The Great Myth of the Medieval Tritone Ban

Summary by Krater

An exploration of the history of the tritone interval, examining whether it was genuinely banned by the Catholic Church as the "devil in music" or if that is a modern myth.

From the video

Answers: Was the tritone actually banned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages?

• tritone in medieval music
• diabolus in musica myth
• hexachord system and musica ficta
• evolution of music theory and dissonance

What it concludes

• The Catholic Church never banned the tritone interval.
• Medieval and Renaissance musicians avoided the tritone because it was considered difficult to sing rather than associated with the devil.
• The myth that the tritone was banned as the devil's interval largely stems from 19th-century composers and modern popular culture.
• Early medieval music treatises described the tritone as dissonant and annoying to human hearing, but not as satanic.