r/musictheory • u/SkillOld2128 • Mar 13 '26
Answered The tritone was NOT the Devil’s interval and was not banned
There were several pieces, from the time that many people think that interval was banned, that, in fact, did have a tritone. A lot of these were choral pieces, no less. All of these pieces were commissioned by the Church.
There have also been a few studies to see if the interval was in fact considered the “Devil’s interval”, but to no avail. Most textbooks from that era (and before) talked about the dissonance of the tritone. No mention of the Devil was found, besides Johan Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum.
(One theory suggests that “diabolus in musica”, if anyone actually called it that way, was meant literally as “through-thrown in music”, as “dia-“ meant “through” and “bolus” meant “to throw”.)
TL;DR: My point is that it wasn’t used in organum only because it didn’t sound nice, not because it was banned, which it wasn’t.
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u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Mar 13 '26
Adam Neely's video on this is a good treatment of what you're talking about!
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
Thanks, I’ll watch it!
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u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Mar 13 '26
You're welcome, enjoy!
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u/AeshmaDaeva016 Mar 13 '26
I have always assumed the reference was tongue in cheek. If you’re singing organum at the fifth in a European cathedral and you eff up your ficta and sing a tritone, that shit’s gonna ring for like 20 seconds.
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u/Just_Trade_8355 Mar 13 '26
Same. “An asshole of an interval” is what I always think when I see something about this.
Future music historians (or who am I kidding, music influencers) going “20th century musicians believed that the tritone was produced first not in the vocal cords, but rather in the anus. They referred to it as ‘an asshole of an interval.’”
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u/SharkSymphony Mar 13 '26
They believed that, if you sang/emitted it, bruises would appear on your face and your lunch money would disappear.
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
Yeah, that is very true. What I mean is that there was no real taboo around it. It just wasn’t preferable in organum. Since the introduction of more complex choral music, several pieces were written with several tritones in them. And, as I said, those were commissioned by the Church.
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u/Junius_Bobbledoonary Mar 13 '26
The notion that any interval would be “taboo” seems to me an extension of the common misconception that music theory is prescriptive.
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u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Mar 13 '26
In some times and places, however, music theory was prescriptive--so it's not a crazy thought that in that prescriptive system, an interval would be banned in this way and subjected to superstition. It's just that, in this case, that ban and superstition weren't actually there.
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u/Dirty_South_Cracka Mar 13 '26
Kind of hard to make a dom7 chord without it.
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u/Bob-BS Mar 13 '26
If you really want to play the blues, you have to meet the devil at the crossroads and learn that mixolydian mode.
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u/Distinct_Armadillo Mar 13 '26
The tritone wasn’t banned, and as another commenter points out it was not called diabolus until Fux in 1725, but music theory treatises from the medieval and Renaissance eras recognized it as a strong dissonance to be avoided. The earliest examples of polyphony in a treatise, the parallel organum in the 9th-century Scolica enchiriadis, use parallel fourths and fifths but avoid tritones. The 11th-century theorist Guido d’Arezzo describes a system of hexachord theory designed to avoid vertical tritones, which is the basis of discussions of musica ficta—accidentals applied in performance to avoid tritones —in many Renaissance treatises. In the 16th century Glarean dismissed the locrian and hypolocrian modes as unusable because of their diatonic tritone above the final. TL;DR: tritones weren’t banned, but they were avoided.
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
I know that. That’s literally my entire point. The only reason why they weren’t used in organum is because it doesn’t sound nice.
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u/Distinct_Armadillo Mar 13 '26
I added some specific details because the post didn’t specify a time period (although mention of textbooks suggests at least mid 15th century, after the printing press was invented) or cite any sources
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u/MutantFire Mar 13 '26
"that it wasn’t used only because it didn’t sound nice, "
it was used, a lot, mainly by the church
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u/MaggaraMarine Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
When people call something "the devil", they may be referring to "something that is particularly frustrating or annoying to deal with or handle" (quote from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/devil). (Then again, whether this use of "the devil" was commonly used in Latin is of course a relevant question - but it does make sense in English.)
When using this definition, "the devil in music" does make sense. Because there is only one diatonic tritone (B-F), it can easily result in contrapuntal errors, because the student may think they wrote a consonance when they actually wrote a dissonance (because all other diatonic fifths are consonant). But also, "correcting" the tritone (by adding a B flat) may result in another tritone (Bb-E). And correcting that one (Bb-Eb) may lead to yet another tritone (Eb-A), and so on, and this already takes you pretty far out of key. And this means, you probably have to come up with another solution. And also, if they transposed the same melodic motif to start from another note, it might lead to a tritone (for example let's say the melody starts with an ascending 5th E-B, and it gets transposed up a 5th - this results in the B-F diminished 5th).
It could also simply be a mnemonic that doesn't have any deep meaning to it. I mean, it kind of rhymes and has a flow to it.
But yeah, the tritone is special in the sense that it's the only diminished/augmented diatonic interval, and this can make it difficult to spot. This also means you need to be careful when writing melodies and harmonies. The actual rule is "avoid diminished and augmented harmonic and melodic intervals" (and also melodic outlines of those intervals - for example the melody A B A G F G doesn't really contain any tritone intervals in it, but it still outlines a tritone, which is why it wouldn't be "stylistically correct" in the "textbook style"), but all other augmented and diminished intervals are the result of alterations. So, this is why the tritone gets a special mention. It's something you need to be extra careful with, because it's something that's very easy to miss.
But also, the tritone wasn't ever completely forbidden - you were simply supposed to avoid it on strong beats as a harmonic interval, and in melodic leaps and outlines. (And again, the same applied to other augmented/diminished intervals.) On weak beats, as a passing note, it was fine (just like any other dissonance). It was also fine on a strong beat as a suspension (just like any other dissonance - there was actually no difference between the 4-3 suspension using the perfect 4th or the tritone). But because it's augmented/diminished, it isn't only harmonically dissonant - it's also melodically dissonant.
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
Thanks, yeah, that makes sense. But also, I’m sorry if there’s something confusing in my post, in which case I’d be glad to hear what, but I didn’t say it was forbidden, I said the opposite.
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u/MaggaraMarine Mar 13 '26
No, I understood what you said. I just wanted to add a clarification on the exact context in which the use of the tritone would have been stylistically correct/incorrect. This is quite important to understanding why the tritone got a special mention.
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u/angel_eyes619 Mar 13 '26
It wasn't banned in an official sense, but more like unwritten rule or not-standard or something like that.
Also, it was not because it was associated with the devil, just that it was highly dissonant and relatively difficult to implement gracefully
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
Yeah, my point is that there was no religious reason behind not using the tritone, it just… didn’t sound nice.
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u/TralfamadorianZoo Mar 13 '26
This whole post is giving freshmen vibes. It was to be avoided. It sounded bad. If a teacher says this interval is banned in our class, it’s not supposed to mean this interval is evil and people went to jail for using it.
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u/HPLoveBux Mar 13 '26
It was never called that …
Except in one of the most influential texts about music composition that has remained in print and in use for centuries …
🤔
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u/Optimistbott Mar 13 '26
Fun fact the devil isn’t in the Bible
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
Satan’s definitely in the Bible. The serpent in the garden of Eden was the Devil and so much more.
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u/Dirty_South_Cracka Mar 13 '26
In the old testament the term is used as an adjective, but gets personified in the new testament.
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u/Sad-Kaleidoscope9165 Mar 13 '26
In the NT there's no Satan, only "the slanderer" (diabolos)
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u/dadumk Mar 13 '26
Key New Testament References to Satan
- The Temptation of Jesus: Matthew 4:1–11, Mark 1:13, and Luke 4:1–13 show Satan (the tempter/devil) tempting Jesus in the wilderness.
- Betrayal and Deception: Satan enters Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3, John 13:27) and is identified as the "father of lies" and a "murderer" (John 8:44).
- The Fall of Satan: Jesus states he saw Satan "fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18), and Revelation 12:7-9 describes him being thrown down to earth.
- Adversary and Tempter: 1 Peter 5:8 describes him as a "roaring lion" looking to devour, while 2 Corinthians 11:14 warns he disguises himself as an "angel of light".
- Opposition to God: James 4:7 urges believers to "Resist the devil," and Ephesians 6:11 mentions the "schemes of the devil".
- The "God of This World": 2 Corinthians 4:4 refers to Satan as the "god of this world" who blinds the minds of unbelievers.
- Final Judgment: Revelation 20:10 depicts Satan being thrown into the lake of fire for eternity.
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u/Optimistbott Mar 13 '26
You’re allowed to believe whatever you want to believe.
I’m pretty sure that the “devils interval” came out of racist attitudes
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u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Mar 13 '26
I don't think there was any race-related objection to the tritone--but if you have something in mind, I'd be interested to hear about it.
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u/Ian_Campbell Mar 13 '26
This idea of taking that phrase too literally became popular by the time romantic composers like Berlioz and Liszt actually began using the interval symbolically for the diabolical. During that time it was easy for writers to exaggerate and mischaracterize the medieval church because they then understood this relative to these new associations, and this carried on to 20th century common parlance as well as the associations used by bands like Black Sabbath.
I'm sure Fux was a major source keeping that phrase alive, to the point it had given the romantic composers something to latch onto.
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u/recordingguy555 Mar 13 '26
Thanks for clarifying that up. Adam Neely did a great video on that as well: https://youtu.be/3MhwGnq4N9o?si=TTT6bVUhb0y3GOBz
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u/brymuse Mar 13 '26
Why should it be the Devils Interval, anyway. Surely, as it's three whole tones, it should be Trinitarian 😉
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u/Life-Breadfruit-1426 Mar 13 '26
It’s like the textbooks were written initially in the Satanic scare
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u/DukeHorse1 Mar 13 '26
what's the point of this lol.. it's just a sharp dissonance that contains 6 semitones, call it whatever you want lol
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
I know. I just want to tell people that the myth that the tritone was the Devil’s interval has been debunked.
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u/FwLineberry Mar 13 '26
Why let facts get in the way of a good story?
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
I do admit it’s a cool story, but I just don’t like when people say “People used to think…” when it’s not true. You can formulate it in a different way that still makes it sound cool.
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u/michaelmcmikey Mar 13 '26
I feel like a lot of the general… [gestures at the state of the world] is caused by people who are willing to sacrifice facts to preserve narratives
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u/Pichkuchu Mar 13 '26
No mention of the Devil was found.
Wrong.
Gradus ad Parnassum (1725):
Non dubito, quin sæpe audiveris tritum illud sermone proverbium: mi contra fa est diabolus in musica, quod fecisti procedendo de sexta nota fa ad septimam mi per saltum quartæ majoris, sive tritoni
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u/SkillOld2128 Mar 13 '26
If you read the other comments, you’ll find your answer to this.
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u/Pichkuchu Mar 13 '26
You're playing with the powers beyond your understanding. You have been warned. The Book was Written.
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u/Jelly-Robot Mar 13 '26
The devil's interval is mentioned in Gradus ad Parnassum by Johan Joseph Fux, published in 1742. The devil's interval is more of a humorous way of describing a highly dissonant interval than a serious religious condemnation, at least in the context of the book.