Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) 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 early renaissance to the late baroque eras. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment.

Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood. In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings, called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard.

The back or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood called ribs, joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument.