The tritone is one of the most dissonant intervals in music. It is also known as the "Augmented 4th", "Diminished 5th", "Doubly Augmented 3rd" or "Doubly Diminished 6th", and it is composed of three adjacent whole tones.

The tritone was banned in early Catholic music due to its dissonance. Is it still banned today?

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    I didn't even know it was banned in the first place – North Feb 21 '19 at 23:44
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    It looks like the Catholic Church technically did ban it, but from what I'm reading so far, no one wanted to use that interval in the first place to begin with due to the dissonance it created as well as it being very hard for people to teach how to sing, since our natural tendency is to harmonize with each other – North Feb 21 '19 at 23:49
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    Can you give a source for the "ban?" – Michael Curtis Feb 22 '19 at 15:00
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    AFAIK, there was never a ban in the first place. The phrase "Devil's chord" simply refers to its dissonance. In Gregorian chant and in medieval music there was a strong stress on the importance of harmony, and while certain "tense" chords were used, they were much less common than in classical and modern popular music. – Simone Feb 22 '19 at 17:07
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    A more plausible example of a tritone spelled as a doubly diminished sixth would be B# to G♭. I've never seen a triple-flat in real life. Similarly, C♭-E# seems marginally more likely as a doubly augmented third. – phoog Mar 11 '19 at 13:07

I don't know that there is any evidence that the tritone was ever formally banned by the Catholic Church, although that story does get passed around a lot. An actual Church document that discusses this and puts the claim in context is needed.

I see no mention of tritones or intervals of any type in Musicam Sacram of 1967. The Sacrosanctum Concilium of 1963, one of the Church documents cited by the Musicam Sacram, similarly makes no mention of tritones. In "Chapter VI Sacred Music" of this document can be found:



Later, this seems to indicate an openness to other musical traditions, with no exception stated for tritones or other musical devices:



Finally there is this advice for composers:



From this, it would appear that the Catholic Church gives a special place to Gregorian chant, but is accepting of the music of other cultures, while encouraging composers to realize the best quality sacred music. None of this seems to support the idea that tritones have been banned by the Church, at least since the early 1960s.

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    This YouTube video is a great debunking of the banning of the tritone myth. He sites the Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Fux as the source of the phrase "the Devil in Music," although it seems like Fux's meaning has been largely mis-interpreted: youtube.com/watch?v=eR5yzCH5CsM – Peter Feb 22 '19 at 17:20

Tritones have been used since Gregorian Chant days. There are several common patterns that outline a tritone and a few instances where a direct tritone is used. The term "Devil's Interval" seems to refer to the difficulty of resolving the interval rather than in forbidding its use. One amusing (if true) use was the direct F to B (I think downward) interval for a chant section outlining the presentation of the vinegar and the same longer pattern with Bb being used in a similar suggestion of drinking wine.

The is an acoustic difficulty in non-equal-temperament tunings in representation of the interval. A tritone would be 729/512 if using three C-D intervals. This is pretty far from the Square Root of two which would divide an octave in half.


It certainly isn't banned now! And the whole historical mythology of banning the 'Devil's interval' though a nice idea, is rather dubious.

As well as being the engine of a dominant 7th chord, resolving to a major 3rd (or its inversion, a major 6th) it's almost achieved consonance status when used as a b5 by jazz players.

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    I'd say the mythology is more than dubious. The earliest known mentions of "diabolus in musica" are from the early 18th century, some 400 years after the medieval period. – Tom Serb Feb 22 '19 at 4:55
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    It can as you say be part of a dominant 7th chord, when the two pitches are sung by two different voices. I thought, though, that any alleged ban related to the interval between two notes sung in succession by one voice. – Rosie F Feb 23 '19 at 15:06
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    A chord is still a chord when arpeggiated! – Laurence Payne Feb 23 '19 at 15:52

As others have said, it was never banned. To clarify diabolus in musica, this referred to the ambiguity of how to resolve it. Harmony had developed enough by the 1700s that B+F could resolve to either C+E or Bb+Gb. But back then, C major and Gb major were still considered distant keys.

Something similar happened in twelve-tone music: certain hexachords could be used in two ways with different rows ("combinatoriality"), which Milton Babbitt abhorred, dismissing the exploitation of that as no more refined than a pun.

The Vatican has also not made any pronouncements about dodecaphony.

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    I guess Messiaen has made it impossible for the Vatican to denounce serialism :-) – Your Uncle Bob Jul 14 '19 at 4:06
  • Mode de valeurs et d'intensités, peut-être? :) – Camille Goudeseune Jul 14 '19 at 4:08

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