Lute

A lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was probably the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance.

Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard. The result of the lute's design is an instrument extremely light for its size. The lute's strings, there are 19 in all, are arranged in courses, of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string. The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches. The neck of a lute is angled back at almost 90 degrees.