Well, sort of...

I'm just now watching and listening to a program of Motets of the Bach family on television. The singers are being accompanied by a woman playing a viola da gamba, and another woman playing something that looks like an enormous theorbo. Only it looks like it's easily six feet long, altogether. The neck and pegboard alone look like they're at least five feet long. The body looks like it could be two feet long.

Do any of our early music people know what such an instrument might be called? Would this instrument and the theorbo both be in the same family as the lute?

Thanks!

Carol