Baryton
bowed string instrument
The baryton is a bowed string instrument similar to the viol, but distinguished by an extra set of sympathetic but also pluckable strings. It was in regular use in Europe until the end of the 18th century.
Design
The baryton can be viewed as a sort of augmented bass viol. It is similar in size to the latter instrument and likewise has six or seven strings of gut (typically D G C E A D, although scordatura was used), arranged over a fretted fingerboard and played with a bow. The instrument is held vertically and is supported by the player's legs (rather than with an end-pin as in the modern cello).
The baryton differs from the bass viol in having an additional set of wire strings. These perform two functions: they vibrate sympathetically with the bowed strings, enriching the tone, and they can also be plucked by the left thumb of the performer, creating a contrasting tonal quality. As can be seen in the illustration, the bowed strings are placed on the left, where they can be easily fingered by the player's left hand. The plucked strings are on the right; they are reachable by the player's thumb from the rear, where the back of the instrument's neck is left open.
History
The historical baryton
There are only about 50 historical barytons for which we have evidence, either in the form of documents or the instrument itself.
The public source identifies “Baryton” as bowed string instrument. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Baryton, bowed and string.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baryton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.