# The significance of the devilish tritone



## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

I've noticed mention of the tritone, and tried to find out what it is, and what is so special about it.

eg here 




and here 




Listening to their examples, I don't "get it". I'm not hearing anything devilish. And in any case, for every sentence of explanation, there's another word I've yet to grasp the meaning of!

So, setting aside the need for a technical definition, can someone explain what is the significance of the tritone? Who first used it? What is its impact on the music? Why is it (apparently) so reviled? (By those who revile it of course!) Can you point to some famous examples?

Thanks


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

It isn't reviled anymore, at least not by anybody with good ears. It appears in most music you hear from Bach's time onward. Almost everytime you hear a dominant chord in tonal music, there's a tritone in it giving it that character. Tritone's are very ambiguous sounding intervals. I love them. They can do so many things, and they are so colorful and expressive. Really its something, where if you knew more theory it would be easier to explain.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

The tritone is/was considered to be the harshest possible dissonance. It's used to create maximum tension, which can then be resolved to achieve maximum relief.

The tritone also indicates maximum distance. It's right in the middle of an octave, so it marks the greatest possible distance between a note and either of the two ends of the octave.

Related to that, the scales that are based on the two notes of a tritone (for example c major and g flat major) have the least notes in common, creating maximum harmonic distance.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> I've noticed mention of the tritone, and tried to find out what it is, and what is so special about it.
> 
> eg here
> 
> ...


if i remember well the big difference is that we are hearing it in equal temperament so the effect is very different from what was heard when it was called diabolus in musica.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

In just intonation the most consonant intervals are made up of frequencies that are simple ratios of whole numbers. This idea that the aesthetics of consonance vs dissonance matching up with the "mathematically pleasing" ratios was seen as sign that music composed using this tuning system had divine origins. However, the tritone was always the "thing that is not like the others." It was necessary to make a complete, self-consistent tuning system. With no tritone, there is a gaping whole right in the middle of the octave. But there is no way to fill in that hole that is consistent with the system of simple ratios on which just intonation is based. So, going back to this idea that just intonation was divine, this one interval was seen as some form of corruption in the system. This resonated with ideas about evil in the real world in the church at the time, so that particular interval became associated with the devil, and was to be avoided at all cost in sacred music.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Actually, the tritone features in the music of composers far preceding Bach. Buxtehude, one of Bach's teachers is no stranger to them but going back in time about a century, neither is John Bull.

Tritones are basically a vehicle in common practice music. The tritone that doesn't resolve very quickly or chooses to go to yet another tritone or dissonance will sound darker.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The tritone? It's the devil's work, I tell you! 

For Britten fans, the entire War Requiem (though quite tonal) is organized around the tritone, which is only resolved in the final Libera Me. It has its desired effect.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2012)

Thanks for the replies. It seems then that it is a commonplace, has been for some time, and is not sonically remarkable.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Thanks for the replies. It seems then that it is a commonplace, has been for some time, and is not sonically remarkable.


MacLeod --

I think you're taking away the wrong lesson from the foregoing. The tritone is a distinctive interval with unique characteristics. It is the interval than which there is none more ambiguous (at least diatonically). It exactly bisects the octave (at least in even temperament) and has a characteristic sound that is most usually described as "hollow" because it refuses to lead your ear toward resolving it in a favored direction. This has been exploited by many composers. Famously, the big ringing alternating chords that introduce the coronation scene in "Boris Godunov" are a tri-tone apart apart, imparting an air of mystery and menace to the proceedings. I'd have to look at the score, but I believe the famously ambiguous bi-tonal ending to "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (flutes in one key, trombones in another) are separated by a tri-tone. Obviously, in non-tonal music, it means less -- but don't sell it's unique qualities short. 

george


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Thanks for the replies. It seems then that it is a commonplace, has been for some time, and is not sonically remarkable.


The fact that it is commonplace could be said of any interval that has many musical uses and has been successfully incorporated into many effective compositions...but I think your statement is not quite accurate, its more like it is commonplace _because_ it is sonically remarkable. But with any of these intervals it depends how they are used. Its like cooking spices, a good 'cook' (or composer) can make a great meal (or composition) using these ingredients (intervals), in the hands of a unskilled cook (or composer), they can lose their 'magic'.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

There are three proper dissonances... The second, the seventh and the tritone... Of these it is clear that in the second the notes are 'too close' and that in the seventh the notes are 'too far' away from each other, when understood within the limits of the octave, in which I think it can be said we do understand intervals (or two octaves in the case of compound intervals etc.).

What is the tritone? Where does it resolve? It's resolutions require more motion, are never as obvious as the other dissonances... In this sense it seems to stand on its own two feet in a way the others don't.

This is of course all generalisation, but hopefully to the purpose of illumination. As for the fact it was reviled, it is probably best to remember that for 500 years Western music was driven by the concept of resolution of 'bad' into 'good'. Perhaps what makes this interval remarkable was that it was only really integrated into the musical language around 1600; the Renaissance style did not have a particularly individual way of dealing with it (they did deal with it, but I would argue the interval wasn't really given a strong identity until the Baroque period), and thus tended to avoid it. This means that there were 200 years of it being treated very differently to other dissonances, and the dominant 7th of the Baroque period (from 1600) is when it was truly integrated into musical language. Surely this is remarkable in itself, and is symptomatic of the inherent remarkability of the interval?


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## Guest (Oct 22, 2012)

I can see how over the many hundreds of years of musical history, an interval that has only recently been accommodated might seem remarkable. But for the listener starting (roughly) with Bach and ending with rock music today, responses such as BD's, clavichorder and anyone citing the medieval idea of music as a divine thing...it seems like its just another dissonance used by many people, that would be easy to overlook today.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

In context, it was labeled as such when music was single-line monody,in gentle seven-pitched modal scales, as vocal chant without any harmony involved at all.... the scale tone (let's hear all the proof that singers in the middle ages also sang in 'just intonation' hah...) being so rife with instability and vagueness, again in the context of modal melody, that it was then an interval to be avoided.... devil or other, it simply 'did not fit' and stood out like a bright red barn in a green prairie.

As dozens have said, you don't have a four pitch dominant seventh chord without 'the devil's interval' - so there ya go.

P.s. many a beginning comp student, getting 'contemporary' will feature the interval baldly and relentlessly - in pop music and film scores one will still find it used this way... blazingly obvious and by now really trite


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## Guest (Oct 10, 2015)

GGluek said:


> MacLeod --
> 
> I think you're taking away the wrong lesson from the foregoing. The tritone is a distinctive interval with unique characteristics. It is the interval than which there is none more ambiguous (at least diatonically). It exactly bisects the octave (at least in even temperament) and has a characteristic sound that is most usually described as "hollow" because it refuses to lead your ear toward resolving it in a favored direction. This has been exploited by many composers. Famously, the big ringing alternating chords that introduce the coronation scene in "Boris Godunov" are a tri-tone apart apart, imparting an air of mystery and menace to the proceedings. I'd have to look at the score, but I believe the famously ambiguous bi-tonal ending to "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (flutes in one key, trombones in another) are separated by a tri-tone. Obviously, in non-tonal music, it means less -- but don't sell it's unique qualities short.
> 
> george


I've finally got it...by listening to Sibelius' 4th Symphony and wallowing in the utterly extraordinary third movement. The small theme that grows and fails and grows again reaches a magnificent climax. Wrap yourself in the strings of the finest largo ever written. Dvorak eat your heart out!

Now don't laugh - those of you who have innate musical understanding will have spotted the connection between the Last Post and Also Sprach Zarathustra, and then Mars from the Planets' Suite (probably since you were rocked in the cradle) but it also helped listening to Stephen Johnson's Discovering Music on the Sibelius symphony. He points out the link between the perfect fifth and the tritone. With apologies to those who can't get it, here it is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zb3ys


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## Guest (Oct 10, 2015)

researching my knowledge and finding that I may have be confused myself


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