I can't speak of the old lutenists, but there were many harpers of medieval and renaissance times who were blind. Although it is well past the renaissance era the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792 listed 10 harpers (nine men and one woman). Six of them are listed as blind. The prolific composer for the Celtic harp, Turlogh O'Carolan (1670-1738) was blind, but most of his pieces have been written down.
Consider the position of the musician, before the complexities of our more modern orchestral compositions (and the specific composed pieces of those such as Weiss). Or consider the position of the blind son of a decent family - and what proper occupation he could choose. O'Carolan was such - he couldn't work the farm, nor could he work in business - but he was supported in an apprenticeship on the harp, and he had the talent to succeed. Could there not have been lutenists of the period who learned the basic tunes, and the harmonic structures, and who could play the instrument in combination with others - adding divisions and variations that fit the piece? Is the instrument limited only to the specific composers that we seem to worship (because their works are written down), or could there have been a great deal more? I speak with no knowledge (as I'm sure some of you may point out), but given the general history of music I think a lot of it was unwritten, and often improvised for the ocassion - somewhat like a modern jam session (or Irish "session"). When one takes any history entirely from the written record one can miss some nuance, and will miss the ambience of much of the era. Try it, play a random set of notes (within a framework of a scale), then embellish it. You may come up with a fine piece (now try to remember how you did it). Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
