quintonn.

1870 C. Engel Descr. Catal. Musical Instruments S. Kensington Mus. 77 Five-stringed viol. Called by the French Quinton.]

1889 G. Grove Dict. Music IV. 277/2 The five-stringed Treble Viol survived longest in France where it was called ‘Quinton’ or ‘Pardessus de Viole’.

1916 C. V. Stanford & C. Forsyth Hist. Mus. ix. 195 True viols have no fewer than six strings apiece... But the makers are beginning to see the necessity of reducing the number... They are just introducing a modified type of instrument with five strings. They call these the quintons.

1941 N. Bessaraboff Anc. European Mus. Instr. iv. 303 The quinton is very often confused with the pardessus de viole, which also has five strings. These instruments belong to different families: the quinton is a true violin, and the pardessus de viole (the high treble) is a viol.

1954 Grove's Dict. Music (ed. 5) VI. 1037/1 The rather ugly word quinton seems to have originated as a 19th-century dealers' name to describe a curious hybrid sort of viol-violin... The instruments appear to belong to the late 18th century... The name drifted into reference books where it was misapplied to the perfectly normal treble and par-dessus French viols of the mid-16th century, which often have only five strings.

1961 T. Dart in A. C. Baines Musical Instruments through Ages 189 During the eighteenth century certain hybrids between the two families of viols and violins made a brief appearance on the musical scene—for instance, the quinton, the baryton, and the arpeggione—but few musicians regretted their equally abrupt departure.

1976 Early Music 4 361/2 The quinton is built basically like a violin, with arched back, shallow ribs and pointed bouts, but with sloping viol shoulders.

1999 Jerusalem Post (Nexis) 7 June 7 Herzog discovered a quinton among the instruments that belonged to her husband.