Clarification of the term "double" in Gregorian Chant pedagogy
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Some reference has been made to how confusing some chant manuals can be to inexperienced newbies and even experienced newbies such as myself. (E.g., what is "euouae.")I think I had something like a revelation. If you read the intro to the Liber Usualis literally, virtually any mark (dot, episma) means "double," leaving you to wonder why there is a variety. This is repeated in many manuals I have read.

    There's just one explanation: "double" in this context does NOT mean "double." The manuals mean what the rest of us mean by "lengthening." I am certain that I have read sentences--LOTS of sentences--that say "double the value of the note but not as much as you double it in this circumstance." This would get a mark in my basic writing class, "unclear." In fact, there is a longish paragraph in the old Solesmes booklet on chironomy that is available for download on this very subject. When all is said and done, this longish paragraph makes not one lick of sense.

    It seems to be like the word "double" among rose enthusiasts: anything that has more than one simple layer of petals, the primordial rose, is referred to as "double." Even as clear a writer as George Orwell has, in a fun little essay on Woolworth's roses, the sentence that one kind of rose is "more double" than another. I use that as an example of how literal mindedness in judging word use is often an error.

    I assume that this was covered in the discussion on the dotted punctum, but I gave it this subject line so someone googling will find it.

    Am I in the ballpark?

    Kenneth
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  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    double (v.)
    late 13c., "make double," from Old French dobler, from Latin duplare, from duplus (see double (adj.)). Meaning "to work as, in addition to one's regular job" is c.1920, circus slang, from performers who also played in the band. Related: Doubled; doubling. To double up bodily is from 1814.


    Kenneth, I think that this supports you...makes sense..."more" & "lengthening".
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Fascinating... another example of how the modern (particularly American) mindset is very literal vs. the history of the Church and the Roman sensibility with regard to rubrics, etc.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Looks to me more like a translation error, the classic example being the difference between the word "embarrassed "in English and "embarrassasda" in Spanish. There are a whole host of words that are not so odd sounding in Latin-based languages but were, perhaps ill- advisedly, simply transliterated into English. E.g., – "See "for "seat. ". I think we cleared that up. Thanks for your input.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    I'm not sure if people (i.e. Noel) are arguing that double "really" just means to increase or lengthen in a vague way, but in fact it is derived from Latin duplus ("double, twice as large, twice as much," L&S), which itself comes from duo, two. It does indeed mean "200% as much."
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  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    There's just one explanation: "double" in this context does NOT mean "double." The manuals mean what the rest of us mean by "lengthening."


    200% of the length of the previous note?....which may have been lengthened due to slowing at the end of a phrase...or 200% of an exact note which remains constant in a military, precise manner and all notes must be sung this exact length to provide a constant so that this lengthened note is numerically an exact 200% ?

    The moment anyone attempts to put a precise value to any group of notes in a musical phrase, it is no longer musical. Let's not lead people down that path.

    Otherwise in rehearsal a tenor in the back row (why is it always a tenor?) is going to say, "I have my iPhone measuring notes and that last note was only 192%, not 200%."


  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    Oh, I don't think it should be 200.00%, just that that's what "double" means, and that it is not a translation for a word really meaning "lengthened."
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Here is where conferences about lexicology get so heated. I would suggest that it seems that the word double, derived from "two," was USED to mean 200% when necessary but ALSO used to mean "lengthen," otherwise the phrase-recurrent phrase in the books I am talking about---"not as double as in other instances" would be meaningless. Also, see Frogman's lexical entry.

    It would be like, "OK, everyone stand in a circle:" it doesn't mean stand in a circle, just "stand in a circle." So, when translating the word "double" into English, you unfortunately have to either clarify that "double" means something more flexible in Latin, or dive head first into the vast sea of available English words---whose vocabulary, by some estimates, is literally "double" that of any other language. This isn't dynamic equivalence-horrid concept--but trying to choose the right word. But, as the Italians say, a translator is a traitor, and that is why the asterix ad the footnote can be helpful.

    But either one believes that etymology determines meaning or one does not. I most emphatically do not. My foreign students just spent a semester learning 1000 words--roughly half Latinate, to prove to my Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese speakers that etymology would trip them up, and half Anglo-Saxon, to prove that depending on a Latinate vocabulary would get you in--dare I say it?--double trouble.. Whoever wants to argue the other side may and I am done with that.

    On a lighter side, there is a group of Dutch monks, being deliberate perverse and "liberated," the way the Dutch like to be, that records Chant fast with the dot's meaning exactly what it does today. On top of that, they chose chants with lots of dotted puncta, if I pluralized that correctly. The effect is a singsongy and chirpy. Did I mention "perverse?"

    Kenneth
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  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,199
    ... and that is why the asterix ad the footnote can be helpful.

    Hmm ... and I thought "Asterix" was the title character in a French comic book series ("Astérix le Gaulois"). Whereas, "asterisk" is a "little star" or the glyph "*" in my understanding.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Touché --- typed a little fast there, and reveled my nerdy comic book reading habits in my teenage years.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Actually, to be completely honest, the spelling is going. The spellcheck flashed disapproval, I clicked a couple of times for suggestions, all of which were way off, and thought, "Huh," but didn't think any further. Used to be perfect, my spelling, but apparently it lives next door in my brain to the part with names, which went years and years ago.

    I see I even wrote "instances" when I meant "estimates." Since corrected. Sigh

    Kenneth
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