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Sweet, soft, gentle — the French equivalent of dolce.
Printed below or beside the staff, alone or graded — doux, très doux, assez doux, doux et expressif, doux et chanté — often with p or pp. It applies to the line or passage it marks, and it can also stand in a heading, as in Ravel’s Pavane.
French composers use doux where Italians would write dolce. It implies tenderness and softness, often with a sensuous quality specific to French music.
Ravel, Pavane pour une infante défunte (piano), m. 1: “Assez doux, mais d’une sonorité large” heads the piece at p — gentle in character, full in tone.
Doux is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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