Classical Music
The musical interval of an augmented fourth, or tritone, was called the Devil's Chord (Latin: Diabolus in musica – the Devil in music) and was banned by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Composers avoided the interval, and although it is sometimes found in secular music of the time, it was used in religious music only in very specific circumstances until the existing system of keys came into use.
The Devil is featured as a character in many musical representations from the Middle Ages to modern times. Hildegard of Bingen's 11th-century Ordo Virtutum features him, as do several baroque oratorios by composers such as Carissimi and Alessandro Scarlatti. During the 19th century, Gounod's Faust, in which the Devil goes by the name Mephistopheles, was a staple of opera houses around the world.
Highly virtuosic violin music was sometimes associated with the Devil. Tartini's Devil's Trill sonata and Paganini's Devil's Laughter caprice are examples. The theme is taken up by Stravinsky in the "Devil's Dance" from The Soldier's Tale.
"Archangel of Light" (another name for Lucifer) is a title song of the classical music band with the same name, by the composer Carlos David López Grether
Read more about this topic: Lucifer In Popular Culture, Entertainment, Music
Famous quotes containing the words classical music, classical and/or music:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
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“The time was once, when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savored in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)