I have heard that the high cost of the lute and its strings ensured that the lute historically was limited to the upper classes.
How can we know this? Do we know how many loaves of bread cost the same as a set of strings in Renaissance Europe? Are surviving documents or iconography definitive on this issue? Were all the composers either patronized by the upper class or upper class themselves? What instruments did the lower classes have? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
