Yelling!

Monz, I had decided to pass on responding to your rude post and dumped that
Digest without answering it, but this morning thought the better of it. You
deserve a reasonable response for taking the time to explain the rationale
that led you to your "pontification of Truth." So I went to the archives and
pulled up your post.

I had suggested that:

>> The term "tritone" could only be spawned by a 12-tET keyboard
>> concept of music.

And Joe Monzo yelled:

> Jerry - I'm sorry, but you are WRONG here!

> You must have missed the post I sent explaining this
> http://www.onelist.com/messages/tuning?archive=528
> where I say, among other things (including an answer to
> a question *you* posed to me):

> [me, monz, TD 528.23]
> But the original meaning, which is obvious from the word's
> etymology, is to define an interval composed of *3 tones*.
> The term developed at a time which stipulated a Pythagorean
> context (help me on the history, Margo), and so thus the
> interval was (9/8)^3 = 512:729 = ~611.73 cents. This is
> exactly synonymous with 'augmented 4th' in Pythagorean tuning.

> The term 'tritone' is *far* older than any 12-tET theory,
> and in fact probably predates keyboards too, which, remember,
> were not tuned even approximately in 12-tET until around 1500
> at the very earliest.

> As far as I know, the Greeks did not use the term, and it
> developed with Latin theory c 1000 - waaaaaaay before 12-tET.

Okay, where do we start? How about starting with a bit of courtesy mixed
with diplomacy. Couldn't you have introduced your thought by saying "Jerry,
did you know that some authorities believe the term 'tritone' dates back at
least 600 years?"

Secondly, the precise meanings of words change somewhat through the
centuries. Modern usage is clear. A "tritone" is a term used to refer to
_both the augmented fourth and the diminished fifth without reference to
function or tuning. The general application today is to the modern tempered
keyboard, which, as you know, has nothing to do with Pythagoras, Greeks, or
Latin theorists.

While the information you presented is interesting, it has nothing to do
with my point (unless you read my words literally without regard for modern
context). I was responding to a post by Paul Erlich in which he appeared to
be equating "tritone" with "augmented fourth," which in my opinion is not
accurate and tends to mislead.

>> Paul [Erlich]:
>> "Tritone" literally means three tones,
>
> [Jerry]
> Yes.
>
>> [Paul]
>> or three major seconds,
>
> [Jerry]
> Yes.
>
>> [Paul]
>> or an augmented fourth.
>
> [Jerry]
> No.
>
> The term

(in the modern sense)

> "tritone" could only be spawned by a 12-tET keyboard
> concept of music.

My curt "no" in this context was intended to be lighthearted and was
followed by my point, that the current use of the "ambiguous" term could
also refer to a diminished fifth (a point that I would have thought was
obvious).

There. I got that off my chest. I feel much better now.

Jerry

> [Jerry Eskelin, TD 533.20]
> Monz, I had decided to pass on responding to your rude post
> and dumped that Digest without answering it, but this morning
> thought the better of it. You deserve a reasonable response
> for taking the time to explain the rationale that led you to
> your "pontification of Truth."

Jerry, I was not intending to be rude, merely *emphatic*!!
(well, OK, so then maybe that *is* yelling.... sorry!)

Paul and I had both already explained that your understanding
of the use of the term 'tritone' was not the full story,
and yet you continued to express that particular definition
of 'tritone' as the only one. You know we can't let you
get away with that :) ....

> [Jerry]
> Okay, where do we start? How about starting with a bit of
> courtesy mixed with diplomacy.

I'm all for courtesy and diplomacy, so please take this in
the spirit in which it's intended. I'm not trying to intimidate
or embarass anyone; simply trying to pass on information that
(AFAIK) is correct, especially when I see something from someone
else that looks incorrect, or at least (in your case) incomplete,
which implies incorrectness by omission.

> Couldn't you have introduced your thought by saying "Jerry,
> did you know that some authorities believe the term 'tritone'
> dates back at least 600 years?"

But in this case, it's not a matter of any authorities believing
anything. The term first appears in the historical record at
such-and-such date with such-and-such meaning, and that's that.

As I noted in the original reply that you seem to have missed,
there are several definitions for 'tritone' (and many other
terms) that are all acceptable. Certain definitions may be
current only at certain times or places or only with certain
authors, or many of them may have varying degrees of currency
all at the same time. I was simply trying to clear up what
looked to me like mis-information being passed along; or at
any rate, as I said above, you were limiting yourself to one
particular definition but passing it along as the *only* one.

In response to the rest of your post, all I can say is that
(as I repeat yet again) 'context is everything', and in today's
multi-cultural global communication network, I don't think
anyone should try to explain anything without making the
context clear. At least now, we've accomplished that for
your posts, and we can all understand more clearly what
you're saying.

I suppose the whole 'conflict' would have been avoided if
I had already provided a good entry for 'tritone' in my
Dictionary, with *all* of its many meanings.
(and no, it's still not in there... too busy right now...)

Thanks for taking the trouble to dig out my post and to respond.

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo Philadelphia monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

Yelling!I've reread the posts and it's clear that Joe Monzo was passionate but not yelling.

I have noticed that there is a tendency in music theory texts (especially those intended for beginners or intended to describe vernacular harmonic practice) to elide the terms augmented fourth, diminished fifth and tritone. This equivalence relation is indeed true under 12tet, but common-practice theory and its predecessors are not based upon 12tet and this relationship does not hold, although it may well hold for other repertoires (i.e. north american popular musics or princetononian 12-tone technique). Indeed the distinction between augmented fourth/tritone and diminished fifth is basic for any student of counterpoint.

The term "tone" is, in its Attic root, _tonos_, the whole tone with the interval 9:8. A succession of three 9:8s is an augmented fourth, the medieval latin _tritonus_, our tritone. The octave complement or inversion of the augmented fourth/tritone is the diminished fifth, and the harmonic and melodic functions of the two intervals are different.

If I could make a single reform in music education it would be to drop the standard lecture in music appreciation classes on the tritone as "diabolus in musica". A little knowledge is often a dangerous thing and learning this attractive little bit of Latin outside of the study of counterpoint and its "Mi contra Fa" stricture is misleading. For most of the music that listeners today encounter, this interval (or interval neighborhood) is treated as basic material, in effect, as a consonance. For example, in "barbershop" music and jazz voice leading, I take it that one can have indefinitely long sequences of these intervals "planing" in parallel motion.

This treatment is at variance with common practice, and perhaps the common practice handling of approximately the same intervals as dissonances is difficult for modern ears to imagine. This is perhaps a similar phenomenon to the treatment of the major third in the pythagorean environment.

Daniel Wolf