Dear lute netters, I have often asked myselfe why lute tablature was invented.
The "classical" answer seems to be because lutenists started to play polyphonic music (or at least music with more than one voice). This seems to be a very poor argument since - apart from German organ tablature - music for keyboard was NOT notated in tablature. Any ideas anybody? Rainer I seem to remember that MANY years ago somebody claimed to have found 14th century French lute tablature which was refuted soon. But hasn't this been discussed again recently? Somewhere else (where?) somebody mentioned that tablature may have been used much earlier in Arabian countries. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
