I'm suspecting that the real question Peter raised is being skirted by the respondents' reaction to the supposition of a charge of dilettantism. Now that I've caught up a little, I see that he isn't necessarily saying that lutenists tending to dilettantism is bad, just that other musicians' (and possibly the public's) opinion of lutenists may be suffering due to the lack of single-focus pros.
That makes this a PR question, rather than a historical or technique question. For my part, I guess I've never felt that it was a problem. When I find a piece of music which includes lute, my music-making associates are more than happy to play it with me. None of them consider my lack of professional credentials. The people I know who have taken up lute never have given a second thought to whether the lutenist they heard who got them 'on the path' was professionally rated above the currently-esteemed violin meister. Quite the contrary, the lute seems to make its own following, and the archlute and theorbo and all the other variants have no problem drawing the unsuspecting guitarist in... ray To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
