The subject of tonight's "Music and the Brain" lecture at the Library of Congress was "Dangerous Music." Norman Middleton and Jessica Krash discussed three related topics. The first had to do with "diabolus in musica," or "the devil in music." This refers to the tritone (a music interval spanning three whole tones), which has been used as a symbol of evil since medieval times and was, in fact, banned through the Renaissance. The dissonance of that interval has, however, found a lot of use in more... read more
