The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped. There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses. Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was gentle and sweet. Its influence, like that of the guitar of the present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar, was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its construction involving an application of the principle of the arch. The standard appearance of the lute was the following: [Illustration: Fig. 37. THE LUTE IN ITS STANDARD FORM. (From Grove's Dictionary.)] The stringing and tuning varied much in different periods. According to Praetorius, the lute had four open strings tuned according to the scale in _a_ below. Later, a G was added above and below, and the tuning was that at _b_. [Music illustration] Another authority--Baron--gives a tuning for an "eleven-course" lute, as follows: [Music illustration] The F below the bass staff had ten frets, G eleven, and each of the highest six strings twelve frets. The instrument thus had a compass of three octaves and a half from the C below the bass. All the strings were in pairs, two to each unison, excepting the upper two, which were single. The instrument was a very troublesome one to keep in order. Mattheson, who wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the lute was still cultivated, said that a lutist of eighty years must have spent nearly sixty in tuning his instrument. The pull of the strings broke down the sounding board or belly, which had therefore to be taken off and righted once in every two or three years. The lute was derived from an Arabian or Persian instrument, of which the Arab eoud, Fig. 24 (p. 113), was the latest representative.