A recent Lute News had an article about this very issue. They looked into some statistics about how many instruments households had and made the proposition that if there was only a lute available and people wanted to dance, they would have danced to the lute.
I think trends change over time. It is hard to imagine dancing dying out immediately with the advent of Dm tuning when dance manuals had been written in lute tab around 1600, but it is also doesn't seem to fit the image of the kind of music that was being played in the time of Baron and Weiss on the Baroque lute. On the other hand, if you expand the definition of what a Baroque lute is, clearly some kinds of lutes (theorbo, archlute, theorboized dm lute) were used in orchestras that played dance music. Interesting question. I wish some musicologists would chime in. Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [1]http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch [2]http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ [3]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- References 1. http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch 2. http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ 3. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
