page_title: Theorbo
section_title: England
hierarchical_section_title: Theorbo / Regional differences / England
caption_attribution_description: English: Woman with an 11-course lute (a theorbo), the lowest courses each with individual nuts.
context_page_description: The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending out from the soundbox. As with the lute, the player plucks or strums the strings with one hand while "fretting" the strings with the other hand; pressing the strings in different places on the neck produces different pitches, thus enabling the performer to play chords, basslines and melodies.
  It is related to the liuto attiorbato, the French théorbe des pièces, the archlute, the German baroque lute, and the angélique or angelica. A theorbo differs from a regular lute in that the theorbo has a much longer neck which extends beyond the regular fingerboard/neck and a second pegbox at the end of the extended neck. Low-register bass strings are added on the extended neck. This gives a theorbo a much wider range of pitches than a regular lute. The theorbo was used during the Baroque music era to play basso continuo accompaniment parts, and also as a solo instrument.
context_section_description: The Italian theorbo first came to England at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but an alternate design based on the English two-headed lute, designed by Jaques Gaultier, soon became more popular. English theorbos were generally tuned in G and double strung throughout, with only the first course in reentrant tuning. Theorbos tuned in G were much better suited to flat keys, and so many English songs or consort pieces that involved theorbo were written in flat keys that would be very difficult to play on a theorbo in A. By the eighteenth century, the theorbo had fallen out of fashion in England due to its large size and low pitch. It was replaced by the archlute.
caption: A 1670 painting of an English theorbo player.
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