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Melody

musical melody

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174 views4 pages

Melody

musical melody

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paso2025
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about melody in music. For other senses of this word, see Melody
(disambiguation).
"Melodic" redirects here. For other uses, see Melodic (disambiguation).
"Foreground (music)" redirects here. For more specific musical uses, see Structural
level.
Not to be confused with Medley (music).

A bar from J. S. Bach's Fugue No. 17 in A-flat, BWV 862, from The Well-Tempered
Clavier (Part I), an example of counterpoint. The two voices (melodies) on each
staff can be distinguished by the direction of the stems and beams.
Duration: 5 seconds.0:05
Duration: 0 seconds.0:00
Voice 1
Duration: 0 seconds.0:00
Voice 2
Duration: 0 seconds.0:00
Voice 3
Duration: 0 seconds.0:00
Voice 4
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία (melōidía) 'singing, chanting'),[1] also tune, voice
or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a
single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and
rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include other musical elements such
as tonal color. It is the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or
part need not be a foreground melody.

Melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases or motifs, and are usually
repeated throughout a composition in various forms. Melodies may also be described
by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches
(predominantly conjunct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range,
tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, and shape.

Function and elements


Johann Philipp Kirnberger argued:

The true goal of music—its proper enterprise—is melody. All the parts of harmony
have as their ultimate purpose only beautiful melody. Therefore, the question of
which is the more significant, melody or harmony, is futile. Beyond doubt, the
means is subordinate to the end.

— Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1771)[2]


The Norwegian composer Marcus Paus has argued:

Melody is to music what a scent is to the senses: it jogs our memory. It gives face
to form, and identity and character to the process and proceedings. It is not only
a musical subject, but a manifestation of the musically subjective. It carries and
radiates personality with as much clarity and poignancy as harmony and rhythm
combined. As such a powerful tool of communication, melody serves not only as
protagonist in its own drama, but as messenger from the author to the audience.

— Marcus Paus (2017)[3]


Given the many and varied elements and styles of melody "many extant explanations
[of melody] confine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too
exclusive."[4] Paul Narveson claimed in 1984 that more than three-quarters of
melodic topics had not been explored thoroughly.[5]

The melodies existing in most European music written before the 20th century, and
popular music throughout the 20th century, featured "fixed and easily discernible
frequency patterns", recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels"
and "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations".[4]

Melodies in the 20th century "utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than
ha[d] been the custom in any other historical period of Western music." While the
diatonic scale was still used, the chromatic scale became "widely employed."[4]
Composers also allotted a structural role to "the qualitative dimensions" that
previously had been "almost exclusively reserved for pitch and rhythm". Kliewer
states, "The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality
(timbre), texture, and loudness.[4] Though the same melody may be recognizable when
played with a wide variety of timbres and dynamics, the latter may still be an
"element of linear ordering."[4]

Examples

"Pop Goes the Weasel" melody


Duration: 12 seconds.0:12

Melody from Anton Webern's Variations for orchestra, Op. 30 (pp. 23–24)[6]
Duration: 7 seconds.0:07
Different musical styles use melody in different ways. For example:

Jazz musicians use the term "lead" or "head" to refer to the main melody, which is
used as a starting point for improvisation.
Rock music, and other forms of popular music and folk music tend to pick one or two
melodies (verse and chorus, sometimes with a third, contrasting melody known as a
bridge or middle eight) and stick with them; much variety may occur in the phrasing
and lyrics.
Indian classical music relies heavily on melody and rhythm, and not so much on
harmony, as the music contains no chord changes.
Balinese gamelan music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a
single melody played simultaneously, called heterophony.
In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or theme,
and then create variations. Classical music often has several melodic layers,
called polyphony, such as those in a fugue, a type of counterpoint. Often, melodies
are constructed from motifs or short melodic fragments, such as the opening of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Richard Wagner popularized the concept of a leitmotif:
a motif or melody associated with a certain idea, person or place.
While in both most popular music and classical music of the common practice period
pitch and duration are of primary importance in melodies, the contemporary music of
the 20th and 21st centuries pitch and duration have lessened in importance and
quality has gained importance, often primary. Examples include musique concrète,
klangfarbenmelodie, Elliott Carter's Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (which contains a
movement with only one note), the third movement of Ruth Crawford-Seeger's String
Quartet 1931 (later re-orchestrated as Andante for string orchestra), which creates
the melody from an unchanging set of pitches through "dissonant dynamics" alone,
and György Ligeti's Aventures, in which recurring phonetics create the linear form.
See also
Hocket
Parsons code, a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic
motion—the motion of the pitch up and down.
Sequence (music)
Unified field
References
μελῳδία. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the
Perseus Project.
Forte, Allen (1979). Tonal Harmony in Concept & Practice, p. 203. ISBN 0-03-
020756-8.
Paus, Marcus (6 November 2017). "Why melody matters". Gramophone.
Kliewer, Vernon (1975). "Melody: Linear Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music",
Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music, pp. 270–301. Wittlich, Gary (ed.). Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.
Narveson, Paul (1984). Theory of Melody. ISBN 0-8191-3834-7.
Marquis, G. Weston (1964). Twentieth Century Music Idioms, p. 2. Prentice-Hall,
Inc., Inglewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Further reading
Apel, Willi. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., pp. 517–19.
Cole, Simon (2020). just BE here – the guide to musicking mindfulness
Edwards, Arthur C. The Art of Melody, pp. xix–xxx.
Holst, Imogen(1962/2008). Tune, Faber and Faber, London. ISBN 0-571-24198-0.
Smits van Waesberghe, Joseph [nl] (1955). A Textbook of Melody: A course in
functional melodic analysis, American Institute of Musicology.
Szabolcsi, Bence (1965). A History of Melody, Barrie and Rockliff, London.
Trippett, David (2013). Wagner's Melodies. Cambridge University Press.
Trippett, David (2019). "Melody" in The Oxford Handbook to Critical Concepts in
Music Theory. Oxford University Press.
External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Melody.


The dictionary definition of melody at Wiktionary
Quotations related to Melody at Wikiquote
Carry A Tune Week, list of tunes
Creating and orchestrating a coherent and balanced melody Archived 2021-04-28 at
the Wayback Machine
vte
Melody
BalunganCadenceIntervalMelismaMelodic motionMotifOrnament
TrillPatternPhrasingPitchRhythmSequenceSteps and skipsTimbreType
(figure)UlulationVoiceVoice leading
vte
Musical form and development
Authority control databases: National Edit this at Wikidata
GermanyUnited StatesFranceBnF dataCzech RepublicIsrael
Categories: MelodyMusical textureHarmonyPolyphonic formFormal sections in music
analysis
This page was last edited on 11 June 2024, at 19:26 (UTC).
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