Well, in the first place, the interval they played to illustrate that sound wasn’t a tritone (a.k.a. “diabolus in musica”); it was, ironically, a perfect fifth. In the second place, I’m glad the guy admits he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because the tritone certainly was not an interval that would send you to hell if you played it. It was indeed forbidden and called “diabolus,” but only because medieval music theory and theology considered the fourth and the fifth to be the only “perfect” intervals and for a long time prohibited even thirds and sixths. Eventually, of course, they all became mainstays of traditional harmony, and the tritone is an integral part of the dominant seventh chord. Even more ironically, it is an integral structural motif in Britten’s War Requiem, in which, however, he uses it to depict the evil of war and usually resolves it to a consonance. The guy certainly has some odd ideas about both music theory and the history of church music. Tell him to stick to programming.
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Well, in the first place, the interval they played to illustrate that sound wasn’t a tritone (a.k.a. “diabolus in musica”); it was, ironically, a perfect fifth. In the second place, I’m glad the guy admits he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because the tritone certainly was not an interval that would send you to hell if you played it. It was indeed forbidden and called “diabolus,” but only because medieval music theory and theology considered the fourth and the fifth to be the only “perfect” intervals and for a long time prohibited even thirds and sixths. Eventually, of course, they all became mainstays of traditional harmony, and the tritone is an integral part of the dominant seventh chord. Even more ironically, it is an integral structural motif in Britten’s War Requiem, in which, however, he uses it to depict the evil of war and usually resolves it to a consonance. The guy certainly has some odd ideas about both music theory and the history of church music. Tell him to stick to programming.
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