Hellooooo fellow humans, it is I, Ania, here with a radar interesting article! Firstly, I hope you had an amazing Christmas along your loved ones, but on to today’s subject, which is the evil, monstrous Devil’s Tritone!

“Diabolus en muzica”, which means “the devil in music” in latin, is an interval spanning three full tones (Tri=three, Tone=Tones). It divides the octaves into two different equal parts, creating an unstable sound that, churches thought, would make the devil appear, if sung. In the Middle Age, it was banned, and anyone who sang it were sentenced to death.

Well…. That’s actually not true… It was not ever banned, as there’s no evidence of that, but the misleading information is repeated over and over again on the Internet.

The tritone was used in church songs (quite rarely), and the reason it was rarely used is because it was difficult to sing and dissonant, but could have been effectively used in certain contexts.

It was first heard of 400 years after the Medieval practice.

In the 18th century, Johann Fux described it in a textbook called “Gradus ad Parnassum”. The phrase said that “mi” against “fa” is the devils tritone… But the notes only form a minor 2nd… So, what’s up with that?

Well… The Medieval Music was split in 3 hexachords. A hexachord consists of the first six notes of the major scale.

The ‘natural‘ Hex. was built on “do“, the ‘soft‘ Hex. built on “fa“, and the ‘hard‘ Hex. built on “sol“.

Therefore, “mi” from the natural Hex. can create a tritone with “fa” from the soft Hex., “fa” from the natural Hex. can create a tritone with “mi” from the hard Hex., and “mi” from the hard Hex. was especially devilish with “fa” from the soft Hex.

The expression “devil’s tritone” is similar to “I after E, except after C”. It’s a practical technical rule, but not a warning against the devil.

Why do we believe it’s evil, then? It’s because of an amazing thing called “Semantic shift”, which means that words can change their meanings in time, often to negative one’s.

For example, “awful” (Really bad) meant “inspiring awe”, and that’s kind of what happened to the devil’s tritone.

19th century romantic composers studied it and took the phrase.. Quite literally… Therefore creating evil, powerful sounding music based on it. The evil of the phrase intensified in the 20th and 21st century, when metal bands started experimenting with it.

Even if it didn’t mean “evil” in the Middle Ages, the tritone has been socially codified to mean “evil” and to represent the devil.

I hope you enjoyed this pile of information thrown at you, and if you want to know more, check out this video.

Have a great day ^^