Rob MacKillop wrote; There is no such thing as the double tonic. the
term is meaningless.
This comment intrigues me. It has been said that this characteristic,
whatever you call it is the most dominant feature of of Scots music
with about 1/6 of all tunes published having this feature. I have
concluded, without proof I must add, that composers of music for the
pipes [which were around for approximately 1000 years before the arrival
of the violin] felt restricted by the fact that the pipes had a very
limited compass [nine notes] and as a result composed tunes which were
in two keys or "double tonic" or "double key" so as to give the tune
more variety, the effect of even a few notes in an adjacent key being
quite noticeable and pleasing to the ear. Allowing for the deviations
from "standard pitch" aren't the available scales on the pipes A
mixolydian, G major, and B Dorian and aren't "double tonic tunes''
based on these characteristic scales with the modification that with the
arrival of the violin the characteristic was retained but the keys were
not now restricted to A,G, and B. It seems to me that the term "double
tonic" or "double key" describes the characteristics of these tunes very
well. I would be very interested in your or anyone's comments
Alexander Mac Donald
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