Fig. 16.
Logic would suggest that where a doubled, that is a two-stemmed, note is dotted in both parts or voices, two dots should follow one above the other. This would, however, be awkward when the note was in a space; and also when it was on a line, if, as in the last group above, both voices proceeded to a lower note (or both to a higher). For according to the rule here being considered, both dots would have to be in the space below (or above).
There is another slight inaccuracy in the above example which will be noticed later on. Let the tyro try and find it!
[21.]—As regards distance from the note they prolong, time-dots may be written either immediately after such note, as in [Fig. 16], or in the part of the measure with which they synchronize, as in the following excerpt from Sterndale Bennett's piano study “The Lake.”
Fig. 17.
Elsewhere throughout the same study the composer has placed dots immediately after the note they prolong. Here, therefore, he seems to have anticipated the objection that he was dotting un-accented notes (see “Notation of Rhythm,” [Par. 9]), and to refute it by showing that there are in reality two series of accents in each measure, at cross purposes with each other, that, indeed, the alto, and tenor measures are an eighth note behind the treble, though they could not be written with separate bar-lines. This is clear when the whole passage is seen. Observe that the dot to the last note of a measure is placed at the beginning of the next, to make the overlapping clear to the eye. (Also that the dots to the last alto and tenor quarter notes are placed not in the space next, but in the space next-but-one higher than the note they prolong.) Dots are not infrequently placed thus—that is, in or near the part of the measure with which they synchronize—apart from any such purpose as that just explained.
The dot made its first appearance in music about A.D. 1300. Sometimes it had a tail (“punctus caudatus”) and looked not unlike an inverted comma. It did not, however, acquire its present meaning till about a century later.