the devil’s interval

diabolus in musica

The weekend was full of interesting things. One tidbit in particular came by sitting down at a piano and learning about a tritone—a type of chord with a strange history:

In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church banned an interval that we would today write as the notes C and F#, which is called a tritone. In those times, musical instruments were tuned differently than they are today, and our modern instruments can’t reproduce this interval exactly… To hear it, or something very close to it, sing the first two notes of Leonard Bernstein’s song “Maria” from West Side Story. (source)

Speaking of church, I also attended my first first communion this weekend, but details will have to wait until the work whistle blows.