Double Dotting
A double-dotted note is a note with two small dots written after it. Its duration is 1¾ times (1 + ½ + ¼ = 2 − ¼) its basic note value.
The double-dotted note is used less frequently than the dotted note. Typically, as in the example below, it is followed by a note whose duration is one-quarter the length of the basic note value, completing the next higher note value.
Before the mid 18th century, double dots were not used. Until then, in some circumstances, single dots could mean double dots.
Example 2 is a fragment of the second movement of Joseph Haydn's string quartet, Op. 74, No. 2, a theme and variations. The first note is double-dotted. Haydn's theme was adapted for piano by an unknown composer; the adapted version can be heard here (3.7 KB MIDI file).
In a French overture (and sometimes other Baroque music), notes written as dotted notes are often interpreted to mean double-dotted notes, and the following note is commensurately shortened; see Historically informed performance.
Read more about this topic: Dotted Note
Famous quotes containing the word double:
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)