I don't think the guitar really did flourish. At about the time the lute was busying itself with entering obscurity, the guitar was doing the same. Certainly, there were occasional efforts at keeping each instrument active. However, between the time of great 5-course composers of the high baroque and the time that the great champions of the 6-string instrument arrived in Vienna and Paris around the early 19th c., the guitar enjoyed ca. half a century or better of relative obscurity. When it did return to popularity, it offered a slightly larger and louder sound box along with the voice clarity of single stringing. When plucked strings found themselves on the rebound, the various incarnations of lute to feature open diapasons did not lend themselves to the taste for chromaticism and modulation developed in the rococo era. As the guitar's strings (in most cases) are all subject to stopping on the fingerboard, it was fully chromatic-ready. There was an interesting guitar-lute intermediary in mandora, but I'll let the better-versed address it.
Eugene At 01:34 PM 9/28/2004, Stewart McCoy wrote: >Dear Roman, > >There may be some truth in what you say, but it doesn't explain why >the guitar flourished, and the lute didn't. Both instruments are a >bit on the quiet side for large concert halls. > >Best wishes, > >Stewart McCoy To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
