Double dotting

What it means

Double dotting lengthens a note value by three quarters of itself. The first dot adds half, the second half of that; the note then lasts one and three-quarter times its value. The term is synonymous with Doppelpunktierung and designates the same matter — the difference lies solely in usage, not in the thing.

In the notation

The two dots stand to the right of the notehead, and with notes on a line in the space above. The rule can be continued: a third dot adds again half of the second, but this seldom occurs in practice. Dotting is to be distinguished from the tie, which combines two written values into one: both lengthen, but the tie can bind across the bar line and connect any values, whereas the dot always remains bound to the halving ratio. What cannot be represented with dots is written with a tie.

Musical use

Rhythmically a ratio of seven to one arises between the long and the short note. This produces a markedly sharper tension than single dotting and is used where music is to seem resolute, solemn, or march-like. Double dotting often stands at the beginning of movements and sections, where it fixes the character at once. In combination with a rest in place of the long note, the same effect arises out of silence.

In the music of the Baroque the execution is not always to be taken literally: it is well attested that dotted rhythms were taken sharper or softer according to style and character of the movement. How far this freedom reaches in an individual case remains a decision of the performers and is judged differently in scholarship.

Other names

The designation Doppelpunkt colloquially designates the same thing but is ambiguous because it recalls the punctuation mark (the colon); technically one speaks of doppelte Punktierung or Doppelpunktierung. The second dot lengthens by half of the first dot: a double-dotted quarter note lasts a quarter, an eighth, and a sixteenth. In the French style of the Baroque, even simply notated rhythms are often executed as double-dotted, which does not always show in the notation.

Performance practice

When practising, subdivide into the smallest note duration occurring and really count out the short note — it is shorter than feeling suggests. Watch the articulation: the long note must not lose its value, the short one stays light. In passages with a rest instead of the long note, the same counting applies; the entry after the rest otherwise comes too early.