tritoneare

Tritoneare is a music theory term referring to the act or practice of incorporating tritone intervals or tritone-related harmonic procedures in composition and arrangement. The term derives from the English "tritone" for the augmented fourth or diminished fifth interval, combined with the Italian infinitive suffix -are, signaling an action or technique.

In practice, to tritoneare a passage means to emphasize or exploit tritone relationships—for example, to place or sustain tritone intervals between voices, or to use chords whose roots are a tritone apart, creating deliberate harmonic tension that seeks resolution. The concept encompasses both melodic use of the tritone and harmonic strategies such as chromatic planing around tritone classes or employing tritone substitutions in tonal harmony.

Historically, the tritone has long been considered highly unstable in Western music, earning the nickname "diabolus in musica." The deliberate tritone emphasis appears in various periods: late medieval and Renaissance counterpoint, Baroque harmonic experiments emphasizing colorful dissonance, and especially in 20th-century chromaticism and jazz where tritone relationships are fundamental. Modern discussions may treat tritoneare as a descriptive term for analysis rather than a formal, codified technique.

Examples commonly cited include passages where the dominant function is replaced by a dominant chord a tritone away, or lines that pivot around tritone intervals between voices, creating a sense of tension and release.