Greer Garden defines double as: “A French term used during the 17th and early 18th centuries for a technique of variation.”1
Having seen all the various types of use of this term in the flute repertoire in the first half of the 18th century, beginning with doubles by Jacques-Martin Hotteterre in his Airs et Brunettes (1721), continuing with occasional doubles in instrumental suites, for instance for the Courante in Suite no. 3 from the Premier livre de pieces by Hotteterre, and finishing with a set of four doubles by Johann Joachim Quantz for a Sarabande in his Fantasies and Preludes, Giedde I.45, I started to wonder, whether the term was used interchangeably in general, or whether there were any differing elements in the style and in the ways of varying the melody. Later in her article, Garden points out that the term was used not only as a technique, but also as a title (double) for the embellished version (sometimes also second couplet) as an opposition to the simple version (simple). In the root of the word double, she sees also the closest connection to other expressions, such as diminution or division, terms used for varying the melody, based on dividing notes in the smaller note values.2
One of my assumptions in the study of doubles in the repertoire for traverso, was a thought that the term double could have been used simply for the second version of the melody, its first and only variation, as seen in the Air and Brunettes by Hotteterre, or in the instrumental dance suites, where in the majority of instances only a single variation for a specific movement can be found. The hypothesis that double signifies an alone-standing variation of a song or a dance, could be objected immediately by observing that Hotteterre himself provides occasionally another varied melody, which is called simply Autre double, following the first double. Similarly, Michel Blavet in his Premier recueil de pieces (1744) uses the term double for a set of three different variations for different voices, but in one instance he uses the term variation for the only embellished version of Menuet Le Cupis, which could otherwise be called double. These examples already provided me with enough evidence to conclude that terms double and variation were indeed used interchangeably, and my further investigation was directed more to the various styles of embellishing the melody.
Definitions of the terms double and variation in the musical lexicons and dictionaries from the 18th and 19th centuries
For a deeper understanding of the contexts of the used expressions and the development of their use, it was necessary for me to search in the period dictionaries, and to compare their definitions of both terms.
Sebastien de Brossard in his Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1703), which was later translated to English by James Grassineau in his Musical Dictionary (London, 1740),3 links the term double to second couplet, used mainly in vocal music, but also to the term diminution in the instrumental music. He distinguishes two ways of varying the melody: by diminishing the note values and by the use of embellishments. He points out that the main melody should always be recognizable and at the same time by using the word substance (le fond) he refers not only to the shape of the main melody, but also to its character.4
VARIATIO. Latin term, or VARIAZIONE. Italian term, properly meaning DIFFERENCE, Change, Variety, etc. But in Music, we call it VARIATION. The different ways of playing or singing an Air, either by subdividing the Notes into several of lesser value, or by adding embellishments, etc. in such a way however that we can always recognize the substance of this Air, which we call the Simple, through so to speak these enrichments, which some call Embroideries. Thus, for example the different Couplets of the Folies d'Espagne, the Chacones, the Passacailles, sometimes the Gavottes, etc. are so many Variations: Thus, these double or second Couplets of the Airs of old Boësset, of Messieurs Lambert, Bacilly, etc. As also a quantity of Diminutions of Courantes, of Gavottes and other Pieces of Lute, of Harpsichord, etc. these are true Variations. We often find this Term in the Books of the Italians, especially in those which contain Pieces for Violin alone.5
This notion, regarding the character of a melody, became a very important aspect for my further treatment of invented doubles.
In his Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732) Johann Gottfried Waltherʼs description of both the double and the variation focuses on the meaning of diminishing the notes values as their doubling (Verdoppelung), and he refers to the technique of doubling only for the second verse, as a second version of an aria. Interestingly, as examples of instrumental pieces suitable for doubles, he refers to Allemandes and Courantes, rather than for examples Rondeaus.
Double [gall.] Adj. double. Also sometimes used as a noun, i.e. le Double d' un Air, or second Couplet en diminution, Means: the second verse of an aria varied, i.e. presented and arranged in smaller notes. A doubling, or a variation, usually in Allemandes and Courants.
Variazione [ital.] Variation [gall.] Variatio [lat.] means: when a bad singing or playing melody is changed and embellished by the addition of smaller notes, but in such a way that the basic melody can still be remembered and understood.6
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768) is the first one who uses doubler as a verb, to describe an act of making doubles. He points out that the term variation is mostly used by Italians for ornamenting a song by adding notes. He doesn’t distinguish adding notes by the means of diminishing the note values or by adding ornaments. However, he does distinguish a simple adding ornaments to the melody from double making: doubler (doubling) means embellishing the entire melody.
DOUBLE. We call Doubles, Airs of a Song simple in itself, which we figure and double by the addition of several Notes which vary and adorn the Song without spoiling it. This is what the Italians call Variazioni.
There is this difference between Doubles with embroidery or Fleurtis, that these are at the freedom of the Musician, that he can make them or leave them when he pleases, to resume the simple. But the Double is not left; and as soon as it has been begun, it must be continued until the end of the Air.7
Heinrich Christoph Koch in his Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt am Main, 1802) does not describe the term double at all. In his description of variations, given directly in plural, he remarked that they can function both as self-sufficient pieces, standing by themselves, or as a part of sonatas, concerts or symphonies.
Variations, Variazioni. One ensures a repeated immediate repetition of a short piece of music, whereby the melody is changed each time by different divisions of its main notes and the continuous and secondary notes connected to them, but without completely mixing up the similarity with the main melody. Such variations are used both as stand-alone pieces for private enjoyment, and also in connection with other pieces in larger pieces, such as in sonatas, concertos and symphonies.8
The aspect of the function of variations became another important practical direction for my research.
Thomas Busby in his A Dictionary of Music (London, 1811) expresses the interchangeability of both terms with understanding that the term double was more used in the earlier period:
DOUBLE, A word which in the old music carries the same sense as that which we now give to the term variation. In the harpsichord lessons of Handel, and other masters of his time, we find instead of variation 1st, variation 2nd, &c. double 1, double 2, &c. &c.9
Finally, both Hugo Riemann in his Musiclexikon (Leipzig, 1882) and Theodore Baker in his A Dictionary of Musical Terms (New York, 1895) refer to the term doubles as a term used in earlier times for variations. Furthermore, they describe the development of their compositional technique: compared to the advance variations in the Beethoven’s style, the earlier doubles were more focused on merely embellishing the melody by using gradually smaller notes values.
Doubles (French, pron. dubl, Verdoppellungen) is the name for the decorated repetitions of movements in the older suites; if several such doubles follow one another, they correspond completely to what is now called variations. These older variations, however, change neither the time signature nor the harmony or the key of the theme, although occasionally the key (minore, major), and instead only embellish the theme with ever new exhalations and increased movement of the accompanying figures.10
Variation. (Ger. and Fr. Variation; It. variazione.) One of a set or series of transformations of a theme by means of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic changes and embellishments. In the Doubles, or earlier form, the variations left the melody, key, and rhythm of the theme intact, merely embellishing it with new and growingly elaborate figuration; whereas the modern tema con variazioni (beginning with Haydn and Mozart, and fully developed by Beethoven) may employ the strongest contrasts of rhythm, harmony, and tonality, the sole limitation being that a memory - so to speak of the theme shall in one way or another be kept alive throughout.11
The double in Margarete Reimann's "Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Double"
The term double has its roots in choreography: almost all the dances of the 15th and the 16th centuries, pavanas, courantes, gavottes, branle or basse danse, had their pas simple and pas double.12 Thoinot Arbeau in his Orchésographie (Langres, 1588) explained that pas double was danced with faster dance steps to fit with more steps in the same time duration as the pas simple. In fact, it was exactly the same principle as with the musical diminutions, but they were dance diminutions. Given its origin, it becomes more understandable that the term double remained longest in use as a dance variation. Some composers, for instance Biber or Bach, made a clear distinction between variations of dances, which they called doubles, and variations of arias, called Variations or Veränderungen. As Reimann pointed out, the term double in the dictionaries of the 17th and the 18th centuries was used as a synonym for variation and the same entry in the dictionaries described diminutions, embellishments, agréments, broderies, coloraturas, but also passacaglias, folias or chaconnes. Consequently, she follows the idea that some authors, such as Mersenne and Mattheson, mention specifically both diminutions and embellishments when writing about doubles. In some German writings, for instance by Walther and Matthesson, the word double is translated as Verdoppelung, which points again to its diminutive character. This two-fold characteristic seems clear also from the fact that the earliest examples of doubles known to date are dance variations from the 1er livre de guiterre (Paris, 1551) with markings “plus diminué” and also collections of airs de cour, where designations such as double or couplet en diminution can be found.13
There were some authors, however, who wanted to make a distinction between double and diminution. Etienne Loulié in his treatise Élements ou principes de musique (Paris, 1696) understood diminutions in the pure sense of dividing long notes into multiple notes of shorter values, while doubles as ornamental figures put between the intervals of the melody (as seen in the example below). However, Loulié uses the term passage for the ornamented figures, underlying that they are generally called doubles.14
The first instance of the word double marked in the music was in the Tierce livre de tabulature de guiterre (Paris, 1552) with the designation “tant doubles que simples”.15 By the year 1620, the term was already known and used abroad and co-existed with the term variation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until in the second half of the 18th century when the term variation finally took over the former.
There are two other characteristics of doubles that Reimann explores in her study: First, double refers both to written-out variations as well as improvised ornamentation. And secondly, their composition is of a non-binding nature. Composers and musicians often wrote doubles to pieces of other authors and when there were more variations, a performer could choose which he/she liked the most, a principle similar to a suite of dances.16 The two-fold characteristic of doubles, expressing and including both the diminutions and the ornamentation (as summarized above) creates an essential feature of this exposition, too, in creating separate chapters for the diminutive and ornamental doubles.
