Die Laute in Europa: Geschichte und Geschichten zum Geniessen [The Lute in Europe: A History to Delight]. By

illustrations, bibliography. Lutenists. We’re an odd bunch. Were one to ask my wife how many lutes I need, she’d respond with a sigh, “just one more.” Yet it is our lot for a very practical reason: during the Renaissance and baroque eras, lute design, stringing configuration, tun-ing, and technique quickly accommodated the rapidly changing musical tastes that make this repertoire so diversified, excit-ing, and challenging. For instance, the 7- or 8-course (a course is a single string or pair of strings tuned in unison or octaves) Renaissance lute necessary to perform the music of John Dowland (1563–1626) can-not be used to play that of J. S. Bach’s con-temporary Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687– 1750), which calls for a larger lute sporting more strings arranged and tuned differ-ently. One lute cannot serve all. Even lute music composed at exactly the same time in different nations sounds noticeably bet-ter on an instrument designed to take into account that area’s musical tastes. While French 11-course and German 13-course baroque lutes are tuned similarly, they carry structural modifications that best serve their own national styles, the 11-course exploiting the French interest in texture and timbre while the 13-course fa-vors the German preference for clear coun-terpoint. This record of extraordinarily rapid and innovative response is further ev-idence that back in the day they were every bit as interested in being au courant as we are today