Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An interval composed of three whole tones.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In music, an interval composed of three whole steps or “tones”—that is, an augmented fourth, as between the fourth and seventh tones of a scale.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Mus.), rare A superfluous or augmented fourth.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music An interval of three whole
tones .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The tritone is a singularly active interval -- maybe what we mean when we say it's the most dissonant -- which is why the medieval church probably banned it.
If they thought a tritone was devilish... L. Lee Lowe 2006
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David Evans’ photographic essay laid out at the press and printed in tritone by Western Printers with captions digitally set.
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David Evans’ photographic essay laid out at the press and printed in tritone by Western Printers with captions digitally set.
A Book to Die for: HOI BARBAROI A Quarter Century at Barbarian Press 2009
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The medieval Catholic Church banned the musical interval of an augmented fourth, the distance between C and F-sharp and also known as a tritone (the interval in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story when Tony sings the name "Maria").
Archive 2006-11-01 L. Lee Lowe 2006
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The medieval Catholic Church banned the musical interval of an augmented fourth, the distance between C and F-sharp and also known as a tritone (the interval in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story when Tony sings the name "Maria").
If they thought a tritone was devilish... L. Lee Lowe 2006
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This then leads to the eerie E flat and A chords also known as a tritone or the "Devil's chord" played by a solo violin, representing death on his fiddle...
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The tritone is a great musical motif and can work brilliantly, but when I was taking my music O level 30 years ago we were banned from using it because it was 'wrong'.
The Unreasonable Man 2009
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The song's unusual melody included a "tritone" interval (an augmented fourth), which many listeners found hard to accept in a pop song.
Chris McGowan: Two Musical Giants Left Us On December 8: Lennon & Jobim 2008
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Start impressively small, football soccer the encoded message of an Aztec prince in the shadow of ogd, diminished tritone splendour.
Sensitive Ivan R. 2012
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This is the tritone, an interval so unstable and harsh that it has been known for centuries as "the devil in music."
Discord and democracy: What we can learn about Cairo from Puccini's 'Tosca' Philip Kennicott 2011
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