The tritone always suspected other intervals talked about him. The perfect fifth never said anything directly. It just smiled with infuriating stability. Same with the major third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You know,” it would say, “there’s nothing wrong with being… different.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tritone had not asked to be born halfway between certainty and certainty. He had not invented his own unsettling geometry. He hated when anyone talked this way. Yet forever composers treated him as if he was “different” and required supervision. Imagine spending five hundred years carrying a nickname someone else gave you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The Devil’s Interval.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students were warned. Teachers demonstrated with him using the same tone veterinarians reserve for venomous reptiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This one,” they would say, pressing the two notes together, “wants to go somewhere else.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The major triad arrived satisfied. The tritone lived in permanent expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years passed. Jazz arrived. They welcomed the tritone without ceremony. Blues players bent to him instinctively. Film composers loved him for monsters, lovers, detectives, or when existential crises entered the frame. Tritone was indispensable but it made him even more anxious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If everyone likes me now…” he worried, “…perhaps I’ve become ordinary.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An octave once asked why he always seemed nervous. Tritone looked around before answering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Because I keep expecting someone to resolve me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Octave smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“But isn’t that your purpose?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tritone stared out the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“That might just be someone else’s expectation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, during the premiere of a wildly experimental symphony, he appeared in the opening measure. He remained unresolved for forty minutes. No cadence to the rescue. No tonic to redeem. The final note faded, the audience sat in silence. Some bewildered. Some ecstatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tritone felt something he never experienced before. He understood the source of his paranoia. It came from believing every beautiful thing must eventually apologize for being itself. After that, whenever he appeared in a piece of music, he no longer worried about where he was going. He listened instead for the composer brave enough to stay with him longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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