, that the lute had at first six strings, or rather eleven, for the five largest were doubled; but that the number was gradually increased till it reached twenty-four. He tells us that in his time a very choice instrument fetched the sum of IOW- which may be considered as equal to 4001. of our present money. [ARCTI-LUTE; The notation for the lute, theorbo, &o., called the t attire, difibrel entirely from that of other instruments. "The chords," says Sir J. Hawkins, "are represented by a corresponding number of lines, and on these are marked the letter a, 6, c, Ito., which letters refer to the frets on the neck of the instrument. The time of the notes is signified by mark, over the letters of a hooked form, that answer to the minim, crotchet, &o. This is the French tablature ; but the Italians, and also the Spaniards, till of late years, made use of figures instead of letters." There were many kinds of tablature, but being now obsolete and for gotten it is unnecessary to add anything further concerning them.