One of my strong values as a composer myself, or as a listener, of new
music is that it be idiomatic for the instruments/voices chosen.
Several points have already been raised that are pertinent to this. It
should sound like lute music, not guitar or keyboard music. It should
show understanding of, and use, the particulars of the instrument. This
is as basic as range, or presence of octave doublings, and as subtle as
whether it can be made to sound good on gut strings. Some of these
things can be attended to by a composer who is not a player of the
instrument. Although you have to be careful - I once spotted a
non-player of recorder music by her use of notes in a range that a
knowing player would not have used in a piece meant for players of
modest capability. She'd just checked a range chart and assumed all
notes in the range were equal, which they generally aren't. I think a
trap that a non-player composer of lute music could fall into is to
write notes in the range, but notes that don't easily come together on a
fretboard. David alluded to this.
One of the difficulties in writing modern, post-tonal music for a
historical instrument with no continuous history is that there is no
easy to understand path from lute music we know, to the new stuff. So
even if well crafted by a knowledgeable lute player it may not sound so
idiomatic to the average listener. A player might be able to tell
though. :-)
Suzanne
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