OK you asked for it. It includes the result of a deep dive into the incunabula history of european music —even much befoe that. Oh --Rozek and Zitec are the names of two Bohemian lineages that I am related to. I just tossed them in because I am so proud of them.
The Devil in the Music by John Wymore
It may help to think of it like this: unicycle has one wheel, a bicycle has two wheels and tricycle has — right, three wheels.
So would it be safe to say that a tritone has three tones? Well yes and no.
Its functional definition is —well, first off, refers to an interval not a single note. Although there is “a” tritone which is any note 3 whole tones away. Away from what? Any starting point. Within a diatonic scale there is only one tritone interval.
Although if you turn a tritone chord upside down the bottom note will be in a lower octave but in the same key. So visualizing the key of C, you will notice that the major scale does not have a black key. The note that would mark it as a tritone is not in the scale. That note being F#. Alright that’s enough about where your fingers have to go. What does it sound like?
It sounds a little strange —edgy some people might say. In musical language it needs to move or it needs resolution. And through the millennia the degree of strangeness has changed. Another way of saying that is that it is not stable and through the millennia people’s tolerance for the note has changed: From “stop it I can’t stand it” to “that’s pretty cool” to
“I can’t hear what you’re talking about.”
That strangeness was once referred to as “diabolus en musica” . A devil in the music.
That person was one Guido d’ Arezzo born in about the year 991. That would be somewhere in the Middle Ages. Guido was a Benedictine monk who taught singers how to sightread music. Before that singers had to memorize everything directly from the sound. But after they learned how to read music they didn’t have to do that anymore.
But there was still no way of writing music; so the good monk had to go back and invent musical notation. Which he did. Guido’s colleagues didn’t like that confusion so they put Guido in prison. Actually, there was only two of them, Zitec and Rozek. Somehow they had the authority do so.
It might have been while in prison , maybe solitary , that the monk made an important discovery. Zitec and Rozek allowed him to keep in the cell with him a monochord. A monochord is like a fretboard of a guitar with one string. You would think that would severely limit the amount of music that Guido d’Arezzo could play —you know, having only one string.
But father d’Arezzo was undeterred. So, OK, he couldn’t compose a symphony or actually anything he really liked. So he decided that he would set about to discover what he hated. And he hit the jackpot. He first discovered how really awful the intervals between Mi and Fa and Ti and Do sounded.
When he could make a trill with two pairs it made him crinkle his nose and raise his shoulders like he could cover his ears that way. The worst of all was when he discovered the tritone. He had already achieved some fame with a 6 tone series but by accident added the tritone to one end and it caused an effect that nearly killed him. Guido’s erstwhile comrades, Rozek and Zitec, now his jailers, found him huddled in a corner of his cell, trembling, weeping, praying. .. his precious monochord crushed to pieces on the jail floor.
‘What happened”, they asked. Guido got a hold of himself enough to wail, “It was the devil”
“No” they cried.
“Si”, returned Guido. “L’ho visto, incarnato.” Guido spoke pretty good italian, and he followed that with the latin, “Il diabolus en musica”.
His comrades gasped, “No, no. Not ——-”
“Ja wohl. In dem fleische”. (He was also proud of his Tedesci —but I shall resume in english
“He actually lives in the music? How does one do that?” asked Zitec.
“He hides in the interstices.” said Guido
“Inter -what?”asked Zitec and Rozek in unison
“The spaces, like between the keys on the harpsichord, or valves of the trumpet, the tubing of the sackbut.”
Rozek was duly puzzled. “He can’t really live there can he?”
“Why not? He’s the devil, isn’t he”?
Rozek thought about that. “Yeah, well, I guess”
“But here’s the real weird thing.” said Guido “Sometimes he prefers to live within the intervals. See, that’s a different kind of interstice. That’s one of his really, really favorite places. And when he can squeeze between Mi/Fa or Ti/Do he can really raze Hell. But by far his favorite is that tritone thingy.
“He showed me in a trailer he’s made of a movie called Things To Come where a big army of people called Aztecs could literally scare people to death with drums that were tuned to play tritones. They had names like Huehuetl and Teponatzli and were loud, man. They were so loud that the enemy just fell over. I ain’t shittin’ ya”
Zitec said,”What? I ain’t what. I aint shittin’ ya ?. The doesn’t make any sense.
“Well, I know”, said Guido. But the devil says that a lot and I kind of picked up on it”
“How much time did you spend with him?
“Well that’s really hard to say. See, it’s kind of like when you’re with the devil there isn’t any time. I mean if he invites you over for dinner you may be gone for decades. But then dinners over and you’ve said goodbye and you find yourself right where you were when he showed up —like no time had passed at all.
but then —“
Rozek said, “OK what’s a “trailer” and a “movie”. I’ve never heard of those things. Have you, Zitec?
“Never”, said Zitec.
“It’s hard to explain”. said Guido. I mean there are things in the future that are miraculous and inexplicable. The devil likes to get himself involved in that stuff. That’s why he knows so much. Anyhow movies are a kind of like live pictures of people and things where the pictures actually talk and move. They look real , but they really arn’t. And if I understood correctly people, real people, pay to watch movies. It’s like theater. Trailers are just small bits or samples of movies that are being made and soon to be available to watch. And there’s always a lot of music so you know that there’s a lot of the devil in movies.
“Huh”, said Rozek thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I understand. Why do they call them trailers? Why wouldn’t they call them “advances” or like “premonitions”?
Guido is getting impatient. “I don’t know . Look, you guys, ask him yourself —if you get a chance.”
“Yeah. Right.”
So Guido continued his pursuit of things that he hated about music. One time he took a tritone and jammed it between a couple of the tones of his beloved six tone series. The result nearly killed him. A huge explosion of fire and brimstone and noise so screechy and fearsome that he just crumbled to the floor. That’s when Rozek and Zitec found him.
It was said that the devil taught Guido a few tricks on of which was that blast on the six note series that became known as Guido’s Hex or finally Guidos Hexachord.
As time passed —generations after generations — the name Guido d’Arezzo shrunk to a short paragraph in the Encyclopedia of Music while Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer and Jezebel rose to world wide fame.
Satan founded the Italian Mafia in honor of his old disciple Father d’Arezzo which accounts for the unique regard that organization has always held for music and music performers. Mario Lanza and Frank Sinatra were famous benefactors of the Mafia’s generosity as they carried on the influence and tradition of the eloquent tritone.
Not only was there Lanza and Sinatra but there was the renowned Maria Callas, who was said to have been at one time Satan’s courtesan, that carried the beacon of the tritone and of Mi/Fa, and Ti/Do. And we must never forget the strange legend of the famous blues singer, Rosemary. The true identity of the father of her baby remains a topic of much whispering even today.
And so that’s how we know the origin of jazz — a sharp 4th or a flatted 5th and the tritone itself. We owe it all to Father Guido d’Arezzo and El Diablo in La Musica.
Yes (the music). It’s been awhile. Would like to see it again.
Just to pick out a phrase that carries with it a bit of a problem (and I may paraphrase a little):
“ what we experience of the actions of the quatum level ,,,”
“briniging to mind”
“we don’t live at a quantum level
“We live at emerges
In the 4 phrases, above, the words “mind" and “live" appear twice, each, the word experience, once. The meanng of each is vast and includes systems and processes of neruo circuits, myriad fluids like hormones,and blood; plasma, conglomerates of cells that function in remarkable coordination with one another to create an organism. As far as I know that is about as far as we can get from a so-called quantum level. And THAT experience (if we can call it that ) is alvailable to only a very few. Those are the ones that you witness listening to a lecturer who has filled a large white board—from upper left to lower right — with arcane symbology that only occassionaly incudes a numeral. As the person in front goes thru step by step, symbol by symbol, taping the board ligjhtly with a pointer or a red sport light which is oddly appropriate for the esoteric subject because there is apparently nothing between the the apparent source held in the hand of the speaker and red spot leaping around the white board. But the most important thing about this scene is the audience who are nodding their heads in enthusiastic comprehension and turning around, looking at each other and smiling. Why are thery smiling ?? Because they GET IT — THOSE people may be close to the quantum level. It reminds me of what an Ex-Prez said once, “It depends on what the menaing of “is” is. Yes. Everything depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
And that is probably what that damned formual is about.
If you are wondering what the hell I’m talking about, what my point is; well I’m sure either. I was just thinking that you cant talk about the relationship between quanta and life without considering the sloppy, often fetid, processes that must come into play to even think of — well, just to think.
So organisms can be reduced to molecules, molecues to atoms which form little galaxies within which is mostly SPACE. Then we go futher. Where there is only space. Or there is space and NOT space. Where Schreodingers Cat is not dead or alive , it is both DEAD and ALIVE. But I would guess not sloppy.
I gotta go. Have I ever shared with you my disquisition on diabolus en musica ? It’s all written out and ready to send .
JW
I watched more of the video. It got into quantum field theory and how what we experience emerges from the actions of the quantum field. But that brings to mind another thing. We don’t live AT the level of the quantum field; we live at the level of what emerges from it. We may live because of the quantum field, like the computer (Peter’s favorite illustration) functions at the level of the chips and so forth (I don’t know enough about the quantum field to be able to speak about it like Peter), but we don’t live at that level when we operate the computer. We just turn it on and start using it. Macro and micro, and I guess then Macro again. So, this puts me to the place we’ve been at in terms of philosophy: GT may depend a lot on phenomenology but we are not dong philosophy when we meet with people. We are applying philosophy (perhaps), but we are not doing philosophy. Micro and macro. Husser’s quote “to the things themselves” (i.e. through a reduction of the natural attitude) to me is an attempt to get to the level of the quantum field (analogy). I think we work with the emergent. So, not reducing the natural attitude but working within it (in maybe a sub-set of it like the professional attitude or the personalistic attitude).
Consider that there maybe no such thing as nothing
"Space is nothing and has no properties”. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPVQtvbiS4Y)
Watching a YouTube on space and time. This was one statement, and it caught my attention because we have asserted that there is no distance between objects and that all are connected in “the field.” But if the cosmos is expanding and the objects (i.e. galaxies) are moving away at increasing speed, leaving space in between, and space has no properties. It is nothing. Does that destroy our assertions that we are all connected?
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at
http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at
http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at
http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at
http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at
http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.