melody

melody, in music, the linear sequence of musical tones perceived as a single coherent line, often forming the most recognizable and expressive element of a composition. Melody is the aesthetic product of a given succession of pitches in musical time, implying rhythmically ordered movement from pitch to pitch.

Historical developments

Melody in Western music by the late 19th century was considered to be the surface of a group of harmonies. The top tone of a chord became a melody tone; chords were chosen for their color and sense of direction relative to each other and were spaced so that a desired succession of tones lay on top. Any melody, then, had underlying chords that could be deduced. Thus, a skilled guitarist, analyzing mentally, can apply chords to a melody.

But melody is far older than harmony. The single line of melody was highly developed—e.g., in medieval European and Byzantine plainchant, in the melodies of the trouvères and troubadours, and in the ragas and maqāmāt (melody types) of Indian and Arab music. Combining several lines of melody at once is polyphony, varying a melody in different ways in simultaneous performance is heterophony, and combining melody and chords is homophony.

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Sound Check: Musical Vocabulary Quiz

Characteristics

A melodic line has several key characteristics, including contour, range, and scale. The contour of melody is the overall line that rises, falls, arches, undulates, or moves in any other characteristic way. For example, the first line of the Scottish folk song “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” rises with a leap, then descends more or less stepwise. Melodic motion may be disjunct, using leaps, or conjunct, moving by steps; motion helps form the melody’s contour.

The range of a melody is the space it occupies within the spectrum of pitches the human ear can perceive. Some melodies have a range of two notes. The soprano solo in the “Kyrie Eleison” of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (K. 427) has a range of two octaves.

Melody also has a scale. In some cultures, scales are formally recognized as systems of tones from which melody can be built. Melody, however, antedates the concept of scale. Scales may be abstracted from their melodies by listing the tones used in order of pitch. The intervals of a melody’s scale contribute to its overall character. When children sing “It’s raining, it’s pouring” (g–g–e–a–g–e), a ditty found throughout Europe, they sing a melody that uses a scale of three tones; two intervals are used, a wide one (minor third) and a narrow one (major second). The harmonic minor scale of western Europe contains an interval not found in the major scale—an augmented second, as A♭–B—which contributes to the distinctive quality of many minor melodies. African and European melodies sometimes consist of chains of intervals, such as of thirds or fourths.

Composition

Composers and improvisers draw from a number of melodic resources:

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• 1. A theme is a melody that is not necessarily complete in itself except when designed for a set of variations but is recognizable as a pregnant phrase or clause. A fugue subject is a theme; the expositions and episodes of a sonata are groups of themes.

• 2. Figures or motives, small fragments of a theme, are grouped into new melodies in the “development” of a sonata. In a fugue, they carry on the music when the subject and countersubject are silent.

• 3. In a sequence, a figure or group of chords is repeated at different levels of pitch.

• 4. Ornaments, or graces (small melodic devices such as grace notes, appoggiaturas, trills, slides, tremolo, and slight deviations from standard pitch), may be used to embellish a melody. Melodic ornamentation is present in most European music and is essential to Indian, Arabic, Japanese, and much other non-Western music.

Some musical systems have complex formulaic structures called modes or melody types with which melodies are built.